New mattress for a 115lb side sleeper with with hip, shoulder and rib pain. Over-researching to death and desperate for help please

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Hello Everyone, brand new member here :grinning:. I have been on Cnet, Consumer Reports, NapLab, SleepDoctor and the list goes on. I have been over-researching mattresses for weeks now while continuing to sleep on my 10 year old mattress with a huge gully that I sleep in. Not to mention my poor husband as well. I have been flooded with beds such as Saatva, Brooklyn Bedding, Casper and Purple. There is so much out there, I just keep going around in circles and scared to buy anything because there are always those negative reviews that stick out. I’m scared that I’ll buy something that’s good for me but doesn’t work for my husband. I have never shopped for a mattress online before.

A little bit about me. I am a 5’5" 115lb side sleeper. My husband is 6’2" 190lb side sleeper. We both sleep very hot, we live in Florida. I’ve looked into cooling mattresses but we always sleep with a waterproof mattress protector on the bed, so that may defeat the purpose of a cooling mattress (I don’t know.) The current mattress we have is over 10 years old and has gullies/dips that have formed where my husband and I have slept, it’s king sized and has also formed a lump in the middle of the bed. My husband and I both wake up with back issues. I personally wake up with hip, rib and shoulder pain as well. I am also currently losing more weight, so I fluctuate between 110 and 115lbs. I have been looking (totally open) into hybrids, latex, foam, I’m a bit hesitant of memory foam as from what I understand it retains heat and I wake up with night sweats, as does my husband. I hear good things about latex but then I always hear its to firm for smaller side sleepers. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you so much.

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HI ForeverSleepy and welcome to the forums! Anything that inhibits the flow of water (the mattress protector you’re using) will inhibit airflow as well and will reflect most of your body heat back to you, so a “cooling mattress” won’t really help as long as you’re using that protector. You might want to look at something like the BedJet system which pumps cool compressed air under the blankets - https://bedjet.com/

Regarding the mattress, if you’re considering Sleep EZ, there are TONS of benefits I can list regarding the mattress. I don’t mean to overwhelm you, so I’ll do my best to summarize it for you. The organic and natural mattresses (the Select Sleep mattresses) are our flagship products. https://sleepez.com/product/organic-latex-mattress/ They’re fully customizable, meaning you can order the mattress to be as soft or as firm as you’d like. They’re also fully adjustable, meaning you can change the softness, firmness, back support, pressure relief, etc. AFTER you get the mattress in your home. To be more specific, the 10” is our most popular, and these mattresses normally go out with three 3" layers of different firmnesses - normally the softest layer (or the cushion & contour layer) is on top and the supportive layers are on the bottom. This helps ensure our customers get the right balance of contour for their hips and shoulders but also support for their lower back. If you start with a certain setup and find that it’s too soft, you can unzip the cover and rearrange the layers to get a firmer feel out of the mattress, or you can exchange a layer to make it softer. Additionally, latex mattresses typically last 20 years. If, in 5 or 10 or 15 years you decide you want a softer or firmer mattress you would only have to buy a new layer instead of an entirely new mattress. Lastly, if the mattress starts to break down in 15 – 20 years, it’s normally the top layer that breaks down first, and at that point you can likely just buy a new top layer of latex instead of a whole new mattress and get an additional 8-10 years out of the mattress.

Furthermore, queen, king, and cal king mattresses are available with what we call “split layers,” which means you can have us cut the layers down the middle (from head to foot) so that you can have a different feel / firmness on your side versus your partner’s side, and you can adjust each side independently over the 20 year lifetime of the mattress. About 95% of our mattresses go out with all split layers from top to bottom, and we get zero complaints on being able to feel the split and we get zero complaints.

Based on the information you’ve provided, I would normally recommend our 10" organic latex mattress with soft Talalay over medium Dunlop over firm Dunlop for your side and medium Talalay over medium Dunlop over firm Dunlop for his side. The top Talalay layer should provide all the contour and pressure relief needed to avoid any pressure point issues and will add secondary support to the mattress. Secondary support is needed to fill in the gaps between your body and the mattress – back sleepers normally need secondary support to fill in the gaps between the small of their back and the mattress; side sleepers normally need secondary support to fill in the gaps between their mid-section and the mattress. If these parts of a person’s body aren’t supported by the mattress, their muscles will work throughout the night to hold these parts of the body up, and by the time they wake up they’ve got back pain. So the top 3” of Talalay latex will provide contour, pressure relief, and secondary support. The remaining Dunlop layers should provide all the support needed to maintain proper spinal alignment and avoid back pain. Please keep in mind that our initial recommendations have a 90% success rate (we only have a 10% layer exchange rate and a 3%-4% return rate) so there’s a 90% chance that the above recommendation works perfectly for you.

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