Yesterday I still had a tiny bit of hip/lower back pain although it’s been greatly diminished compared to what I was dealing with previously. I’m pretty sure this is an alignment issue still because if I’m on my side and tighten my muscles to straighten myself it does feel better and the discomfort goes away. I suspect that I’m still lacking support in the lumbar region as being the cause of the lower back/hip discomfort. Ideally my shoulder could also sink in more but right now I have no pain or discomfort there other than it still being a bit tender from when it began to hurt in bed prior to getting the air mattress base (I was able to bench press the other day so it feels like it’s healing fine). In order to really fix this permanently I may need to create to a zoned setup similar to the Flobeds Vzone. That way I can really tune the firmness for where I need it firmer/softer depending on where on the body I need more support or cushioning. I haven’t really seen anyone do this as a DIY yet with latex (found a few threads where folks cut up polyfoam) so if anyone knows of any links where they did latex zoning please post them up. I have to admit I’m a little scared to cut the latex because with all the Covid stuff going on now replacements are much harder to get up here in Canada but I think I won’t have a choice if I really want to solve this for good. So basically I’m planning on sacrificing 1 soft (20ILD), 1 medium (30ILD) and 1 firm (44ILD) 3" SOL dunlop twin XL layer to try and create the zoning pieces I need for this. I will be putting these under an SOL soft 3" dunlop layer which has been working but I also have a soft (not sure on ILD) 2" Natura Talalay topper I can experiment with too to see which feels better.
Looks like I’ll be taking my own advice from my post here about spinal alignment and multi-zoning your mattress:
https://forum.mattressunderground.com/t/diy-latex-hybrid-adjusting-spinal-alignment
Since the latex foams are are quite an expensive material to work with I want to make sure I’m doing this right so I’m probably going to get something like this to make sure the cuts are smooth and vertical. Once I have a bit of use with it I’ll let everyone know how it worked along with a few pics. I have a couple couch cushions I want to put better foam in too so that should allow me to do them myself too.
https://www.sailrite.com/Sailrite-Blade-8-Foam-Cutter-with-Carrying-Case-110V