Zenhaven Latex Mattress

[phoenix]

Hi sdianne,

Welcome to the Mattress Forum!

I have owned a Sealy Posturepedic with a pillow top for 20+ years. It slept fantastic until 3 years ago when I added a form layer top since it was beginning to wear

You certainly got your money’s worth out of that item.

Earlier this year, I noticed I was waking up during the night, tossing and turning and decided I needed a new mattress to ensure a good nights sleep. Note that I did not have any “real” problems including no morning back ache etc. I just thought it would be great to sleep straight through for once!

Frequent repositioning is one of the signs that your mattress may not be meeting your specific comfort needs. And a 20-year old mattress, while it still may have felt “relatively” comfortable to you, would have been well beyond what most in the industry would consider a useful comfort life, so the decision to replace the mattress would have been a reasonable one.

I am a natural born researcher so after much thought, I ordered the Zenhaven latex matress. The day after I received this mattress, I slightly injured my back attempting a complicated Pilates move. I am 60 years old with slight scoliosis and in the last 10 years I have had some minor back issues if I make a “wrong” move. This usually goes away in a week or so

You selected a product using good quality and durable materials. I’m sorry to learn of your pre-existing back issues, and your recent injury.

Well roll forward 3 months later and I continue to have this back discomfort. It is especially bad when I first get up in the morning. I had Zenhaven flip the mattress from the luxury softer side to the firmer side two weeks ago and I am in even more pain when rising. I have now have 30 days until I can return for a full refund and am considering flipping it back to the softer side and if the discomfort continues, returning.

Unfortunately, there’s really no way to tell if the mattress is contributing to your back issue, as you injured yourself the day after receiving it, and you already have pre-existing back issues. All injuries aren’t the same, even if they feel similar when becoming injured or arise from the same activity, so when you’ve experienced an injury it really complicates testing out a new mattress, as it introduces new variables into the equation of attempting to objectively analyze your new mattress.

Most people tend to describe the ZenHaven as a “medium-firm” to “firm” product, depending upon the side which is used. As your issues seemed to get worse when sleeping upon the “firmer” side of the mattress, and as your old mattress certainly would have had the foams soften over time (along with the softer topper you added), it could be that you prefer a softer overall level of plushness. But this would really be impossible for me to say via an online forum, and also because of the injury issue you sustained.

In general, issues with “pain” earlier in the night tend to be surface comfort related, and issues with “pain” in the morning tend to be more alignment (deep support) related, but your “deep support” would have been a bit firmer when you had the mattress flipped, so this may not necessarily be the case, which again makes this assessment more difficult to separate the cause between the injury and the mattress. There are some general guidelines as to what tends to cause back pain in post #2 here that you may find interesting

Has anyone else had issues with the Zenhaven mattress or a latex mattress? I feel like I have been beat up when I awake in the morning! Should I just start over and buy a different kind of mattress?

In general, other people’s opinions and experiences won’t be reliable indicators of the appropriateness of a product for anyone else, due to the many unknowns, variables and personal preferences involved, and especially in this case, with a pre-existing back issues and a back injury.

It certainly may be that you don’t have a preference for the comfort that this mattress provides, but until you are able to address and recover from your back injury, I don’t know how accurate any assessment of a mattress will be.

One thought I have would be that if you flipped the mattress back over to the “less firm” side, do you still have the foam topper from your old mattress to place upon it? This would be an easy way to test if you desire and respond better to a bit of extra surface plushness.

Otherwise, I don’t have a suggestion until your back is back to a more “normal” state. I wish I did! :unsure:

If you have more specific questions, I’ll do my best to answer them for you.

Phoenix