Choose The Best Mattress For Your Health
On average, adults spend a third of their time sleeping. Most healthy adults generally spend seven to nine hours a night sleeping, while some individuals can get by without feeling drowsy on six hours' rest and others require as much as ten hours to function without drowsiness. Given this large chunk of humanity's existence dedicated to a single purpose, choosing the mattress on which to sleep should be a relatively straightforward matter. Unfortunately, mattresses come with a variety of types and features many individuals find confusing. Research is also continually studying sleep health and habits, which leads inevitably to changing products. These tips will help discover how to choose the best mattress for your health.
Consider Your Sleeping Position
Studies have established eight sleeping positions, but these are generally lumped into three main categories: stomach, back, and side. Different mattresses are designed for different sleeping positions. Side sleeping is most common and vitally requires proper pressure relief. Without this consideration, hips and shoulders take the extra strain while a side sleeper sleeps, causing discomfort during waking hours. A side sleeper, therefore, requires a mattress with a thicker and softer comfort layer, about three inches on average. Back sleepers, on the contrary, do better with a thinner top layer of about two inches. Stomach sleepers require the thinnest layer of all, with one inch to give cushioning to any bony areas without creating unnatural curves in the back. Consider your sleeping position to find the ideal mattress.
Continue reading to learn about the next factor in choosing your mattress: debating how firm or soft it needs to be.
Determine How Firm Or Soft You Want It
The best mattress firmness is a little challenging to declare universally, as it is somewhat subjective. Whether a mattress is firm, soft, or somewhere in between depends on an individual's definition of firm, medium, and soft. Factors such as body weight, type, size, and sleeping position play into this feeling of firmness. These are why you must determine how firm or soft you want it. Customers often mistakenly conflate support and firmness as the same, but this isn't the case. Good support means the mattress keeps the sleeper's spine is properly aligned and avoids creating pressure points. Firmness is more of an indicator of how the mattress feels and a firm mattress may not always give the appropriate support for the sleeper. Some manufacturers have developed what they call universal comfort, which includes a variety of layers and foams to adjust to each sleeper's needs, and is typically a happy medium of firmness for most sleepers.
Continue for details on how weight can impact the type of mattress needed for health.
