A good night’s sleep is one of the best and often most underrated things we can do for your health. Its therefore a no-brainer that having a good supportive mattress is key to accessing all the good health benefits.
The effects of sleeping on a bad mattress extend beyond your bedtime and can even affect your basic health like breathing, energy levels, your mood and mental health.
In this article, we’ll help uncover some basic signs to look out for that your mattress has become the silent enemy!
1. Pain / Back Ache:
An older mattress often sags in the middle or form severe indentations where we put the most weight on it. Couples also often find that their sleeping area has dipped and the mattress forms 2 valleys with a ridge in the middle, needless to say, that’s bad for your back and your intimacy! Sagging mattresses could cause lower back pain, stiffness or sore muscles. Prolonged periods of waking up in pain can lead to chronic back problems and injury.
2. Sagging and Deforming:
Sagging or deformation of a mattress occurs when the surface of the bed gets indented and lumpy from years of taking your weight (No I don’t mean your fat! Its basic wear and tear). Most mattresses will have some basic settling as the comfort foams and fibres settle. This should not, however, be too drastic or visible as a dramatic sag or a canoe shape in your mattress could be a sign of defect or age. Most bed manufacturers cover this under the guarantee or warranty, provided you’ve taken good overall care of the rest of the surface.
3. Joint Pain / Soreness or stiffness
If you wake up in the morning feeling like you’ve been 12 rounds with Rocky Balboa, either you have very lifelike dreams or your mattress is causing you pain. It’s most likely that your mattress is not providing the correct support to keep your spine in the correct alignment. It’s natural for your mattress to become softer over time, but if it becomes too soft, you might be tossing or turning all night. Laying down, your spine should maintain a fairly natural, relatively straight line, so when a mattress gets older, it tends to cause your body to dip which could lead to issues after spending hours in that position.
4. Lack of sleep
This is the most common and easiest sign that your mattress is trying to ruin not only your night, but your day as well! So, if like any responsible adult, you got to bed by 10pm looking forward to a solid 8 hours sleep, but still wake up groggy and tired the next morning, chances are it could be your mattress’s fault. A unsupportive or uncomfortable mattress leads to you tossing and turning thereby preventing you from getting that deep, restorative sleep your body needs. This leads you depriving your body of the time it needs to repair and restore itself, and may also lead to daytime drowsiness, poor judgment, and mood swings.
5. Hygiene issues:
Tens of millions! No, that’s not what a quality mattress will set you back, but rather the average number of microscopic critters sharing your bed with you every night. Dust mites are the most common and they feed off your dead skin cells and their poop (nasty buggers) is what causes us problems (itching, breathing problems etc.)
These critters will however always multiply and a scary fact is that your mattress tends to double in weight after 10yrs simply because of what goes and grown inside it over the years! (Makes you want to go out and burn that old mattress doesn’t it!)
Dust mites are however not our only concern. People are pretty gross too! (well most of us not intentionally) While sleeping, we shed skin cells and we sweat out about a cup of water per night. Most of that will evaporate, but the rest soaks through our sheets and right into our mattress. Over time this could result in mould and mildew developing which is also a health hazard as we breathe that in.
So if you suffer from a shortage of breathe, itchy skin or rashes when in bed, you should maybe look at renewing your mattress or at least investing in a quality Waterproof Mattress protector . If however, you have not used a mattress protector from day one, chances are spores are already in your mattress.
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Hopefully, this article helps shed some light on the question of the ages: “is it time to get a new mattress?” Drop us a line or give us a call and you might be pleasantly surprised at how affordable a quality mattress might be (especially compared to doctors’ bills if left for too long)