Is Your Mattress Helping or Hurting You?
Shawn Clark
The Modern Mattress and Wellness
Mattresses used to be made primarily of cotton padding and springs. Since the 1950's and the invention of plastics and foams, the modern mattress has gone through many evolutions. From waterbeds to today's memory foam offerings, this evolution has been quite spectacular. During this time, though, sleep issues have risen to almost epidemic proportions, making us ask the question, "Is the modern mattress a wellness product or not?"
Let's examine the facts. Research shows that we are sleeping 30% less than our parents did. Seventy million people report that they suffer from sleep-related pain. Poor sleep is at epidemic proportions, making it the leading health issue in the US since it has been related to the growth of many disease states, including stroke, diabetes, obesity, and many immune disorders and toxicity-related illnesses, such as SIDS, ADD, and cancer.
The Modern Mattress
The modern mattress is composed of two basic parts:
1. The foundation, which is usually a box spring, but it can also be a platform or adjustable base.
2. The top mattress, which has a support layer and a comfort layer. The support layer's job is to provide support for the skeletal system. It can be an innerspring unit or have an air or foam core. The comfort layer's role is to provide pressure relief. Synthetic foams, such as viscoelastic (memory), latex (rubber derivative), soy, and polyurethane foams (and combinations thereof), are used to provide these comfort layers.
Additionally, the federal government passed a law requiring that all mattresses also contain a fire blocker that selfextinguishes open flames should a mattress be set on fire.
Over the years, these modern materials, which are predominantly synthetic foams, have replaced cotton and steel springs as the primary materials used in a mattress. This is due to cost and the availability of cotton.
Sleep, Wellness, and the Modern Mattress
Doctors tell us the ideal mattress should support the spine properly; reduce pressure and encourage deep, healing sleep; and be made of safe, nontoxic materials that wear properly. When we evaluate the modern mattress on these guidelines, we find the following problems:
Alignment Support: For most people, the hip and lower torso area weighs more than our shoulder area and must be pushed up into proper alignment. The use of new foam materials, such as memory foam and latex, do not do this when we sleep, and neither do air or water. The fastest-growing segment of the modern mattress market is memory foam beds, which will soften with use, further diminishing alignment support as they become worn. Flence, the movement away from steel springs in mattresses presents a threat to proper back support.
Pressure Relief: Synthetic foams wear with use at a much faster rate than cotton. This has given rise to the phenomenon of "body impressions," which occur with use and reflect foam's inability to rebound over time. Independent testing of mattress foams shows they can be expected to wear out in three to eight years, depending on the amount and type of foam used. Buyers, however, expect the modern mattress to last for the warranty period of 20 or more years, just like their old cotton mattress did.
Off-Gassing: Synthetic foams emit noxious fumes as they wear, which is called off-gassing. The fastest growing segment of the modern mattress market is memory foam, which is made from polyurethane foam and an additive to make it rebound slowly. Almost every modern mattress uses polyurethane foam, which is proven to contain carcinogens. New research links PCBs such as polyurethane to the rise in childhood cancer, ADD, asthma, and autism.
Fire Blockers: Many of the materials used to retard fire also contain known carcinogens. By federal law, mattress manufacturers are required to prove to the government that their products will extinguish an open flame, but don't have to reveal to the consumer what materials they used to do so.
This is not to say that your mattress will kill you tonight. The synthetic materials it is made from and the fire blockers used are present in
many other areas of everyday life, even around the home. Flowever, for some people the effects are quite serious, and it is also clear that the mattress in its modern evolution, as compared to its previous form, has moved further away from being a safe, reliable product upon which to sleep.
What Can You Do?
Sleep is important. Recent studies link the absence of deep, healing sleep to increased risk of stroke, diabetes, and obesity (not to mention optimal performance). The role the right mattress plays is widely misunderstood. Ask your doctor about it.
a Shawn Clark, EVP/cofounder of Advanced Comfort Technologies, Inc., a company founded in 1998 to develop sleep wellness mattresses marketed through wellness professionals under the intelliBED name.
