The Best Mattress for Back Sleepers

The very best mattress for back sleepers will be the mattress that supports the body in a neutral position.

What do we mean by that? Well, the best mattress will be able to not only support your body weight, but also simultaneously provide the proper contour necessary to maintain that neutral position.

Your neutral position is how you look standing upright, nice and relaxed; it’s the way your shoulders line up with your hips. If you turn to the side and look in the mirror, you can see the natural curvature of your spinal column and how your seat curves down to your hamstrings.

This is what we’re trying to replicate while back sleeping: everything should look as close as possible to how it looks while you’re standing upright. All that natural curvature needs to exist while you’re sleeping. If it doesn’t, you’ll wake up with soreness due to the stress of being mispositioned during the night.

For back sleepers, please pay special attention to the hip region. The heaviest bone group in the body is the pelvic region. If proper contour isn’t achieved in this area, it throws off the entire alignment.

If the bed is too firm, and hips are held too high, once sleep sets in and the body relaxes, the hips will be forced upwards (towards the ceiling) in an unhealthy way, and ultimately flatten out the natural curvature of the low back region. The discs in between each vertebrae can’t rehydrate properly, resulting in back pain. The musculature isn’t relaxed in a healthy position, but is flexed, resulting in tension/pulling sensations: back pain. See where we’re going with this?

If the bed is too soft, the hips/pelvic region drop in too far into the mattress, creating a swayback effect. This creates musculature tension along the lumbar spine due to exaggerated curvature: back pain. And again, the intervertebral discs can’t rehydrate properly when they’re pinched.; back pain results.

Do you need a soft, medium, or firm mattress? The answer is dictated by your weight.

We suggest throwing the terms “soft” and “firm” right out the window. Shop according to flexible support that allows proper positioning. Find a mattress that holds you properly, then take a good long look at the warranty to see how long you may expect it to do so. Beware, again, of “comfort impression” caveats. Please refer to our article: Mattress Warranties—What You Need to Know Before You Buy for more information on how to de-code warranties: http://sovnsleep.blogspot.com/2012/12/mattress-warranties-what-you-need-to.html

Next up: What’s the best mattress for stomach sleepers?

The Best Mattress For Side Sleepers

We decided to break things down in shorter (but still informative) essays more focused on main sleeping position.

Go look in the mirror at yourself in a relaxed, standing position. Note the position of your shoulders in relation to both your hips and waist region. This is your neutral position.

This is what the best mattress for you will do: it will allow your body to rest in that alignment while you’re sleeping.

For the side-sleeping individual, imagine replicating your standing position while in bed.

The shoulders and hips need to “get in” to the mattress, compressing the materials just enough so that the midsection gets proper support. There should be contact on every part of your body: no gap under the midsection.

The firmness of the best bed for you depends on your build and weight.

When side-sleeping, if the shoulders and/or hips do not compress the surface of the mattress enough, the mattress will essentially repel them. So comparing the two:

A well-fitting mattress:

Plenty of room for shoulder/hips and support through the midsection. Spine in a straight alignment.

A too-firm mattress will get you to this:

Shoulders and/or hips get forced upward (towards the ceiling), which flexes the spine into a “U” position. Pain in the low back area will occur. Also, compression upon the shoulders/hips can cause numbness in the arm, tingly fingers, mid-back pain, hip/shoulder pointers, etc.

If a mattress is too soft, the heaviest parts of the body (hip zone) get too far into the mattress; once again, the spine is flexed in an unnatural position. Different problem with the same results: Low back pain and more.

So there you have it, yet again. The proper mattress for YOU will be dictated by:

• Your weight
• Your build
• Your sleeping positions

40 Facts About Sleep

40 FACTS ABOUT SLEEP YO U PROBABLY DIDN'T KNOW... (OR WERE TOO TIRED TO THINK ABOUT)

What really strikes me

"Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.05%."

-The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.

- It's impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision. People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.

- Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you're sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you're still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.

- A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year

- One of the best predictors of insomnia later in life is the development of bad habits from having sleep disturbed by young children.

 

- The continuous brain recordings that led to the discovery of REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep were not done until 1953, partly because the scientists involved were concerned about wasting paper.

- REM sleep occurs in bursts totalling about 2 hours a night, usually beginning about 90 minutes after falling asleep.

- Dreams, once thought to occur only during REM sleep, also occur (but to a lesser extent) in non-REM sleep phases. It's possible there may not be a single moment of our sleep when we are actually dreamless.

- REM dreams are characterised by bizarre plots, but non-REM dreams are repetitive and thought-like, with little imagery - obsessively returning to a suspicion you left your mobile phone somewhere, for example.

- Certain types of eye movements during REM sleep correspond to specific movements in dreams, suggesting at least part of the dreaming process is analagous to watching a film

- No-one knows for sure if other species dream but some do have sleep cycles similar to humans.

- Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.

- Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory, that is, we dream about things worth remembering. Others reckon we dream about things worth forgetting - to eliminate overlapping memories that would otherwise clog up our brains.

- Dreams may not serve any purpose at all but be merely a meaningless byproduct of two evolutionary adaptations - sleep and consciousness.

- REM sleep may help developing brains mature. Premature babies have 75 per cent REM sleep, 10 per cent more than full-term bubs. Similarly, a newborn kitten puppy rat or hampster experiences only REM sleep, while a newborn guinea pig (which is much more developed at birth) has almost no REM sleep at all.

- Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain's sleep-wake clock.

- British Ministry of Defence researchers have been able to reset soldiers' body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hrs. Tiny optical fibres embedded in special spectacles project a ring of bright white light (with a spectrum identical to a sunrise) around the edge of soldiers' retinas, fooling them into thinking they have just woken up. The system was first used on US pilots during the bombing of Kosovo.

- Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.

- The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.

- The NRMA estimates fatigue is involved in one in 6 fatal road accidents.

- Exposure to noise at night can suppress immune function even if the sleeper doesn’t wake. Unfamiliar noise, and noise during the first and last two hours of sleep, has the greatest disruptive effect on the sleep cycle.

- The "natural alarm clock" which enables some people to wake up more or less when they want to is caused by a burst of the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. Researchers say this reflects an unconscious anticipation of the stress of waking up.

- Some sleeping tablets, such as barbiturates suppress REM sleep, which can be harmful over a long period.

- In insomnia following bereavement, sleeping pills can disrupt grieving.

- Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a "neural switch" in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.

 

- To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain's sleep-wake cycle are closely linked. That's why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep. The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees. But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees - one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.

 

- A night on the grog will help you get to sleep but it will be a light slumber and you won't dream much.

- After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you've slept enough.

- Humans sleep on average around three hours less than other primates like chimps, rhesus monkeys, squirrel monkeys and baboons, all of whom sleep for 10 hours.

- Ducks at risk of attack by predators are able to balance the need for sleep and survival, keeping one half of the brain awake while the other slips into sleep mode.

- Ten per cent of snorers have sleep apnoea, a disorder which causes sufferers to stop breathing up to 300 times a night and significantly increases the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.

- Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep

- Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal

- Some studies suggest women need up to an hour's extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.

- Feeling tired can feel normal after a short time. Those deliberately deprived of sleep for research initially noticed greatly the effects on their alertness, mood and physical performance, but the awareness dropped off after the first few days.

- Diaries from the pre-electric-light-globe Victorian era show adults slept nine to 10 hours a night with periods of rest changing with the seasons in line with sunrise and sunsets.

- Most of what we know about sleep we've learned in the past 25 years.

- As a group, 18 to 24 year-olds deprived of sleep suffer more from impaired performance than older adults.

- Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

- The extra-hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents.

Lost Sleep Can Lead to Weight Gain

The best path to a healthy weight may be a good night’s sleep.

For years researchers have known that adults who sleep less than five or six hours a night are at higher risk of being overweight. Among children, sleeping less than 10 hours a night is associated with weight gain.

Now a fascinating new study suggests that the link may be even more insidious than previously thought. Losing just a few hours of sleep a few nights in a row can lead to almost immediate weight gain.

Sleep researchers from the University of Colorado recruited 16 healthy men and women for a two-week experiment tracking sleep, metabolism and eating habits. Nothing was left to chance: the subjects stayed in a special room that allowed researchers to track their metabolism by measuring the amount of oxygen they used and carbon dioxide they produced. Every bite of food was recorded, and strict sleep schedules were imposed.

The goal was to determine how inadequate sleep over just one week — similar to what might occur when students cram for exams or when office workers stay up late to meet a looming deadline — affects a person’s weight, behavior and physiology.

During the first week of the study, half the people were allowed to sleep nine hours a night while the other half stayed up until about midnight and then could sleep up to five hours. Everyone was given unlimited access to food. In the second week, the nine-hour sleepers were then restricted to five hours of sleep a night, while the sleep-deprived participants were allowed an extra four hours.

Notably, the researchers found that staying up late and getting just five hours of sleep increased a person’s metabolism. Sleep-deprived participants actually burned an extra 111 calories a day, according to the findings published last week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But even though we burn more calories when we stay awake, losing sleep is not a good way to lose weight. The light sleepers ended up eating far more than those who got nine hours of sleep, and by the end of the first week the sleep-deprived subjects had gained an average of about two pounds.

During the second week, members of the group that had originally slept nine hours also gained weight when they were restricted to just five hours. And the other group began to lose some (but not all) of the weight gained in that first sleep-deprived week.

Kenneth Wright director of the university’s sleep and chronobiology laboratory, said part of the change was behavioral. Staying up late and skimping on sleep led to not only more eating, but a shift in the type of foods a person consumed.

 

“We found that when people weren’t getting enough sleep they overate carbohydrates,” he said. “They ate more food, and when they ate food also changed. They ate a smaller breakfast and they ate a lot more after dinner.”

In fact, sleep-deprived eaters ended up eating more calories during after-dinner snacking than in any other meal during the day. Over all, people consumed 6 percent more calories when they got too little sleep. Once they started sleeping more, they began eating more healthfully, consuming fewer carbohydrates and fats. Dr. Wright noted that the effect of sleep deprivation on weight would likely be similar in the real world although it might not be as pronounced as in the controlled environment. The researchers found that insufficient sleep changed the timing of a person’s internal clock, and that in turn appeared to influence the changes in eating habits. “They were awake three hours before their internal nighttime had ended,” Dr. Wright said. “Being awakened during their biological night is probably why they ate smaller breakfasts.”

The effect was similar to the jet lag that occurs when a person travels from California to New York.

Last fall, The Annals of Internal Medicine reported on a study by University of Chicago researchers, who found that lack of sleep alters the biology of fat cells. In the small study — just seven healthy volunteers — the researchers tracked the changes that occurred when subjects moved from 8.5 hours of sleep to just 4.5 hours. After four nights of less sleep, their fat cells were less sensitive to insulin, a metabolic change associated with both diabetes and obesity.

“Metabolically, lack of sleep aged fat cells about 20 years,” said Matthew Brady, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and the senior author on the study.

“These subjects were in their low 20s but it’s as if they were now middle-aged in terms of their response. We were surprised how profound the effects were.”

Both Drs. Wright and Brady noted that because their studies lasted only days, it was not clear how long-term sleep deprivation affects weight, and whether the body adjusts to less sleep.

Dr. Brady said that while better sleep would not solve the obesity problem, paying more attention to sleep habits could help individuals better manage their weight.

In the future he hopes to study whether a focus on better sleep could improve the health of people in middle age who are overweight or prediabetic.

“Telling someone they need to sleep more as a way to improve their metabolic health, we think would be more palatable,” said Dr. Brady. “We think sleep is very underappreciated.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 03/19/2013, on page D4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Lost Sleep Can Lead to Weight Gain