Taking pain out of finding a mattress

May 23, 2004|By Erika Hobbs, Tribune Newspapers: The Baltimore Sun.

Ron Ferguson loved his new mattress so much that after he bought it, he signed on to work at the store that sold it to him.

Injuries and backaches plagued Ferguson, 60, for two decades. He couldn't tilt his head, raise his arm or roll out of bed. But after he bought his new mattress last year, he says, it was much easier to get up, get around and get to sleep.

Americans spend an estimated one-third of their lives sleeping, and sleep is crucial to good health. So finding the right mattress -- one you might sleep on for 10 years or longer -- is key.

"Mattresses are the most important piece of furniture you'll ever buy," says Will Leuchtenberger, manager of Bedding Barn in Cockeysville, Md. "Buy wisely."

Consumers don't have to sacrifice comfort for support. A November study published in the British medical journal The Lancet found that you can sleep on a softer bed and still have a pain-free back.

In other words, says Ferguson, manager at JoAnne's Bed and Back in Owings Mills, Md., firmness is out and softness is in.

The Lancet study, the first of its kind, showed that medium-firm mattresses were just as effective at relieving general back pain as firm ones, casting doubt on conventional wisdom that the harder the mattress, the better it is for the back.

That conventional wisdom, says Jim Wolf, a neurologist at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Baltimore, "was not necessarily an effective piece of advice." Little medical research exists on how mattresses affect back health, notes Wolf, who searched for studies last fall when he was in the process of buying a new mattress. He and his wife decided on a softer, latex model.

Because of advances in technology, most mattresses provide adequate back support despite their level of firmness. Inner support mechanisms prevent sagging, which can cause backaches. Still, shopping for a new mattress can cause a different kind of pain.

Mattress shoppers are bombarded with choices of retailers, brands and options. Models and firmness ratings can vary considerably, making it difficult to comparison shop. And you can spend anywhere from $500 to thousands.

Last year, the wholesale mattress market topped $5 billion and is expected to grow by about 5 percent in 2004, according to the International Sleep Products Association, a mattress manufacturers' trade group.

Shopping for a mattress can be frustrating and confusing because there are few industry standards. In Europe, firmness is measured on a standard scale, with 1 being the firmest and 10 being the softest. In the United States, the market is clotted with a mix of terms that vary by company: Some offer firm, medium-firm and soft mattresses. Some use "plush" to describe softness. Others use their own number system to denote firmness levels.

Mattresses also come in a variety of materials. Some are latex, some use a type of foam developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; most have a coil-like support system. In general, more coils mean more support, but even that can be misleading. Smaller mattresses require fewer coils, and some models are made with a single, tightly wound coil.

To make matters worse, some manufacturers sell the same mattress to different retail chains, but often license them under different names.

So what's a consumer to do? "There is no one formula," says Scott Boden, an orthopedic surgeon in Atlanta and spokesman for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

The International Sleep Products Association estimated that about 36 percent of mattresses sold last year cost less than $500, while 44 percent cost between $500 and $1,000.

No one is sure how the advice to sleep on hard mattresses evolved. Physicians believe that it grew from the time people slept on hammocks and straw-filled sacks, which molded spines into a sometimes painful "C" shape. For years, the hardest alternative for straightening out curved sleepers were floors, boards and, later, firm mattresses.

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Sweet dreams

Buying a mattress can be a daunting task, but you don't have to lose sleep over it. Industry experts offer the following tips to simplify the bed-buying process:

- Do your homework. Before visiting stores, check out manufacturers' Web sites to learn about their products and terminology. Consumer Reports and other consumer publications are also helpful resources.

- Try several different stores, and spend plenty of time on each mattress you try. Bringing your pillow from home is a good idea, and curl into your normal sleep position.

- Your lower back should feel supported, whether your tastes run to a firm or soft mattress. Don't insist on a firm mattress if softer ones can send you to dreamland faster. Comfort is key.

- Mattresses and box springs are usually sold as a set, and buying both will increase the life of the mattress, manufacturers say. Most mattresses last at least 10 years.

Pay attention to warranty. Generally, mattresses can't be returned based on comfort issues.

- Don't pay the sticker price. Sales are almost always available.

-- Erika Hobbs