FOAM MATTRESS TOPPER - Sleep and your health
Getting a good night's sleep is essential to healthy living. The body is rarely inactive once we are awake and it requires time to recover, relax and rejuvenate itself. This vital recovery period occurs when we are in bed and asleep.
Sleeping alone is not however good enough. For the body to benefit from sleep the sleep needs to be deep and undisturbed and the body needs to be adequately supported, particularly around certain key areas.
Getting good sleep
In order to get as much continuous and uninterrupted sleep as possible, the body must feel comfortable.
This means that the sleeping surface must be adequately padded, easy to move around on, and free from any characteristics that may disturb sleep and result in the sleeping person waking up.
This means that lumps or faults in a mattress, or over firmness of a mattress, must be avoided.
It is also important, when two people sleep together, to ensure that the mattress (or topper) does not ripple one person's movements over to the sleeping area of the other person.
The mattress or topper should also have a neutral temperature that does not become overly warm or allow too much heat to escape and become unduly cool.
Getting supported sleep
Staying asleep is one thing, but providing recuperative support for the body's tired muscles and bones is something else.
It is critical for healthy sleep that important areas of the body are adequately supported. These areas include the shoulders, hips, knees and back.
The back needs to be supported in a way that retains the spine's natural curvature, i.e. the spine's profile when an individual is in a standing posture. Any failure of a mattress or topper to do this will ultimately have a negative impact on the health of the back. This can result in a painful or aching back and can even lead to chronic back conditions.
Important skeletal joint structures like those of the hips and shoulders are the other key areas where a good mattress or topper needs to provide the right kind of support. These are often the heaviest parts of the body, but it is important that they do not become pivotal load bearing axis on the bed. This can result in pressure build up and cause aches and discomforts. Sleep can also be disrupted.
The foam mattress topper solution
A foam mattress topper is not necessarily the recipe for the perfect night of undisturbed and supported sleep.
However, when the right topper is added to a mattress, it can improve the sleeping surface and it may provide a comfortable and orthopedically supportive mattress and topper combination that improves sleep.