Waking up with a stiff body is not a great way to start your morning. Having pains at your joints or feeling sore in certain areas can certainly be caused due to working in a fixed position at your 9 to 5. Or exercising too hard at the gym.
However, if you are waking to such pain regularly, then it’s not your morning routine that is affecting your body. Rather it is your sleeping habit that is the culprit and your mattress might be the one aiding it. But how do you figure that out? How to tell when your mattress could be causing your back pain? Let’s find out!
How does a mattress cause back pain?
The reason you have stiffness in your body and you suffer from back pain is due to either having long periods of rest or reduced flood flow from sleeping. You can usually shake this feeling off with little stretching. But having to wake up with such a feeling of pain in the first place simply means that your mattress has failed to support your back while sleeping.
This can happen due to the following reasons:
Back Pain due to soft Mattresses: The most common reason people experience back pain is due to soft mattresses. While soft mattresses feel great initially like you are sleeping on a cloud, they hurt your back slowly. Their soft nature fails to properly support your back giving rise to back pain.
Your Mattress is too firm: A firm bed giving back pain is also very common. Although a firm bed lowers back pain by nature, too firm of a bed is like sleeping on a rock. The hard surface blocks blood flow and prevents your body from releasing pressure.
This not only results in back pain but can also lead to serious injuries. Especially cheap hard foam mattress causing lower back pain is more responsible for the misalignment of the backbone.
Your Mattress has aged: If you have been sleeping on your mattress for some time but your back pain has started recently then chances are that you are suffering from uneven mattress back pain.
You see, when you sleep on a mattress daily in one position for a long time, your body weight creates an impression of your body on the mattress, causing it to deform. The deformation results in an uneven sleeping surface that forces your spine out of natural alignment. Hence causing back pain.
The best way to avoid this is by regularly flipping and rotating your mattress. Knowing how often should you rotate your mattress will help you avoid any wear, tear and deformation.
You have a new mattress: Sometimes it is hard for our body to adjust to a new sleeping surface. A stiffer bed causing middle back pain or lower back pain is fairly possible if you have been sleeping on a bed with a softer mattress.
All of this can lead to back pain. But how do you know your mattress is causing your back pain?
Signs that your mattress could be causing your back pain?
The quickest way to judge if your mattress is the reason behind your back pain is to look for the following signs:
Waking up with pain: If your morning starts with back pain complaints, then your mattress is one of the reasons. Not having a supportive sleeping position is the reason for back pain.
Too much Tossing and Turning on the bed: If you find yourself tossing around the bed in the hunt for a good sleeping position then again it’s your mattress causing the pain. Having an uncomfortable uneven mattress is the reason you might toss and turn around too much on the bed.
Sinking Mattress: Is your mattress eating you every night? Having too soft of a mattress could cause you to sink in. Not having proper rigidity and firmness would fail to provide proper support to your back resulting in back pain.
You keep waking up: Unless your body is comfortable on the bed, you can’t go into a deep sleep. So if you keep waking up it means that your body is not very comfortable and you need to change your mattress.
What type of mattresses can reduce back pain?
Any type of mattress that provides adequate support to the spine while prompting even alignment is the most recommended mattress for back pain. This can be different for different people depending on their body and shape, size and preferred sleeping style.
However, generally, the mattress made of memory foam reduces lower back pain. These mattresses mould to a person’s body type and offer the optimum support required. Most memory foam mattresses have layers of firm and soft foam that guarantees the best bed firmness for lower back paint.
Some mattresses you can consider are from Nectar, Dream Cloud or Livpure mattresses which offer the best queen mattress for back pain.
But mattresses do come expensive, so you can’t immediately change them just because you want to. This is why it is often recommended to use a topper for back pain. These are an additional layer over your mattress that is designed to either make the surface a bit more soft or firm depending on the need.
Since toppers are made of foam, latex and feathers they can equally distribute the body weight providing an even surface to sleep. These are extremely useful if you have an old saggy mattress that keeps sinking. The best toppers for back pain that you can consider are Livpure grid topper, Saatva Mattress topper and Puffy Mattress topper.
You do need to remember that while toppers can solve the problem temporarily, you must change your mattress eventually to maintain a healthy sleeping routine. At the same time, one should also practice stretching every morning to feel free.