When you are not getting enough sleep, the source of the problem can seem like finding a needle in a haystack. Nonetheless, if you are waking up with a stiff neck and achy joints, a prime researcher says that the issue may be your mattress. After a few visits with a massage therapist or chiropractor, it may become obvious that getting a better mattress is cheaper than continuing to suffer. In addition, the costs of paying out of pocket for assistive health care over the course of a year are greater than most mattresses on the market.

To help figure out the benefits of an investment like this, some academic background knowledge on the subject can help you reached this decision on your own – without a sales pitch.

Vital to Healthy Living

Anything with a high price tag is bound to have a sales representative that relies on selling you a product in order to get a paycheck. For this reason, many buyers overlook what the sales person is saying when it concerns their repeated line of good sleep is a key to health. Regardless of being annoyed by a salesperson, is this actually true?

Doctors and other professionals say yes. In addition, specialized engineers observe that the way that human bodies are affected by objects they use on a regular basis. In simple terms, this is called “ergonomics” and this science usually focuses on the workplace.

However, one ergonomic scientist, Bart Haex, wrote a book for academic publisher CRC Press called Back and Bed: Ergonomic Aspects of Sleeping. In it, Haex gives helpful advice about selecting the right mattress and the deleterious side effects of neglecting to make this change.

While they may be higher in price, Haex does the math and says that paying a little more for an ergonomic mattress saves your health, and doing that saves you money on related costs for your sleep-related aches and pains.

Defining the Right Mattress

In Haex’s book on the ergonomics of sleep, he states that a bad mattress is one that does not support your back. Overall, he says that every mattress should have spine support. The way that this support is measured is through three areas: mattress elasticity, mattress material density, and hysteresis. Hysteresis is demonstrated in two ways; first, if you are heavy, your body should not fall into the mattress too deeply. Alternatively, if you are lighter, you should have a bed that is soft enough to allow you to sink in enough.

To round up his point and put it in perspective for the average mattress shopper, Haex explains that when you lay on your back or on your side, your spine should not dip down too far into the mattress or push it up. In these cases, ill side effects can occur. Haex goes on to conclude that people should always have a mattress that supports, proper sleeping room temperatures, and a pillow.

Are Stiff Joints, Neck Pains, and Weak Immune Systems Mattress Issues?

A majority of the rest of Haex’s book discusses the side effects of a bad mattress. These include how it can affect your mental health, the ability for your body to heal itself (a primary function of deep REM sleep), and your muscular-skeletal system. Sure, you will not develop diabetes from having a bad mattress, but we all know that stress takes its toll. Having a good night’s sleep is one of the first steps in stress management.

If you are always coming down with a cold or wake up with aches and pains, it could be related to your sleeping habits. At the end of the book, Haex reaffirms that other research besides his own shows that bad sleeping habits are often influenced by poor ergonomic principles of a mattress.

Are the Benefits Worth It?

Naturally, there is no way of knowing 100% if a bad mattress is the key to all of your misery. Thankfully, it is easy to get a second opinion from someone who deals with the side effects of bad mattresses. In particular, this will be the massage therapist that you see for your stiff neck. On the other hand, it may be the chiropractor that is always happy to work on your stiff joints or the doctor prescribing you sleeping pills.

If you already spend too much money at the chiropractor or the massage therapist, think about how much you will have spent three months from now. When these costs are higher than a new mattress that will last you years, the decision is easy to make.

Nathalie Moreno knows that finding the right mattress to sleep on is difficult. If your mattress decision is leaning toward memory foam, Memory Foam Express can deliver it quickly to your home.