Tossing and turning. Too hot. Too cold. Covering and uncovering. Can’t fall asleep. Waking up what seems like every 5 minutes. What the heck is going on? It just might be your mattress.
As it turns out, quality sleep is absolutely critical to your physical and mental health. Without getting good sleep on a regular basis, your body will not be able to adequately repair muscles or other tissues, reinforce bones, fight off infections, consolidate memories, regulate mood, maintain mental focus, and more.
Based on the available scientific evidence about how the human body sleeps, there are three crucial functions that your mattress must serve in order for you to get that quality rest that is so important. Shortcomings in these three key areas are among the most common reasons why people get poor sleep, and are also precisely why you shouldn’t skimp when it comes to mattress quality. Keep reading to see if your current mattress passes this short but important checklist!
[Editor’s Note: If you’re coming here from The Science of Sleep, Part I, keep reading! If not, don’t miss Part I to discover why getting quality sleep is critical to your mental and physical health. Understanding how your body repairs and restores itself during sleep is foundational to everything we will learn below!]
The 3 Essential Functions of a Quality Mattress
Any decent, well-designed mattress should provide sleepers with the three essential functions below. Whether your current mattress provides these three functions will let you know if it’s time for a replacement, and if you’re already mattress shopping, they’ll tell you exactly what to look for in your next mattress.
1) Crucial Comfort
As our dear friend and sleep expert Dr. V puts it, “Comfort is in the behind of the beholder”. To a degree, the comfort a mattress provides is subjective and unique to each individual sleeper. Depending on factors, like height, weight, body shape and their preferred fall asleep position, what is comfortable to one sleeper may be uncomfortable to another.
That being said, it’s important to be clear about what we mean when we say “comfort”. When we discuss comfort with shoppers here at Woodstock Furniture & Mattress Outlet, we’re primarily talking about pressure relief and the ability for sleepers to fall asleep – and stay asleep – in their preferred sleep position. In other words, the comfort of a mattress is measured by your ability to find that just right position that makes your tension and pressure points melt away.
It feels silly to say because it seems so obvious, but having a mattress that feels comfortable to you is absolutely crucial to your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep. You need your mattress to eliminate pressure points by cradling or contouring to your body’s shape, giving you that weightless feeling. Otherwise, pressure point pains and poor circulation can keep you from falling asleep and eventually, from transitioning to the deeper, most important stages of sleep.
2) Must-Have Musculoskeletal Support
Yes, “musculoskeletal” is a fancy word, but it’s accurate and we couldn’t pass up the chance to use it. Your muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons and other connective tissues make up your musculoskeletal system. This bodily framework is precisely what desperately needs to be supported while you sleep. 
Whether asleep or awake, the body is built to subconsciously maintain postural alignment. This means that even during sleep, the muscles in your core, back and neck are always working to keep your spine in proper alignment. If your mattress doesn’t properly support your neck, back, hips and shoulders, those muscles have to work overtime.
In the light stages of sleep, a mattress with poor support can cause tossing and turning much like the poor comfort we discussed above. This can make it harder for sleepers to reach deep sleep and REM sleep. However, the problems don’t stop even once sleepers get there. Since the body is more or less motionless during the deep sleep and REM sleep stages, sometimes we don’t realize until the next morning just how unsupported our sleep positions are. Without adequate support, our shoulders, hips, neck, back, and other joints may be even more sore and fatigued after we wake than when we went to bed.
Let’s put it a different way. If comfort is what you feel when you fall asleep, support (or the lack of it) is what you often feel when you wake up in the morning. Do you wake up feeling like a million bucks? Congratulations, you’ve likely got a mattress that gives you adequate support. Do you wake up with tense muscles, stiffness, or kinks in your back, neck, shoulders, hips, knees or other joints that you have to “work out” throughout the day? Lack of support from your mattress should be your prime suspect.
3) Mandatory Temperature Management
Contrary to the beliefs of mattress shoppers everywhere, the human body doesn’t “sleep hot”. In fact, as we briefly touched on in Part I of The Science of Sleep, core body temperatures actually drop between 2 and 3 degrees during light sleep to help pave the way for subsequent sleep stages. The truth is, as sleepers, we create our own little microclimate between the covers, and that is what causes mattresses to heat up.
We pile on the top sheets, blankets, comforters, duvets, and whatever else, because we feel cold as we drift off to sleep. Inevitably, these layers trap body heat and cause the mattress to heat up. We then spend the rest of the night getting hot, kicking off the covers, getting cold, and covering back up. That is, unless our mattresses can help us manage the temperature in these microclimates that we’ve created.
Fortunately, many mattresses these days have features designed to do just that. These features can range in affordability and effectiveness from simple heat-wicking and moisture-wicking mattress covers, to air vents and channeled or perforated foams that promote better breathability, to phase change materials that pull excess heat away from the body, to cutting-edge cooling materials like those found in Tempur-Pedic’s TEMPUR-Breeze mattress line. The simple truth is that you will sleep better when your mattress has some way to help you manage the temperature within your sleep environment.
Mattress Malfunctions: What Happens When Your Mattress Fails to Provide These 3 Key Functions?
If your mattress fails to meet even one of these three critical needs, you’re in for a rough time. It’s true, lack of comfort, inadequate support and poor temperature management can easily interrupt your sleep. But it’s much, much worse than that. Failures in any of these mattress functions can potentially disrupt every single stage of your sleep. That includes the vital deep sleep and REM sleep stages that assist mental function and allow your body to repair itself.
Think of it this way. Every single time you can’t get comfy, need to stretch your joints and muscles, or get too hot or cold in your own little microclimate, is like pressing a reset button on your sleep cycle. Remember, each of these disruptions evokes a subconscious biological response. If your brain feels you are too hot or cold, or that your back, neck, hips or shoulders are straining from not having enough support, it will pull you out of deep sleep or REM sleep so that you can move and make adjustments. This kills your sleep efficiency.
Unfortunately, the more frequently these disruptions occur, the poorer sleep quality gets. Getting the recommended 7 to 9 hours of sleep is great, but not if it consists entirely of light sleep. As we discussed earlier, frequently interrupted, inefficient sleep can lead to debilitating issues with cognitive functions, hormonal imbalance, weight gain, troubles with mood regulation, poor immune response, significant joint and muscle pains, atrophy of both bone and muscle mass, and more.
This is why it is imperative that you sleep on a quality mattress that is right for you every single night. Whether you buy from Woodstock Furniture & Mattress Outlet or elsewhere, make sure that your new mattress meets your body’s needs for comfort, climate and support. It’s simple. Just find a mattress that fulfills these three core sleep needs, and sit back while you reap a mountain of health and wellness benefits that come with high quality sleep.
Looking for Sleep Tips to Improve Your Health & Wellness? Have More Mattress Questions? We’d Love to Be Your Resource!
Thanks again for joining us for The Science of Sleep! Now that you understand sleep’s critical purpose, how the body restores itself through quality sleep, and the absolutely crucial role that your mattress plays in this process, you can begin taking some relatively easy steps to improve the quality of your sleep – and your life!
Is your current sleep setup providing you with the comfort to effortlessly drift off to sleep? Is it providing you the support you need to wake up feeling rested and ready to seize the day? How about the temperature control necessary to stay asleep all night without the disruptive and seemingly endless covers-on, covers-off cycle?
If not, there are a few things it could be – namely you, your mattress, or your sleep environment. That’s why we’ve written extensively on each of these topics too! For more information that will help you diagnose your sleep troubles, be sure to check out these articles from our Sleep Factors and Sleep Disorders series below:
- Sleep Factors: 3 Potential Barriers to Quality Sleep
- Sleep Factors: Poor Sleep Habits & How to Break Them
- Sleep Factors: The 5 Elements of Your Sleep Environment
- Sleep Disorders: What Are Sleep Disorders & What Can We Do About Them?
- Sleep Disorders: Snoring, Sleep Apnea & What You Can Do About It
- Sleep Disorders: Practical Solutions for GERD, Acid Reflux & Heartburn
If you’re ready to shop for your next mattress, come see us at our 6 North Georgia and Metro Atlanta furniture and mattress stores! Got more mattress questions first? Be sure to drop us a line on our convenient live chat. Hope to see you soon!
