Mattress Forum

We have 2 twin Sealys side by side due to my wife moving around a lot during sleep (restless leg syndrome) and me being a light sleeper. This way her bouncing around doesn't wake me up. For now we're going to focus on my bed and leave her's alone. We just fixed her up with a  4" memory foam we had laying around on top of the box springs, covered by a 1.5" memory foam topper. Seems to be working for her, at least for now. The 4 year old CostCo Sealy was giving us both lower back aches.

So for me, what do I do?

I have arms that get stiff and tingly at night. No one knows for sure what it is; I'm still looking into it and seeing a doctor again this week. I am fairly sure it's something called Thoracic Outlet Syndrome which has to do with nerves around my neck/shoulders being pinched and affecting my arms. I have lots of trigger points or knotted muscles in my back, neck and shoulders from an accident. and from working at a computer most days.

Additionally I have lately found my lower back just above my waist wakes me up after about 5 hours sleep,  with a lot of pain - not just in the spine area but all around my body in a circle about 2" above my waist. I can't sleep once it wakes me up; I just toss and turn until I can't stand it anymore and have to get up. There is NO position I can get myself into that does not hurt, but getting up feels better and after a few minutes of massage and moving around, I am mostly okay until the next night. The lower back problem is most likely affected by the configuration of my current mattress which is 3" of 4lb? memory foam over the box springs with 2" of soft talalay over that. Probably overall too soft, right?

I emphasize though that I doubt my tingling arms problem is purely mattress related. i know this because I have slept on hotel beds with no difference, and I have lately been experimenting with various combinations and densities of memory foam like my wife's bed, except that I have the latex toppers. It has helped my upper shoulder problem but not my lower back or arms problems.

Okay... So that's the background:

Now, this is what I am proposing to do:

Somehow take the Sealy mattress apart and get down to just the springs. Anyone know how to do this? Just an exacto knife or what? What tools will I need? And what will I put directly over the springs?

I can put a what? 3" HD Foam core over them? with softer densities for my shoulders and legs? Or is 3" too much?

And then try my low ILD latex toppers over that? And/or a 1.5" memory foam topper over it?

I'm open to any ideas. I really am not sure how much of a core I'll need over the springs because in the past I experimented only with HD foam,  latex and memory foam on the floor, not over springs.

I tend not to like the feel of Talalay too much, though I respect it's support. I am thinking natural latex might be better for me if I can find some at a good price and get them to cut it for me so I can just buy the amount I need for zones. I think I might know of a place that can do that. I layed on natural latex a couple times and think I liked it better.

So I'm open to ideas from you guys. I read the stuff about zones and it makes sense. I tried this a bit before but for some reason I dropped it. At some point, 4 years ago, after experimenting with dozens of different foam cores and toppers, we just got burnt out and gave up! Now that the old Sealy has proven a failure on all counts, I'm ready to start experimenting again!