Mattress Forum

Your post upthread regarding your latex experience sounds frustrating ... as well as a riddle.

Your comment about your ear hurting really had me wondering. Are you using a pillow? Perhaps the pillow wasn't providing the necessary cushioning and/or was not adequate for you needs and was throwing your head/neck/shoulders/torso out of alignment which impacted the rest of your body? It seems odd that an ear would hurt as a by product of an unsuitable mattress.

I have very narrow shoulders so have to use quite a thin pillow.  I tried different pillows in the house when trialing the Flobeds.  I am very sensitive to the push back pressure of latex and being a side sleeper, almost everything on the downside right against the latex will feel the pressure.  I mentioned the ear to make that point, but also my jaw, my ribcage, etc., etc.,
 

At the moment I am stumped as to whether to go firmer or softer and will try the suggestions here before I throw in the towel.

If I had known how hard it would have been to find a new mattress and if I had found this forum before purchasing the S brand, I would have just done some mattress surgery on the old spring air. Now like many others here, I find myself in mattress purgatory. In fact most of this year seems to have been spent dealing with this issue. Such a pain!

I think most, if not all foams (memory, latex, PU), will seem to sink in more after a few hours laying on them.  Temperature is probably one factor and maybe the air gradually gets pushed out of the cells.  Perhaps that is why steel springs can make a good base level, since they may keep the same firmness.

I also think the foam then feels firmer after in it fully compressed.  Either that or the pressure points take time to be bothersome.  I think that is the difficulty in making something comfortable. 

I can have mine feeling great when I first lie down for a while, but inevitably I can feel too much firmness (on my hip bone mainly).  Not sure if any combination of latex, memory foam, etc. can solve that problem. 

I think sleeping on the back helps spread the weight around more.  I find sleeping that way difficult, but I have never really forced myself to stick with it.

Has anyone out there been able to successfully switch from side to back sleeping?

 Physics dictates that the mattress/box spring will "push back" with equal force as your body weight.  Otherwise you would end up on the floor.  It doesn't matter what kind of mattress.  So, the only thing really can affect the pressure points is how that push back gets distributed along your body.  Memory foam, soft latex, indiviudal pocketed coils, zoning, etc. help distribute the body weight to a way one prefers, but they cannot eliminate the force being pushed back.  Of course the mattress will also dictate spinal alignment (i.e. back issues) and temperature as well.   Trying to get the right weight distribution, alignment, and temperature is a complicated thing and difficult for some people accomplish in a satisfactory way.

How thick is your foam and fibre bed?  If not too thick you might want to try one of those on top to see what happens.

Has anyone had a latex bed that caused them neck/top of shoulder pain and if so, did you find a solution?

thanks as always, wishing you all a great nights sleep :)

Do you feel your shoulders are sinking in more or less on this mattress than on your old spring air?  Are you sleeping in the same body position as you were before?  Do you have a favorite side (for example, I sleep mostly on my right side)?  Does one side of your neck and shoulders hurt more than the other?  Answers to these questions may point in the direction of what to do for pillows.

So far the best config seems to be S/F/M,  top to bottom, it seems to feel the best and does not cause back pain. I should have bought firmer layers initially I now see, but in the showroom we really didn't like the firmer latex mattresses. If I could do it over I would go firmer.

I sleep on side and nothing has changed at all in sleep habits. The hard part is that I cannot tell if shoulders are sinking in more or less, my guess is less.  Last night I tried a really thick pillow, and that was the best so far but doesn't make a lot of sense logically. The only thing I can say for sure is that I definitely need soft latex as a layer on top as even a medium is too much push back for me. Strangely, latex feels so heavenly initially, but I find as the night wears on the push back becomes annoying.

What I have learned about working with latex layers is that they don't seem to follow logic, that is, what my experience and reason would tell me would be best for me is not necessarily so. Nor is trying beds out in a showroom all that instructive, because it seems that whether a mattress will work for me does not become apparent till the 3rd night. Maybe that is why so many of us can sleep great on a hotel bed as we are not there for an extended stay.

My recommendation for anyone considering the latex is to have the ability for a lot of layer switches and trial and error. Latex doesn't work for everyone, and it seems most people end up with a firmer config than they originally thought would be right. There are for sure people on this forum who buy a mattress and are happy right off the bat, and I wish I could be one of them. At this point I will either return the whole thing, keep it and make the best of it, or give it away. I'm even reconsidering the dreaded S brand. If I lived near a small business mattress mfg. that allowed returns, I would probably buy a flippable innerspring mattress from them, with a real box spring like they used to make.

I used to be able to sleep on anything....guess those days are gone, both because I'm older and mattresses are not as well made anymore.