5 Tips for Choosing the Best Mattress for Pain-Free Nights

It’s no surprise that a great night's sleep makes you feel absolutely fabulous. You’ve got that spring in your step, you’re not falling asleep at our desk at 3pm, and you’re better able to concentrate and perform daily tasks.

Getting your best night's sleep every night is one of the most important things you can do for your health. And your kid’s math homework. So when pain stops you from sleeping, it’s a big freaking deal. But you’re not alone. Millions of Americans suffer from pain-related sleep loss.

The National Sleep Foundation notes that pain is a key factor in the gap between the amount of sleep Americans say they need and the amount they’re actually getting. There are a number of reasons why you might experience pain while you sleep, but your mattress is often overlooked as cause for these problems.

Types of pain your mattress can solve include:

• Back pain from stomach sleeping or weight gain.
• Shoulder + hip pain from side sleeping.
• Neck pain.  

An old mattress reinforces poor sleeping posture, strains muscles, and doesn’t help keep your spine in alignment. Ouch!

We’re not being dramatic when we say a mattress can make or break your sleep. In fact, 95% of orthopaedic surgeons believe that a mattress plays a role in helping to manage lower back pain. So let’s walk through Sleep First’s guide on how to pick the right mattress to avoid back pain.

You’re as unique as a fingerprint and what works for you won’t work for someone else. There is not one brand of mattress that works for the entire population. There is no one size fits all. This isn’t meant to overwhelm you. This is good news. There’s no right or wrong way to choose a mattress, and you’ve got plenty of options to pick from. It’s all about personal preference, says Sara Elizabeth Benjamin, M.D. , a neurologist and sleep medicine specialist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Sleep. So when it comes to picking a mattress, embrace your uniqueness and trust your body.

Why Your Pillow Is Uber Important

Your pillow is the unsung hero of the mattress industry, solving neck pain since the dawn of time. Approximately. 95% of orthopaedic surgeons believe that a mattress plays a role in helping to manage lower back pain. At Sleep First, we believe the other 5% is solved by your pillow choice. When choosing a mattress, don’t forget to spend some time choosing a pillow that supports your unique sleep style.

Get Help From An Expert

Who doesn’t want to click a button, open a box, and settle in for a good night’s sleep? We totally get it. But you spend a third of your life in bed. You deserve better than decent. No matter how advanced online shopping gets, it truly can’t compete with going into a mattress showroom, and physically lying down on a bed. Not only do you get immediate feedback from your body on how the mattress feels, you’ll have a mattress expert on hand who knows the mattresses like the back of her hand. Imagine a walking, talking encyclopedia of mattress styles, designs, benefits, and features that can make on-the-spot recommendations based on your feedback. Never underestimate the power of buying a mattress in store.

You know what contributes to a crappy night's sleep? Stressing about the insanely expensive mattress you just purchased and attempting to calculate how long the repayments will take to pay off. You do not need to buy the most expensive mattress for a pain-free sleep. That’s the beauty of building your own bed. You also get to build your own budget, too. Know The Policies + Take The Mattress For A Test Drive Buying your mattress is the beginning.

It’s only once you start sleeping on the thing that the real pain relief happens. And sometimes, we can get it wrong. That’s why it’s super important to understand the exchange policies for your mattress. At Sleep First, for example, we offer a full year exchange on your mattress policy. Which means you get to test drive your mattress for 12 months, giving us the advantage of a whole year to help improve your sleep. This isn’t just an exchange policy if you end up hating the mattress. Think of it as a long term solution to your back pain. Side note: There’s a little-known fact about the mattress industry. All return policies come with fine print that says if you stain or soil the mattress, the return guarantee is void. That means you’re one Sunday breakfast in bed away from never being able to return your mattress again. Protect your return policy and make sure you grab a mattress protector.

So, Which Bed Wins?

We asked our mattress experts, and while the Tempur-Pedic is popular in solving pain, there’s no one mattress that fits all.