Memory foam mattresses

Following on from the general guidance about mattresses, here is a bit more detail about memory foam mattresses.

A visco elastic memory foam mattress uses a material that was discovered and developed during work on the NASA space program. This material has a number of unique properties that make it an ideal bedding material and it confers excellent supporting characteristics to the complete bed unit.

Visco elastic memory foam has a different way of adapting to the weight of the person laying on it to other mattress materials. The immediate areas of the mattress that are in contact with the body compress and depress to accommodate the shape of the body, but the rest of the memory foam remain unaffected. In other words, the memory foam has a very limited localised reaction to weight meaning that the mattress compresses under the weight of the person laying on it, but not in the areas around them.

The second feature of visco elastic memory foam is the way that its unusual compressibility features allow it to balance out the manner in which the mattress supports the sleeping body. The memory foam mattress manages to avoid the build up of “mattress pressure resistance” on the heavier parts of the human body like the hips and shoulders, thereby spreading the body’s weight in an even and comfortable way.

Summary

 
The combination of these two factors makes memory foam pleasant and easy to sleep on and orthopedically supportive of the body. Critically, memory foam is able to allow the back, and specifically the spine, to maintain the curved profile that it has when a person is in a standing position. This is healthy and good for the body as a whole.

Latex foam has similar properties to memory foam, but even the best and most advanced pocket sprung mattress systems fail to duplicate these body shaping property.

Sleeping on the right mattress

Finding the right mattress to suit your body and sleeping habits is essential to back health and also to getting a relaxing and uninterrupted night of sleep.

Until quite recently the general consensus of opinion on mattress support was that a mattress should be firm or even hard. This view held for many years and most still have the opinion that an overly soft mattress is not good for the health of the back, muscles or other parts of the skeletal structure.

What a mattress is supposed to do has however been open to much debate over recent years and the very firm mattress has now become less favoured. Orthopedically the "perfect" mattress should support the back in its natural figure S shape and a firm or hard mattress is no better at doing this than a soft one. In fact it may be less suitable!

New mattress materials

The last 20 years have seen a new material called visco elastic memory foam introduced into the world of mattresses and this material is thought by many to have superior orthopedic support qualities to conventional mattresses.

Visco elastic memory foam compresses and shapes itself around the person sleeping on it and its sensitivity to weight means that it curves and profiles around the natural shape of the body and not the other way around.

Because of this, memory foam beds are perceived to have very good orthopedic properties and they rest the back and spine in its natural shape. This also holds true for the other parts of the body and the material has the ability to constantly adapt to whoever is sleeping on it in whatever position.

Another similar and comparatively new material to the world of mattresses is Latex foam. This pliable material can also shape itself around whoever is sleeping on it and it provides the same kind of contouring support as memory foam.

In summary, what both of these mattress material have is the ability to shape themselves around the person sleeping on them rather than forcing the body to adapt to the flat surface of the mattress. This means that they can keep the important muscles, organs and joints of the body in the most natural and rested positions to ensure the best kind of sleep.