While I’ve been on the hunt for a new mattress (soft, as I’m a hypermobile side sleeper and medium to firm mattresses make me bruise and sublux) I’ve learnt a few things: side sleeping is the most common sleeping position, while medium-firm is the most popular mattress firmness. Softer mattresses are much harder to come by. However, soft mattresses are also supposedly the best for side-sleepers while medium-firm is for back sleepers and firm is for stomach sleepers, so how does this work together? Are most people sleeping on the wrong mattress?
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I’m a side-sleeper and, rightly or wrongly, find softer mattresses very uncomfortable. Weight might be a factor though. I’ve been carrying too much of it for too long. On my way down, and it’ll be interesting to see if I feel different about my mattress once I’m at a more reasonable level.
If I side sleep on a soft mattress my hips sink into it more than the rest of my body and I get a sore back.
Traditional mattress with springs doesn’t equally support the whole body, so what happens is that you get pressure points on your hips and shoulder usually. Softer mattresses knock you out of alignment because there’s less support, while a firmer one will dig sharply. Weight also contributes to this, most people carry their weight in their torso. It’s hard to make a soft mattress that also has good support. That’s where stuff like latex and memory foam come in, they’re meant to do both by providing equal support without causing pressure points. Soft is still rare to find even there though.
The weight is much more influencial on the type of mattress you should get than your sleeping position, thats just a fact of physics. A 50kg person probably wont sink at all into a medium and just a bit into a softer one while a 150kg person will still sink in quite a bit into a medium and would basicly get burried in a very soft one. So this is more a testament to most people being overweight than anything else.
The firmness regarding your sleeping position should be in relation to your weight so if most people were back sleepers the most popular mattress would probably be a very firm one.
Mattress companies probably make more medium-firm mattresses because they’re trying to hit that “just right” Goldilocks zone for the average person. Soft mattresses are great for side sleepers but they can wear out quicker and might not offer enough support for everyone. økonomisk beslutning muligvis?
As a bigger guy, I would pick a firm bed for side sleeping every time. You sink in soft beds. Edit: Big Fig owner.
Honestly, mattress marketing mostly just caters to the middle ground. Easier to sell a medium-firm mattress that can “work” for everyone than a super soft one that’s more niche. Plus, some folks just don’t know what they need until they try it and realize they’re waking up in more pain. Quite a racket, really.
I also sleep on my side, got a pretty firm matress. It was hard for a couple of weeks, but now I am totally used to it.
Definitly no bruising here. So that doesn’t seem normal.
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