Tech Mahindra_Issue_I_52 pages_3

14 wellness
focus
Choose The Right
Mattress For Your Back
Sleeping on the wrong mattress
can lead to or worsen back pain.
If a mattress is not right for you
or is too old and hence sagging,
it could create problems for your
back. Sagging occurs when part
of a mattress, usually the middle,
becomes compressed and lower
than the rest. It often puts a person’s
spine into an unnatural position
and leads to back pain. The greater
the sagging depth, the more is the
discomfort or pain both in and out
of bed.
The right mattress encourages
good sleeping posture, relaxes
muscles and generally provides
healthy, wholesome sleep. The
quality and type of the right
mattress for you depends on your
sleep position, height, weight,
budget and health needs. All of
these factors can impact your
comfort.
Changing your mattress for the
right one will do wonders for your
back pain. There are dozens of
brands, models, and styles, and new
technologies introduced every year.
To choose the best mattress, you
need to know all your options, and
thoroughly research before you buy.
Mattress technologies
For many years, a mattress
had been synonymous with the
innerspring coil bed, topped with
various layers of fibre and foam.
However, today manufacturers
compete to deliver best mattress
technologies that are constantly
updated. There are 3 basic
categories: Inner spring, Specialty
mattresses and Combination or
hybrid mattresses. Inner spring
mattresses could be either
traditional coil inner spring, where
all the springs are interwoven
together, designed to give you great
support or the individually wrapped
coil springs, great for conforming
to your body. This is also beneficial
if your sleep partner moves a lot
during sleep because the motion is
not transferred to your side.
Specialty mattresses remove the
inner springs. The layers of foam
give you the support, with memory
foam layers on top to provide great
conforming to your body. This is to
relieve pressure points as you sleep.
The Combination mattresses
use more than one technology to
provide comfort to the sleeper’s
back. They could use memory
foam, latex or gel. A 2010 study
showed that replacing patients’
beds with new medium-firm
mattresses, layered with memory
foam and latex, provided significant
improvement in both back and
shoulder pain. Then there are
also the innovative, elite Tempur
mattresses, which are made of
open-celled viscoelastic, pressurerelieving
and temperature-sensitive
material that moulds to the contours
of your body, conform to your
shape, and provide superior support.
Orthopaedic
mattresses
Some brands also specialise in
orthopaedic mattresses, which are
meant for people with chronic back
pain. They are designed to provide
you with maximum support to those
areas of your body, which mostly
bear the weight of the body during
the night – like neck, back, hips and
lower portions of the body. This
support distributes your body’s
weight to alleviate stress on the
spine, relieving painful pressure
points, and helping to maintain the
spine’s natural alignment. This leads
to minimal aches and pains.
Waterbeds & Airbeds
Waterbeds and airbeds are also
available through retailers, though
people with more specialised health
issues use them. When a person
sleeps on a waterbed, the water in
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