{"id":123082,"date":"2012-02-16T06:00:43","date_gmt":"2012-02-16T13:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/?p=123082"},"modified":"2019-10-30T23:55:13","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T06:55:13","slug":"going-to-the-organic-mattresses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/going-to-the-organic-mattresses\/","title":{"rendered":"Going to the (organic) mattresses"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I’ve dropped a rather obscene amount of money on bodywork in the last few years. I’ve had an evolving team of chiropractors, massage therapists, and acupuncturists. I’ve bought books on physical therapy exercises. Some things have worked, others have not. In the end, the pain always comes back.<\/p>\n

I have chronic shoulder pain. My arms also frequently go numb in the middle of the night. I don’t mean they tingle, I mean sometimes I literally cannot move my arm. I have to use my functioning hand to reposition it and get blood flowing back into the limb. It’s kinda scary.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Two (Life-Changing?) Questions<\/span><\/h2>\n

When my shoulder bothers me enough, I usually get a massage to alleviate the pain. It’s a temporary fix \u2014 I know a 60-minute massage can’t cure a chronic problem that’s probably caused by structure and daily habits. But recently a new (to me) massage therapist asked me two questions that no one else had asked. First, she asked if I grind my teeth at night. Yes, I have in the past, and I have a TMJ (temporomandibular joint) disorder<\/a>. She firmly suggested that I started wearing my night guard consistently, and in the past five days the pain has gone from a constant ache to a mild annoyance.<\/p>\n

The second question she asked: “How old is your mattress?” <\/strong>Oh, man. So old, I didn’t want to tell her. The mattress my husband and I sleep on for (ideally) eight hours every night is 11 years old. I know it’s not in good shape. I just never thought it would make that much of a difference, but then, I never<\/em> would have guessed that a night guard would, either. “You should think about replacing it,” she said. “Even a cheap new mattress is better than a worn-out one. One of my clients bought a $600 mattress from Costco and her back pain went away.”<\/p>\n

<\/span>The Research Begins<\/span><\/h2>\n

I know you’re probably thinking that a new mattress should have been an obvious solution. But after so many years of varying diagnoses, x-rays showing scoliosis (one chiropractor called it “severe,” another disagreed) and other spinal issues, I thought the pain was a given, something I’d have to learn to manage. I also didn’t realize just how old our mattress was.<\/p>\n

I started my mattress search in my usual way, by reading mattress-buying guides like the one J.D. wrote a few years ago<\/a>. (Interesting tip: According to Consumer Reports<\/em>, you’ll know in 15 minutes if a mattress will be comfortable: “Panelists who took beds home for a month-long trial rarely changed the opinion they formed after the first night. On the whole, their opinions were the same as those of our in-store testers.”)<\/p>\n

But I also had some other concerns, such as off-gassing. Most mattresses and box springs are coated in a mixture of fire-retardant chemicals, formaldehyde, glues, stains, and coatings, all of which release gasses into the air. There are a lot of parenting sites that recommend organic mattresses for baby’s crib, but the hard, scientific data is nonexistent or vague in most of those articles. Here’s what I was able to find:<\/p>\n