A worthy experiment (Part 1)

Over the last few years I've been having recurring and increasingly painful problems with my back.  Some of this can obviously be blamed on not getting enough exercise and being a bit [~cough~] overweight.  However, over the past five or six years I have become convinced that a good chunk of the blame can be laid directly at the feet (foot?) of my bed. 

About a week ago, I downloaded a nifty computer program (sorry PC people, only available for Mac) called Dream Recorder.  The program is designed to use your laptop and web-cam to monitor your sleep cycles in order to know when you are in the various stages of sleep and when is the optimal time to wake you.  But honestly, if I had an electron microscope I wouldn't be able to locate my interest in those things.  What drew me to this program is that it monitors how often you change position during the night.  For me, this is the single biggest indicator of how comfortable the mattresses are and how good a night's sleep one is getting.

So I downloaded the free trail version of the program, forced myself to go to bed at a reasonable time, and let it record me throughout several nights of (apparently) fitful sleep.  Not only do I toss and turn dozens of times per night, but the built in noise detector revealed something I had never known about myself; I snore!  Who knew?!  I sound like a freaking Harley being ridden through a drainage pipe!!!!

So, armed with this new (and irrefutable) data, I decided that the time had finally come to look into new mattresses

Most people spend about a third of their lives asleep... and even more of that time in bed when one factors in TV watching, reading and other, ahem, popular indoor activities.  Yet for most people, the bed itself is almost an afterthought when it comes to the budget we allow ourselves when furnishing our homes. 

Obviously I'm not talking so much about university students and young adults starting out in their first apartments.  With that crowd, beds, like most of the other furniture, are generally hand-me-downs from family or friends... or sometimes even from the previous occupants (ewwww).

But when we get married or buy our first real home, we generally give more thought to the decorative aesthetics of the bed-frame and linens than to the mattresses... and we tend to forget that, unlike other furniture, mattresses don't become 'classic' with age.

When Zahava and I got married almost 18 years ago, we got a lot of help from our parents in purchasing and furnishing our first home.  Although some of the stuff in our first place was hand-me-down (albeit really good hand-me-down... Danish modern couch, antique secretary and cedar chests, etc.), when it came to our bedroom furniture, we were told, "buy better than you can really afford... we'll help you out". 

And we did: Solid maple Thomasville dressers, armoire and headboard... and two top-of-the-line, extra long twin, Sealy mattresses and box springs *.

But somewhere along the line we did what most people do... we forgot that the mattresses are not really furniture and that they require periodic replacing.  Exactly what that periodicity is depends on the quality of your mattress... and your tolerance for poor sleep and back pain. 

By all rights we really should have trashed our old mattresses when we made aliyah almost six years ago.  But like most new olim, we were fixated on all the shiny new appliances we were going to 'need', and well, mattresses sort of fell off our radar... and our priority list.

Until recently when I realized that my mattress was literally killing me!  

So Zahava and I decided we needed new mattresses.  But what kind?  I grew up with the 'firmer is better' lie, and you can see where that got me.  I'd also had several occasions in my life to sleep on water-beds... and hated the sensation. Which left the middle ground occupied by the uber-expensive visco-foam mattresses.

Yesterday I picked up the phone and called an Israeli company called Comfort Living (full disclosure: one of the nice folks who advertises on this site) and ordered two new mattresses made of the same 'Visco-Elastic Memory Foam' as the super-duper high end US and European beds I've been lusting after for years.  And the price? Surprisingly reasonable!  Really!!

The new beds haven't arrived yet, but when they do, I plan on continuing with my semi-scientific home sleep-experiment to measure...

... If I toss and turn less.

... If my back starts feeling better.

... If I feel more rested in the morning.

Sadly, I doubt there is much even a fancy new mattress can do about my snoring.  But since Zahava has never mentioned it to me, I'm not sure she's even aware of that particular problem. 

[ducks and runs from the room]

* If you are familiar with Jewish laws concerning 'family purity', you already know why we have two twin mattresses.  If not, an equally good reason is that we're both very restless sleepers, and side-by-side twins are much less disruptive to one's bed partner when you keep very different waking hours and schedules.