Sleepy night is crucial for daily function and overall well-being. Poor sleep has been linked to higher instances of mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression, as well as physical issues like higher cardiac risk and lowered resistance to viral infections. Additionally, there is evidence that academic and occupational performance drops under sleep-deprived conditions. Many, if not all, human systems undergo restorative and metabolic processes during these sleep phases, and these include the brain and whole body. Some basic biological functions have been shown to be affected by sleep, such as cognitive performance, emotional regulation, and metabolic integration.
The relation between sleep debt and adult obesity, along with its potential to influence children’s sleeping behavior, has somewhat substantiated that poor sleep can lead to weight gain. Sleep quality is equally important to overall health as the amount of sleep. The amount of time an individual sleeps can partially, but not completely, describe their level of sleep debt. Some individuals require less sleep overall to feel well-rested and awake. Good quality sleep does not necessarily lead to needing less sleep. It does mean that these individuals progress through their sleep stages without waking up multiple times a night. They will start their day refreshed and not feel any sleep debt. This same concept applies to daytime productivity, in that while you may get many hours of work done in a day, it does not necessarily mean that you are extremely productive. A quality night’s sleep can lead to a more productive workday. Many factors contribute to an individual’s overall sleep quality, but arguably none are as important as the sleep surface on which the person rests. Researchers have begun to outline certain algorithms and criteria for mattress selection in an attempt to guide consumers towards products more suitable for them. The basis of these algorithms invariably leans towards the objective outcome of sleep quality as measured by the participants, and many have shown positive results. In conclusion, the limited number of mattresses used and the differing study designs make it hard to compare them as a whole. Further research needs to adopt questionnaires whose results can be correlated with actual statistical sleep cycles.
Significance of Sleep for Overall Health and Well-Being
Sleep is the primary period during which the body heals; it is a time for immune function, cardiovascular health, hormone regulation, and homeostasis recuperation. Perhaps the most evidenced effect of chronic sleep deprivation is the decreased ability of the immune system to function properly. Long-held popular wisdom has put forth the belief that seven to eight hours of sleep per night is typical. Inappropriately less or more than this amount of sleep can result in a lowered lifespan and a life filled with more disease and ill health. The majority of research culminates by stating that between seven and nine hours of sleep per night is ideal to be in the best health. Sleep is of utmost importance in maintaining mental clarity. As suggested throughout this text, in order to improve sleep, an improvement in the sleep surface must be implemented. It’s time to start thinking about the mattress as less of a commodity and more like a health advancement. Not all factors contributing to the potential for mattress-based preventative medicine come from within the mattress or sleep in general; some are quality of life decisions. Wash your sheets once a week. Pillows should be replaced every two years or as you see fit. Bedrooms should be dark, quiet, cool, comfortable, free from electronics, and used primarily for sleep. Older adults require the greatest amount of sleep each night. Sleep physiology changes with age. The most restorative, slow-wave, stage 3 sleep occurs before midnight, typically in the earlier part of the night. Generally, a good night’s sleep is the sleep you wake up from feeling refreshed and ready to live your waking hours. This recipe varies greatly for all of us. The recommended sleep time for adults is around 7 to 9 hours. Unfortunately, the ability to recognize poor sleep does not reliably correlate with true physiological sleep parameters. Studies have shown that awareness of bad sleep may actually worsen it.
Factors Influencing Sleep Quality
Sleep is essential for a range of cognitive and biological functions, including the processing and consolidation of new information. It is affected by both internal processes as well as external factors such as environment and behavior. Sleep quality can be assessed overtly or indirectly and includes factors such as the duration of sleep, the time taken to initially fall asleep, how many awakenings are experienced throughout the night, and the time it takes to go back to sleep. Environmental and behavioral factors can significantly impact sleep, including the lighting environment, noise, temperature, and the quality of the sleeping surface. Psychological causes of sleep impairment include stress, worry, angst, anxiety, depression, and sleep-disordered breathing. Life decisions around exercise and diet can also have an indirect effect on the quality of sleep. Insufficient sleep is associated with a range of physical and psychological health concerns. Indeed, sleep is increasingly being linked to health outcomes.
Research reinforces the important role that mattress firmness plays in sleep quality and comfort, with science proving the link between the two. It’s estimated that we spend about 229,961 hours of our lives sleeping, equating to 26-33 years if we live to an average age. Given the importance of sleep on our health and well-being, this is a significant time span in which to invest – and explains why, relatively speaking, we devote so much time to searching out the perfect mattress. The mattress layer, type, and comfort in a new sleep surface are all crucial quality components, with research backing the science. Ensuring you have a suitable mattress is just one part of a broad context, impacting whether we wake up feeling rested or in need of more precious slumber.
Role of Mattress Quality in Sleep
Reviews on sleep quality, deprivation, and disturbances in the general population often emphasize the role of pillows, bedding, room atmosphere, and other soft or thoroughly removed aspects of your room. Little attention is given in these reviews to the role of mattresses in providing the best source of comfort for a person in bed. One study indicated that a significant number of orthopedic surgeons considered the mattress “an important factor in obtaining a good night’s sleep” and “significantly impacts sleep disturbances.” According to a majority of the orthopedic physicians studied, “in order to receive a comfortable and sound sleep, facing the day with energy and vitality, the mattress must provide good posture.”
But how beneficial is a comfortable mattress for sleep? In the United Kingdom, a large percentage of people stated that a comfortable bed is key for an excellent night’s sleep, exacerbating the impact of “uncomfortable mattresses and pillows” on sleep elsewhere. This portion of “comfortable bed” sleep represents the voice of the population. A significant number of healthy male and female volunteers in their 20s noted back and/or shoulder pain upon waking in one study, most of whom identified comfort issues with their mattresses as contributing factors. The texture of the mattress surface, the foam substances in the topmost bedcover that come into contact with the knee, the white bedding, and themes of bedding are indeed factors that influence comfort or pain during the waking state.
Understanding Sleep Cycles and Patterns
Increases in sleep quality are said to partially stem from a change in sleep architecture dependent on mattress choice. In order to comprehend just how deep this claim runs, however, it is essential to understand the complexities and workings of sleep itself. When one hits the pillow and drifts into slumber, one does not drop off instantly into a night’s worth of sleep. Instead, the average nightly sleep structure is broken down into a cycle of multiple stages that may repeat anywhere from four to six times, depending on the individual and total time spent in sleep. These stages include both non-REM (or NREM) and REM (for ‘rapid eye movement’) phases, during which valuable restorative processes of both the mind and body are set into motion. It is also here that memory information is thought to be processed and stored.
Non-REM sleep, in turn, is broken down into three sub-stages – N1, N2, and the slow-wave sleep (SWS) achieved during N3. Over the night, a sleeper will spend less and less time in N1 aspects of sleep, with most of the deeper aspects of sleep relegated to the first half of the night when one first drifts off. For a sleeper in ideal conditions, 75% of total sleep should be consolidated here. The decades’ worth of research in sleep science has revealed that just about every aspect of both NREM and REM architecture varies from person to person, based on a multitude of factors including age, lifestyle, and health. Interruptions from any of these varieties may affect sleep depth and thus quality.
Stages of Sleep and Their Significance
During a single night’s sleep, individuals go through four to five complete cycles of different sleep stages. These stages are characterized by specific physiological and psychological activities and are important in their contribution to overall health and functioning. There are two main categories that the different stages fit into: NREM (non-rapid eye movement) sleep and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. NREM sleep has sub-stages, including light sleep, moderate sleep, and deep sleep. Generally, individuals start their sleep cycles in NREM sleep and progress through each sub-stage until they reach deep sleep. In the third stage, REM sleep takes place, and it is when individuals are most likely to have vivid dreams.
In general, functions serve to conserve energy and resources, repair physical and psychological wear and tear, and learn both cognitive and physical skills. The quality of sleep can influence the success of sleeping to perform these ends. Disturbances at any stage of sleep can lead to specific sleep disorders and to varying degrees of fatigue and drowsiness. The quality of an individual’s mattress can impact the quality of sleep experienced during sleep’s four stages, along with the duration of sleep, regularity of individual sleep patterns, and degree of comfort and support that a mattress provides. Therefore, fatigue and drowsiness caused by sleep disturbances can largely be moderated by purchasing a good mattress and becoming aware of one’s own sleep habits. Finally, it is the combined benefits of all sleep stages that improve overall quality of life.
Sleep Disorders and Their Relationship to Mattress Quality
Sleep disorders all share one thing in common: they impede someone’s ability to sleep during the night. Some people with sleep disorders may feel lethargic on a daily basis. Others may wake up feeling terrible after hours of sleep. It’s no coincidence, then, that sleep disorders, notably including sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, and insomnia, affect so many people throughout the world. The consensus is that everyone sleeps, so it creates a story. Issues with the one object truly necessary for sleep—a comfortable surface—will only exacerbate the problems for those struggling to sleep. Poor sleep surfaces may exacerbate an already diagnosed sleep disorder, or they may be happening without any concrete medical explanations. Mattress companies and other sleep-related merchandise companies doing studies would help them tailor their products to specific categories of customers if that data were available. This paper would review the scientific literature regarding certain sleep disorders and any relationships between them and mattress support.
Insomnia, often seen as synonymous with insomnia in today’s world, is commonly characterized by trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up feeling unrefreshed. Restless leg syndrome (RLS) is a unique nervous system disorder characterized by unpleasant sensations in the legs, often accompanied by a strong—nearly irresistible—craving to move them. Sleep apnea is characterized by shallow breaths or pauses in breathing throughout the sleep period. Those pauses can last from mere seconds to a minute or more. The paper would end with four main “takeaways” for the potential paper reader. The first would talk about the general human benefit of being well rested; a person should be sleeping better, reducing any likelihood of bad rest-related health side effects, if they had the understanding to choose the mattress that’s right for them. The remaining three takeaways could provide targets for future substantive research on each effect. It would also demonstrate the breadth of the industry’s applicability to all populations, regardless of sleep disorder.
Common Sleep Disorders
The most common sleep disorder is insomnia, which affects 1 out of 10 adult individuals and is characterized by an inability to fall or remain asleep. It often develops out of stress or depression and may lead to long-term exacerbations of symptoms and compromised overall sleep quality. Sleep apnea, while not as prominent, is another disorder from which many people suffer; it is caused by periods throughout the night in which an individual ceases breathing, briefly awakening to alleviate this disturbance in airflow. Sleep apnea tends to be exacerbated by obesity, the accumulation of fat deposits in the airway, and the use of alcohol or sedatives prior to bedtime. Parasomnias, a group of disorders that manifest as abnormal movements, behaviors, or perceptions during sleep, are fairly common among children and do not necessarily indicate poor reactivity or learning abilities. Night terrors and restless leg syndrome, two totally opposite ends of this new disorder classification, are more likely to affect the adult population.
As mentioned previously, the type of mattress on which an individual sleeps can exacerbate symptoms related to these disorders. The connection between common sleep disorders and sleep quality is significant, as poor sleeping conditions may lead to their development. Thus, poor mattress quality has a cascade of negative effects that span across many different areas of psychological and medical health. For those who suffer from common sleep disturbances, attempting to control sleep environment components can be a good strategy for behavioral and environmental sleep therapies. One such component, the mattress, could potentially affect any one of the aforementioned sleep disorders to exacerbate his or her sleeping system. With emerging evidence of the appropriate mattress recommendations for some of these people, employing the use of mattress type for controlling such behaviors could be a valid attempt at such an intervention strategy.
Methods for Evaluating Mattress Quality
Several different testing methodologies for measuring perceptual and functional mattress quality are currently in use, coming from both industry and academia. The most thorough performance evaluations employ a combination of subjective measures, wherein a person interacts with and rates the searched product, and objective measures, based on metered readings conducted using sophisticated analysis equipment. Since mattresses are among the most complex human-interactive products due to individuals’ subjective preferences and the number of interacting factors in making a purchase decision, a comprehensive evaluation using a wide variety of tests may make the most sense.
Human sleep-related outcomes measured in the research studies reviewed for the tables include: time to sleep onset, total sleep time, sleep efficiency, sleep quality, morning stiffness, morning pain, and back pain during sleep. Subjective surveys and studies conducted to assess the impact of mattresses on sleep primarily focus on consumer satisfaction and preferences. These include self-report protocols asking a small number of simple questions about sleep as well as more comprehensive studies. The latter frequently involve long-term field tests in home-like environments, including health care, dormitories, and sleep centers. The most comprehensive consumer sleep study is that conducted with questionnaire results from a randomly selected sample cross-section of adults, including reviews on mattresses and bed use trends.
Objective Measures
It goes without saying that scientific approaches allow one to evaluate, with a high level of confidence, which mattresses are essential for the effective treatment of sleep disorders, underlying problems, or sleep disturbances. Many methods have been used to objectively sleepy night mattress review quality by being placed in commercial sleep laboratories and universities. Among the many methods to be used, we can mention several tools: Tissue compression over bony prominences and other factors; pressure mapping is a relatively new way to assess sleepy night mattress surfaces and medical cushions. Objective assessment of mattresses and pads or toppers aims to reduce pressure distribution. Additionally, pressure mapping is a useful tool for cushion and mattress materials to compare or evaluate the relative contribution of material properties. The third sleep-based evaluation encompasses actual sleep events on the mattress and includes in-home sleep logs and sleep tracking technology, as well as audio and video recording. Evaluation of several nights of sleep is time-consuming and is usually limited to new product screening. There is a significant and understandable emphasis on this type of research in the hope of uncovering specific problems with individual models. Sleep-related trials are usually of short duration and include relatively small subject numbers being tested in controlled laboratory environments. In a study that lasted only seven days, it was concluded that since sleep trials are costly and difficult to perform in large quantities, large numbers of mattress models are compared, and the goal is to select only a limited number of mattresses. The most appropriate for the next phase of research is the need to restrict it. Overall, it seems that the majority of sleep trials involving foam beds have obvious methodological weaknesses that limit their ability to provide any real insight into mattress quality or sleep outcomes that can be expected from them.
The Impact of Mattress Quality on Sleep: A Comprehensive Review
