Best Mattress for PAP users

Okay, this will open up a can of worms, but here goes.

What's you thoughts on the right bed to sleep on, in addition to getting your nightly therapy? I know it depended, but generally speaking. Why am I asking?

I'm in the market to get a new mattress and box springs. Current one is 12 years old, and beginning to show signs of wear. It's rotated and flipped every 6-8 months. Pillow top, double sided. Needs to be a standard king as all bedding, fitted sheets, comforters, and covers are king.

It's just me and the cat, and his 12 pounds doesn't leave an impression in the mattress.

I really think that your mattress is a personal comfort issue. What pillow you use or what position you sleep in is more to the point for cpap. Your mattress, on the other hand, is just what makes you most comfortable and the sleepiest *smile*. Sometimes people have back issues, or other body sleeping position problems, but I don't think that cpap bears directly on picking a mattress. My mattress is really comfortable, but I had it before cpap, and it's still really comfortable *smile*.

I picked up an inexpensive memory foam mattress a few years back that I like alot, although in summer it is just a little warm for me. I was not on CPAP at the time but it seems to work well now for that also. Been side sleeping for years. It's getting a little worn out so I've been thinking about what next. I slept on a sleep number bed during my one sleep study and found it very comfortable once I had it dialed in, but I'm a little concerned about the durability of them in general.

It's a non-issue as it for as cpap, whatever your body is happy with other factors come in, for mine, very firm due to back issues. Jim

I agree, it's a matter of comfort and compromise (if you share your bed).

Pillows are way more important IMHO.

Thanks Jim,

That's the sort of information I was looking for. I'm 20 months short of 70, and find myself separated after 41 years of marriage. I totally relied on my wife to make this type of decision. Helpless, and without a clue comes to mind.

Had the mattress and box springs for about 12 years, and I can tell from the wear patters, etc., it's time for something new. Mattress sales people will lie to make a sale, (even to their mother) and if you buy a mattress only, usually - should you need to replace during warranty period, the company rep will find a way to void the warranty cause you didn't buy their box springs.

Rather than beat a dead horse on the forum, I'll head to a couple of good quality hotels in the area, and speak to the person who does the ordering of mattress and box springs to get an idea of what purchase. I've never had a bad experience sleeping in a good hotel bed, unless I was out camping for a couple of weeks and anything is better than a sleeping bag, and pad then a cheap bed seems like top of the line.

apw5746 wrote:...I'm 20 months short of 70, and find myself separated after 41 years of marriage...

Great holy gravy! You have my condolences, APW. I can't imagine how hard that is for you. At least you got the cat. I know someone would lose an arm if they tried to take my cat.

I'm planning to get a sleep number bed as soon as I get moved; my furniture is in storage while I wait for my new home to be ready, which is probably in about a month. My cousin (71 today) has one and she loves it because it takes all her aches and pains away and she no longer wakes up stiff with her arthritis. I spent some time on her bed one day when I was visiting, played with the control, and I think I will really like it.

I agree with the others though; it's not going to make a difference in using cpap. It's a matter of what's comfortable for you.

I would recommend highly against a "sleep number" bed, and any mattress that is actually an air mattress.

The reason I say this is because if you understand the physics behind hydraulics, the main rule is that the pressure is the same at every point in a pressurized volume, such as a baloon, which is essentially what a "sleep number" bed is.

But that is exactly what you don't want. You do not want the same support pressure under your head or shoulders or hips; often you need more or less support in different areas. The SN bed can adjust the amount of support, but being a single baloon-like volume, it can only adjust the support globally for all parts of your body at the same time; there is no provision for changing the amount of support for your hips, for instance, differently than for your trunk, or shoulders.

This is exactly why the waterbed, ubiquitous in the 80's and 90's, is now as rare as henteeth. You can't find them, because they are not supportive, and folks finally realized how bad they were.

I also was doomed to sleep on one, once for a weekend in a hotel. No pressure setting worked well. Since it was a double mattress, I ended up adjusting one mattress into the 50's, the other mattress down into the 20's, and then laid crosswise so that my hips got the support they needed without my head and trunk feeling like they were on a cot at San Quentin.

Do yourself a favor, and pass. I also used to think memory foam was a scam, until I found myself desparately trying to heal a sore neck. I tried one of the expensive $100 pillows, and it worked pretty well. Then I found a $7 knockoff of that famous pillow at WalMart, and it worked better. I went back for a second one, and they were out, but I found a combo memory foam on one side, batting on the other pillow, and for a few bucks nmore, that is my favorite pillow yet. And memory foam as a mattress is also very good. Just don't fall for the expensive ones, because viscoelastic foam is generic, and you can find one at a decent price without getting gouged

after reading this area....which is the best pillow for use with cpap?

I'll be in the market for a new mattress next year. Leading the pack right now, is the hybrid style of mattress; memory foam over coil spring. It's what I've created by putting a memory foam topper on my older coil spring mattress to get it another couple years of use out of it. It works pretty well for me. I'm a stomach/side sleeper. The new "cooling foam" mattresses have my attention because my current setup is a bit warmer than my plain coil spring was.

TO Library Lady and Guest: I have to chime in here. I ALSO was going to buy a Sleep Number Bed, until I read the horrible reviews on THEIR website, the Sleep Number website. I have two co-workers who absolutely love it, but yet the reviews really scare me very much on how people say it falls apart so rapidly and makes their back hurt worse. Please read these reviews online on the Sleep Number website, and tell me what you think? Thanks.

Oops, they REMOVED all the reviews of the Sleep Number Bed website since I last researched this 3 months ago. Library Lady and Guest, please just google Sleep Number Bed reviews and tell me what you think.

tyrone

Luthie2006 wrote:...makes their back hurt worse...

This is exactly what I was talking about. The SN may be fine if you do not have a tendency for back trouble; certainly there are a lot of them out there and the product is successful. I probably should have qualified my statements earlier with this.

But, at least for those who may have a need for heavy support under your hips, the SN will do exactly that...make your back hurt worse.

And the reason is because there is no way a baloon, whether filled with air, or water, can support yout hips differently than your head and shoulders; physically impossible because the principle of hydraulics is a physical law that can't be violated.

That they sell this product to unsuspecting folks who don't think this through is appalling to me; the concept of "lets fill a bag with air and get people to sleep on it and allow them to adjust how much air is in the bag" is as flighty a concept as "it would me nice if my car could just fly me to work while I do crosswords on my iPad." Not gonna happen, not gonna work out how you might at first imagine.

I agree with what most of the other replies said: whatever is most comfortable for you personally.

Along those same lines, I do have a bone to pick with mattress sellers. You go into the showroom with your best friend, spouse, parents, whoever and you lay down on the display mattresses. Then your fellow shoppers lay down and give opinions; most opinions widely divergent and irrelevant to you, no doubt. Then you lay back down and focus on hardness, softness and things like that. The one thing you can't do in the showroom is actually sleep on the mattress, that is, unless you have a special agreement with the dealer. It seems there's no real way to test a mattress when it's really important.

Case in point. One of my neighbors went and bought a top end $2000 SpringAir mattress and used it for a few weeks and decided they hated it. Sorry, you can't return a mattress no matter how long the period you used it. They asked me if I wanted it (for free) and I said, "Hell, yeah!" I love that mattress. Seems that everybody has a different idea of what's comfortable... who knew?

The moral of the story is that you can return a $100 CPAP mask you used for a week if you have a return policy, however you can't return a mattress you used for a week or two? What's up with that?