Finding the right mattress

Thoughts on “anatomically correct” lying

Our customers often ask us how they can find the right mattress. We would like to offer our customers mattresses on which they can lie well and sleep restful. By a good mattress we mean first of all that natural and environmentally friendly materials are processed during production.

Customers take this quality for granted in an ecologically oriented company.
This is why they do not ask about the control of harmful substances or the climatic properties of mattresses. The most common question we are confronted with concerns “healthy lying”, the criteria for “anatomically correct” positioning. Precisely because the conventional bed businesses advertise very massively with such arguments, we are asked whether we also “medically” legitimize our mattresses accordingly.

All the usual publications on the subject of “healthy lying” more or less agree that a mattress should be “point-elastic” and “anatomically support” the body so that the spine can rest in its “natural S-shape”. It is therefore not surprising that most manufacturers advertise their products with appropriate ratings, even though their mattresses have quite different structures and different support properties.

Some mattress suppliers have meanwhile started to offer measurements of the spine in order to be able to determine the “anatomically correct” mattress for each customer completely “objectively”. But even with this method it is not easy to convince customers and find the right mattress. Especially not if the “objective” measurement results do not correspond to the perceptions and wishes of the customers.

How to find the right mattress

We do not agree with this approach. Nor are we convinced that healthy lying is about the highly mystified “spine”, any more than we believe in a “natural position” of the spine. If there really were objective, natural storage, then all problems in this regard could be solved with some technology.

We see the problems of back pain at night and in the morning in the area of muscles, ligaments and fascia (muscle skins), because these align the spine and keep it upright during the day. It is this ligament “apparatus” that has to recover and reorganize at night and not the spine. The vertebrae do not care how they lie and how they are aligned, nor do the much-cited intervertebral discs.

There is neither a “normal spine” nor its “natural position”. In our opinion, all known doctrines regarding the “correct back support” have little to do with the realities of individual people.

Each person is characterized by his unique movement sequences and posture patterns. The human movement pattern is as personal as the mental character. So if permanent one-sided strain and engrained habits lead to complaints, these can only be solved individually. Muscles, ligaments and fascia do not reorganize themselves by simple immobilization and relief, but require opposing tensions and movements, depending on existing problems and habitual patterns, in order to achieve a balance to the preceding loads.

This is probably one reason why many people want to sleep on relatively strong mattresses. They do not want to sink into the mattress because the movement “apparatus” and the spine cannot align and stretch as desired. During the consultation we look for an individual solution for each person, which is oriented to the respective movement character and personal habits. Our advice and recommendations to find the right mattress must be consistent with individual body perception.

Therefore, we will not advise a person who is used to sleeping on very flexible mattresses and feels comfortable on them to sleep on a firm and low-vibration mattress, just as we would not recommend a spring slatted frame to a “futon sleeper”, unless it is his express wish. Finding the right mattress is therefore an individual challenge for every customer. With our many years of experience, we are happy to help you find the right mattress for your needs!