Lower Back Pain Caused By A Bad Mattress

By Ryan Page

It is hard to believe that a mattress can be the cause of lower back pain, more specifically what many call morning back pain. The type of pain that is most acute in the morning when we first get out of bed. This is not normal. Sleeping is supposed to be a healing experience. If lower back pain is caused by the march of time and the effects of gravity over our lifetime then it should be most severe at the end of the day not the beginning.

For years I looked for some type of solution. I was thinking about trying anything - spinal disc decompression therapy, traction, inversion tables and was even considering surgery. Decompression therapy seemed like a good choice. The commercials on TV looked promising, then I discovered this type of treatment could cost up to $1,000 each month and was not covered by medical insurance. With each passing year the pain grew worse until one morning I could barely get out of bed, the pain was terrible.

I had to do something, this could not go on. Then I saw another ad on TV about inversion tables. They seemed inexpensive and they were a type of traction therapy. I bought the cheapest one I could find for about $100. I must admit, hanging upside down is not a pleasant experience at all. The blood in your body rushes to your head, and your feet and ankles get sore. In time my body did get used to hanging upside down.

Finally after about two weeks of using the table I did get some relief from my pain. It seemed to diminish little by little day by day. I would even take my relief for granted and stop using the table only to find the back pain would return. One thing kept bugging me. Why was the pain most acute in the morning? It just did not make any sense, I was finally beginning to believe my mattress was the culprit.

Finally I ripped off all the blankets and sheets on my bed and gave my mattress a very careful inspection. I noticed the mattress did have a slightly concave shape to it, like a very shallow bowl. I imagined this bowl shape was even more pronounced when my weight was on it. Could this be the problem? Seemed unlikely to me. When I was young I could sleep on anything without any trouble. But, I was not young anymore. Time to try a new mattress.

After some research I really wanted to try a memory foam (MF) bed but I could not afford to spend thousands of dollars on a high quality visco elastic MF bed just to experiment. After all, what if this did not solve my problem? I would be out a lot of money. To my good fortune I found out I could make my own MF bed - mattress and platform bed - very easily and cheaply. In my case, this "morning back pain" was completely solved with a MF bed. Unbelievable that I suffered and probably did some damage to by back all those years. - 32188

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