My first night in China I arrived after 30 hours travel to a mattress as hard as a rock and the worlds worst pillow. Well, I bought a new pillow first thing but I still sleep on my concrete mattress. I gotta say, I will never go back to a soft mattress. Back in the States my mattress was as soft as a feather and I woke up every morning with lower back pain. It was just a nightmare getting out of bed in the morning. It wasn’t until almost right before I left that I figured out my mattress was probably the culprit – and I was about to start sleeping on the floor. My first week in China I noticed a huge decrease in lower back pain every morning.
Now when I wake up I usually do have some back pain (soreness would be a much, much better word) but that is because I lift like an Animal and do a ton of heavy back work at the gym. To be sure, the bed is uncomfortable as can be but the absence of back pain makes it more than worth it.
Most of the Chinese sleep on a hard mattress and I rarely see a Chinese person with bad posture. I was at the shop with a friend and she asked the shopkeeper where she could find a soft mattress and the shopkeeper laughed at her and said a soft mattress is bad for your back. Clearly they know something about sleeping on a firm surface that we have forgotten.
If you have lower back pain you should get off of your weak mattress and sleep on a firm surface. The human body was most definitely not designed to sleep on a bed of feathers. Try sleeping on the floor for a few days and see if you notice a difference. You probably will. Then you can trade in your fancy pants mattress for a firm one. Sleep on the ground like a man and look like one. Sleep on feathers like a princess and look like one.
Sleeping on a soft mattress makes you soft. Sleeping on a hard mattress makes you hard. Give it a try and see if you notice a difference.
I totally agree. A few years ago I got a herniated disk in my lower back. It’s still sore every now and then, but back extensions help keep it under control.
Anyway, I sleep on the floor at least once a week, and I notice that that alone helps my back somehow realign itself. If I sleep on a soft mattress, it’s bad news.
What I’d like to see (not sure if they exist) are sleep “platforms” that contour to your body, but are hard (I’m not sure if they’d accommodate different sleeping positions). My shoulders are kind of wide, so the one disadvantage to sleeping on the floor is I need to fold the pillow in half just to keep my neck from straining.
I sleep on a reasonably soft mattress that offers good body support when i sleep on my side. The design of the mattress means it compresses where my hips and shoulders rest while still ofering support for my torso. This means i wake every morning without any aches or pain.
In China, however, the hard mattresses don’t contour to your body, and so don’t offer the same degree of body support. In China, by about the third day i awake each norning with an ache in my lower back, and that ache persists every morning until i return home.
Maybe if i could sleep on my back it would be better, but unfortunately i can’t seem to get to sleep in thatposition unless i’m absolutely dead tired, and even then, i’ll roll onto my side while sleeping.
So in my case, i feel as though hard mattresses are actually bad for my back, due to the lack of contoured body support leading to my spine being curved when i lie on my side.
Most of the obstinate Chinese I know who insist on their rock hard mattresses have all kinds of lower back, joint, and arthritic pain and they wonder why. Tradition and hold-over false beliefs govern most of what they do and they all seem to think alike. Similarly, they hold onto the notion that eating with two straight sticks instead of a relatively modern invention called a fork is better for eating food.
How narrow minded! If you knew how to use a chopstick correctly, it’s way easier to grab soup noodles than a fork. Chopsticks were never designed for steaks initially anyway. It was designed to fit their food dishes. How about trying the modern fork invention on a sushi? Why would that be such a messy disaster before it reached the mouth? Because it obviously isnt a one size fits all.
I have been in China for 4 months. My back has continued to give me more and more pain. I have been sleeping on hard to semi-hard beds and have narrowed my problem down to the mattress. I am a triathlete training for 2013 Ironman Arizona and can not afford to be not training but right now the pain in my hips from sleeping on a non-contour forming mattress is preventing me from training. I can
hardly walk. I finally realized it was because ot the hard mattress. Now I have two thick comforters folded in half on top of the mattress. In just one night’s sleep my back is better.
I have been going to an accupunturist and a chiropractor to have them determine the problem but
they just say keep coming back for more treatment. They did relieve a bit of muscle tension and align my back to some degree but the pain continued to increase over the past week.
Now that I am sleeping on a soft contouring surface my hips no longer ache and my back is improving. So, I think it is an individual thing. what may be good for one can be terrible for another.