TOPIC:

why not just use a fitted mattress protector like suite sleep ?

you don't need *ANY* inches of natural latex. you can sleep on regular poly foam just fine. how much latex you want is up to you. as for mattress thickness - you should be able to tell that yourself by testing various mattresses in person.

if a mattress was perfectly matched to you it could be relatively thin - about 6 inches - and still do the job. however it would be hard to even design such a mattress, let a lone find one on sale, so in practice a few inches of mattress will end up getting wasted and you may need a thicker mattress. you have to get the mattress that works for you - regardless of how thick or thin it is.

that said i'm also 230 lbs and i never tried a 10" mattress that i liked, but that's probably because i haven't been trying 10" mattresses. i seem to have better luck with 12" ones but that can be simply due to the fact that most mattresses use a thick 6" base layer. with a 3" base layer a mattress could be only 9 inches thick and feel similar to a 12" one. a thicker base layer feels more premium though because you can't bottom it out by sitting on it so i guess that's why it is so popular.

mom2meredeth wrote:

Hi there. I am desperately looking for advice on a latex mattress topper. I recently purchased a Plush Beds Botanical Bliss 10" talalay mattress in medium-firm (29-31 ILD). I am 5'9" and 140 pounds with most of my weight in the lower region. In fact, I have a very slim upper body and shoulder area. I love the Plush Beds mattress; however, I am starting to experience some pretty severe shoulder pain. I am a side sleeper and I am wondering if my mattress is too firm and if I need a soft topper. I have done some research and was considering the Ultimate Dreams 3" topper in soft (19 ILD). I would love you thoughts/suggestions.

i hate when manufacturers and sellers confuse the matters by providing meaningless and wrong information but they do it all the time though. i went to the site and checked it out - sure enough they express mattress firmness as ILD ...

exept that ILD cannot be used to measure anything except a 4" thick layer of foam. it cannot be used to measure mattress firmness, so they ( excuse my french ) basically pull those numbers out of their ass. this pulling ILD numbers out of their ass problem is actually endemic in this industry.

in other words based on information they provide i can't tell what is the ILD of the uppermost layer of the mattress, and therefore how what you buy would relate to it ( softer or firmer ).

that said i have a 2" 19 ILD topper from brooklynbedding.com ( same company that sells ultimate dreams on Amazon ) and it is rather ridiculously soft - so soft its useless IMO. so i'm pretty sure it would soften up whatever you have.

that said brooklyn bedding / dreamfoam doesn't use 100% natural latex - they use blended latex. most people ( me included ) don't care much, but if you already have a 100% natural mattress that cost over $2G might want to consider spending a bit extra for a 100% natural latex topper.

also i have to warn you that the cover on brooklyn bedding topper is not removable and of questionable quality ... but the whole topper costs less than you would have to pay for the latex itself ( without the cover ) elsewhere, so you can just rip the cover off and throw it in the trash, then buy a better one.

finally if you have shoulder pain ( as i do ) you probably shouldn't sleep on your side to begin with. that's a bit like banging your head on the wall then complaining about headache. shoulder is the most mobile joint in the body, and i actually know somebody who dislocated his shoulder in his sleep. you can actually injure your shoulder simply putting your coat on - think of what sleeping on it for 8 hours will do.

i'm not saying you shouldn't try the topper - i'm saying you have to be reaslistic. as we get older our joints get weaker. the shoulder is not designed for sleeping on. for those people who can get away with doing that - good for them. i can't. i actually sleep in fear that i might accidentally end up on my shoulder and hurt it ... and i was shoulder pressing 300 pounds ~ 8 years ago.

actually the shoulder is not so much a joint as it is simply a bunch of loose ligaments and tendons. this design was necessary to enable the kind of flexibility that you need to lets say throw a baseball or a spear - but the price for this flexibility is fragility.

with the bed i have now i can sleep on my back. with the mattress i am building i hope to be able to sleep on my stomach. i don't think i could get a mattress on which i could sleep on my side even if i had $50,000 to spend on it.

ok i should have seen this coming - nobody in this industry knows anything about what they do

specifically they can never get their ILDs right - EVER

for example rocky mountain says Venus foam is 12 ILD ... but on the same page they have a diagram they copied from Foamex which shows that it is 15 IFD !

well no wonder it is so firm ! it feels about 50% firmer than my 19 ILD latex ( which is probably not 19 ILD )

and of course on the same page rocky mountain says that Energia is a memory foam when it is not

i swear - these people are hopeless - there is just no chance they will ever get anything right

and salesmen in places like Sleepys are far, far worse than even that - they literally don't know anything at all

it reminds me of how i was ordering a ROOR glass bong from Britain - the store messed up everything they possibly could - they sent wrong parts to wrong address etc, but at least they were stoned - the mattress salesmen are just dumb

i mean i'm not expecting salesmen to understand how things work or what the cons and pros are - but i WAS expecting until now that they could at least correctly copy / paste product descriptions - but clearly, this is far too complicated for them - so don't make the same mistake as i did !

when you order anything in this business you're just playing a lottery - you can never know what these geniuses will actually ship because they have no idea what they're doing

MY ADVICE TO ALL OF YOU IS DEMAND SAMPLES AND DON'T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER, because anything they TELL YOU about the products means squat since they have no idea what they're talking about - ANY OF THEM

i have seen another website list Venus ( which is out of stock there ) as 15 firmness before, but i dismissed it as a mistake ... silly me

it was pure luck that i noticed this diagram: www.rockymountainmattress.com/chart_v4.jpg

i mean watch the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap8sqVXc5mY

this genius says that it is a softer memory foam but you can actually hear his knuckles make a cracking sound when he tries to compress it LOL

yeah there were many clues that 12 was wrong number, but like an idiot i continued to have faith that people know what they're doing ...

i mean look:

4 LB Aerus - 12 ILD
5 LB Sensus - 14 ILD
8 LB Venus - ??

now what should it LOGICALLY be ? not 12 ! on the other hand 15 fits in there perfectly !

this topper is sold elsewhere as "luxury firm" ... since when is Firm = 12 ILD ?

damn !

jay55 wrote:

Which would be the longest lasting latex, blended or Natural? If blended then what percentage of synthetic should i consider?

it's not like you can choose what percentage you want.

natural will smell better and be more comfortable.

durability i think will be similar although blended says it is more durable but anytime somebody wants to sell you cheap substitute they will say it is better, so frankly i don't believe it ...

the only real advantage that blended has is consistency from batch to batch, and lower cost.

i just called absolutecomfortonsale ( who delivered the Venus sample to me ) and asked for samples of Sensus and Aerus. they promised to send them to me.

trusting any kind of information that sellers have about ILD or anything else is simply pointless - it is always wrong - you will never know what you're going to get unless you get a sample

i tried e-mailing Foamex and i called them repeatedly but they never pick up - EVER - it is always the answering machine, and when i tried to game the system and instead of sales picked another department they didn't want to talk to me and said i should call sales instead, who never pick up ...

acutally i just figured out why in the video he pressed it down so hard. the foam is sticky so if you collapse it fully it actually sticks to itself which makes it expand much slower. if you only compress it halfway it recovers in about a second, but if you compress it fully it takes several seconds because it sticks to itself internally. so the sales guy was basically trying to cheat and make it look like it has a slower recovery than it actually does.

that's scary ! talalay latex cannot be produced in large sizes so they glue 2 pieces together. i wonder if you could be feeling that joint. hope not ! because i don't want it to happen to me ! LOL

that said i couldn't find the model - do you have a link ?

I don't have a link but I think I googled it awhile back. The ridge I feel was not there when I bought the mattress.