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Sleep On Your Side, Back Or Stomach Comfortably,When you’re going to buy a mattress, there’re many things you should consider such as size, thickness, material or your weight, sleep positions, and build. Here we’re going to talk more about sleep positions and mattress. Each position has different gaps between body and mattress and needs different mattresses to fill gaps. What kind of mattress does side, stomach or back sleepers need? Let’s start with side sleeping positions.
Sleep on your side
There are a large number of people especially women sleeping on their side. When you’re sleeping on your side, shoulders and hips are primary bony parts contacting with the mattress and share almost all pressure of your body weight. They become pressure points and develop numbness and aches. On the other hand, a wide gap has formed between lumbar area and mattress surface. Therefore, the mattress for side sleepers needs to provide support for shoulders, hips and filling in the gap in lumbar area to distribute your weight evenly over the mattress. That requires mattress to be soft let the sleeper sink in just right depth to get lumbar support but still to be supportive to keep sleeper from bottoming out. Generally, a 3-inch or more comfort layer is good enough and it would be a little different if we take weight, body shape, and firmness of support core into account. Actually, how much soft top layer we need could be measured. Measure the distance between the outside of a shoulder to the outside of the widest part of your chest under your armpit (especially in men) and the distance from the outside of your hips at their widest point and the outside of your waist at its narrowest point (especially in women), the largest of these two measurements may be a good starting point for the thickness of your comfort layer. Keep in mind that it’s not accurate but good for better guess. Why some people complain their arms fall asleep or don’t feel hips at night is they don’t have an appropriate mattress to relieve pressure points and offer lumbar support.
Sleep on your back
Many people are only comfortable with back sleeping and always sleeping on back when go to bed. I’m one of them and can’t fall asleep on side or stomach unless sleep on my back with two hands stretched. Compared to side sleeping, back sleeping causes a small gap under lower back so the lumbar area needs a thinner comfort layer to fill the gap. It also means that back sleepers need a mattress letting them sink a little bit less than side sleepers. Generally speaking, model with 2 inch soft top layer is a good start point. Of course you can increase or decrease the height based on your weight, body shape, etc. You can measure the depth of your lumbar area to know how many inches the top layer should be by measuring the distance of the gap while you’re standing straight against the wall.
Sleep on stomach
Sleeping on your stomach is different from other two sleep positions and it doesn’t create any gap to fill. A firm comfort layer or one with a thin cushion topper would be great. Stomach sleepers need a relatively firmer top layer because soft top layer could let stomach sink much and that pulls your body especially lumbar area and spine. Honestly, stomach sleeper needs only a thin cushion layer for the pointy iliac crest of the pelvis and 1 inch is good and comfortable enough.
Sleep on side, back and stomach
Actually, lots of people don’t have only one sleep position at night and they change a lot at night. You must have been aware that fall asleep on your side but wake up on your back. It’s complicated and difficult to get right because different positions require different support. However, we have a compromising solution. Always choose a height of comfort layer that is thinner than your deepest sleep positions. For example, if your deepest position is 3 inches sleeping on your side and you also change to back sleeping, then get a mattress with mattress with 2.5 inches comfort layer would be a compromising choice. Now many mattresses include several layers instead of only two. The middle layer serves as a good transition to allow people to sink a little more and prevent from sinking too much. If you don’t have a regular sleep position at night, take a look at mattress with middle layers.
There is no best or worst sleep position. You just need to sleep the way you feel comfortable and get a mattress to keep your spine aligned naturally and soften pressure points.