Mattress & Back Pain

[guessagain]

Have had this memory foam mattress from IKEA for about 3 months I think, it’s the Morgedal one.

I wake up, every morning with excruciating back pain, mainly lower back pain ever morning. Sometimes I can wake in the night with it in agony. I am a side sleeper, but can find myself waking up on my back.

The back pains eases a lot when I have got up & walked about.

I’ve never been one to suffer from back problems as such, apart from when I pulled a lower back muscle last year in springtime doing some gardening.

I suspect it’s the mattress. We changed it from a different IKEA one so we can’t just go & change it again.

I’ve thought about getting a mattress topper for it, but will that do anything? Most of them are memory foam ones anyway. I don’t think we can afford to just buy a new one & DH is happy with our current one, he seems to have no problem with it.

I have slept on our sofa, a family’s sofa when visiting & I don’t wake up with the same back pain at all.

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Bump

We had to get a new bed base aswell as s new mattress for my back pain. It was old and lopsided.

@guessagain what did you do about this in the end? I have similar and suspect the memory foam is the problem. Hard to keep trying out different mattresses though as they're not exactly cheap!

I've had similar and replaced the bed and mattress (it was 8+years old though) and found that it helped a bit it didn't sort the problem.

What REALLY helped was supporting my legs - started with a couple of different versions of leg spacers/knee pillows and whilst they worked I found them too hot and awkward after a while. I now (and have for 2+ years) just put a pillow at the bottom of the bed (quite a firm heavy foam type one) and rest my lower legs on it (I'm also a side sleeper) and it works too. My lower back problems got quite bad (couldn't sit at all for hours after getting up etc). I would try something like this first and see if it helps.

We got rid of it & got a traditional open spring one from Costco.

Very very firm. It was a little too firm for me. But DH was exasperated- like I always say, he could sleep on a washing line - he wasn’t going to change this one.

As it happens I was also having trouble with waking up with aching neck, shoulders & head every morning, no matter how many pillows I used. I felt like I was falling apart or just odd!

I looked into different pillows & decided to go for the Panda one - it was a leap of faith as it’s memory foam.

OMG - this pillow was a game changer for me in terms of my neck & shoulders- never woke up with pain in since!

Then I saw they did a mattress topper too so we got that. It’s comfy enough & I think I’ve found the best I can for me, an odd duck :) I do find sometimes I can get back ache but that’s only if I’ve laid on my back too long.