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So, you’re out of town on business and you check into your hotel. You’re tired from the long trip and in need of a good night’s sleep but it has been your experience that you just don’t sleep very well unless you’re at home. Regardless of this fact, you settle in for the night with a good book or a little television until you drift off. The next thing you know the alarm is going off. Despite your assumptions about your sleep habits, you awaken refreshed, refueled, and ready to start the day.

You’re halfway into dressing for your big business meeting when it dawns on you; you’ve just had one of the best night’s sleep in years. You rack your brain trying to remember when you slept that good at home as you search the hotel bed for clues to solve your “Rested In Seattle” mystery. Was it just that you were so tired? Was it the food you had for dinner? Is the hotel pumping sleeping gas through the ventilation system? It isn’t until you see the new mattress that the final pieces fall into place.

For most of us, buying a new mattress is not very high on the priority list. In fact, mattress shopping usually doesn’t enter our brain until it becomes painfully obvious the old mattress isn’t doing the job it did 25 years ago when it was new. However, it may surprise you to know that the age and condition of your mattress goes a long way in determining how well you sleep each night. Simply put, the older the mattress, the less rest you’ll have.

The reasons for this should be fairly obvious but, again, most of us think nothing of trying to get a good night’s sleep on a mattress that should have been retired several presidential terms ago. If the age of the mattress or increasingly sleepless nights aren’t sign enough that a new mattress purchase may be in your immediate future, here are a few more signs that your mattress needs replacing:

Pain
One of the more common symptoms of a worn out mattress is chronic joint or muscle pain. Certainly this isn’t an exclusive sign since pain can be caused by many ailments that have nothing to do with your sleeping surface. That said, many of us have been told by our friendly neighborhood chiropractor that our mattress may be the reason for our recurring back, neck, hip, or joint pains. Studies have proven that the position of our bodies during sleep either positively or negatively affects our physical well being. If you’re experiencing chronic joint or muscle pain and your mattress is over 10 years old, you may have found a primary culprit in your search for permanent relief.

Lumps & Sags
This one should be fairly obvious but the number of people who sleep on mattress that are physically worn out would fill the Astrodome to standing room only capacity. As mattresses age and wear out they tend to sag, especially in the middle. If you start the night on your end of the bed and wake in the middle with your partner, pets, and pillows you’ve definitely got a sagging problem. Another sign of a worn out mattress is the accumulation of “lumps”. These small piles of fabric are the result of the mattress’ interior materials bunching up into very uncomfortable sections along the sleeping surface. Basically if observable signs of wear and tear are affecting your comfort, you’ve got a mattress that isn’t “broken in”, it’s just “broken”.

Restful In Seattle
If you find yourself sleeping better in a hotel, a guest bed, or on a foldout mattress, you’ve probably got a mattress problem back home. It doesn’t take too many out of town trips filled with restful sleep to come to the conclusion that your old reliable bed at home is now just old. In most cases, the average mattress lifespan is at least 7 years and at maximum 10 years. If you’re like most of us and have a mattress that could have come over on the Mayflower, you’re a good candidate for a new mattress.

When you consider the importance of a good night’s sleep to our general health and well being, it is always a good idea to keep up with the age and condition of your mattresses. Anyone who has been deprived of a good night’s sleep over an extended period of time will tell you, there is literally nothing like a good night’s sleep. Don’t let your old, worn out mattress keep you from the rest your body needs.