Memory Foam Topper

Many people have a difficult time getting to sleep or staying asleep, especially those who work in an office. There are several rules that can help you fall asleep faster and sleep better at night:

• Get at least 30 minutes exposure to sunlight in the morning
• Get at least 30 minutes of brisk exercise everyday in the daytime
• Do not drink anything with caffeine in the evenings and nights - this includes coffee, tea and Coca-Cola
• Loosen your muscles with stretching exercises before you go to bed
• Mentally relax yourself before you go to bed. e.g. using meditation, progressive muscle relaxation or autogenics

Unfortunately, in our modern world, many of us spend most of the useful daylight hours in the office, out of natural sunlight. Many of us spend way too many hours in high-pressure situations, without the privacy or chance let go of our tension. And when we spend so many hours, including overtime, at work - our homes also become a high-pressure environment because we need to squeeze too many activities into too little time. Activities like household maintenance and other chores, as well as making sure the kids have finished their homework. Trying to find time to squeeze in any kind of exercise or relaxation is extremely difficult.

There is no surprise, then, that so many people including you and I suffer from various sleep disorders, including insomnia. However, there is something which can help - sleep in a more comfortable bed! Common sense, isn't it? But your bed is already comfortable, you may protest. It is nice and soft and lets you sink into it. Or it is nice and firm giving you plenty of support. But have you truly ever tried sleeping or just lying down on the latest and best water beds? Or even the best spring coil beds, or memory foam beds? The best of these beds and mattresses let you sink into them, absorbing away all the physical tension in your muscles. They spread out the pressure on your body, no matter whether you are lying on your back or your side. Yet they continue to support your spinal alignment, preventing backaches and stiff necks.

For many people, this simple release of physical tension also leads to a release of mental stress. Why? Because most of us are locked in a negative feedback loop of physical tension and mental stress. Stress causes our muscles to tighten up. In our minds, this tightening of the muscles soon becomes associated with stress. Psychologists call this anchoring. Once this happens to you, anytime your muscles feel strained, you will also feel a undefinable sense of uneasiness, i.e. stress. In severe cases, this stress would cause a further tightening of the muscles, which cause a greater feeling of mental stress, and so on and so forth until complete mental breakdown occurs. But sleeping on a really good mattress, in fact just lying down for a while, cuts short this negative spiral. The strain in your muscles, the various knots and tightness, slowly release themselves. Due to the feedback loop between the physical tension you feel and your mental stress, your physical relaxation also leads to your mental relaxation. As you can see, this feedback cycle works in both directions - it can cause more stress, but it can also cause relaxation. In fact, this is how relaxation techniques like progressive muscle relaxation work.

But there is one problem. These top-class beds and mattresses are expensive. A bed for one person could well cost you one to two months' salary, maybe even more. Some types, like water beds, even have an additional maintenance cost. Does this mean good sleep is out of your reach? Not necessarily. Put perfection out of your mind. If you will be satisfied with a "good enough" solution, you can try a memory foam topper for your normal bed. This is like a thin mattress made from visco elastic polyurethane foam (the technology developed by NASA for their space programme). It works best laid on top of a firm mattress. If you sleep on a soft mattress, you may need to switch to a firm mattress.

The best of these memory foam mattress pads are the Tempurpedic memory foam topper and the Serta memory foam mattress pad. While nowhere as good as a real memory foam mattress, they are a great deal more affordable. Look online for overstock memory foam sales, and if you are patient your local furniture shop may also have memory foam clearance sales. With some luck, and cutting back on some unnecessary luxuries for a while, you may soon be sleeping on a Tempur memory foam mattress topper and Tempurpedic memory foam pillow.

Good quality visco elastic polyurethane foam products, like the Serta Ultimate memory foam and Tempurpedic memory foam mattress pads can last their owners one or two decades with careful use. While they should not be expected to solve all your sleep problems, they will help you to sleep better. They are also great for people with allergies - there are no memory foam dust mites, unlike mattresses with cotton of feather fillings. The memory foam is too dense for dust mites to hide in.

In conclusion, a memory foam topper can help you to sleep better. If you have severe sleep problems, you will probably still need to spend a bit of time on stretching exercises and mental relaxation before going to bed. But you should soon find yourself in deeper sleep for longer stretches of time.