Archive for the ‘Furniture’ Category
The Ergonomics of Sleep
The growing study of ergonomics has lead to changes in the way we think of the office work space. The proper height of our computer monitor, the placement and angle of our keyboards, the way we sit and adjust our chairs, and more have all changed in corporations throughout the country as companies seek to take advantage of the lessons learned about preserving employee health and comfort through ergonomic best practices. Many employees would complain vociferously if their employers knowingly left them with a workstation that was designed poorly from an ergonomic perspective, but when they get home, they spend hours and hours sitting or sleeping on furniture and mattresses that are causing them physical damage that they are striving so hard to avoid while on the job.
Some people may go to the trouble of setting up their desk at home ergonomically, spending a few extra dollars for an ergonomically designed keyboard, adjusting their chair they way they learned at the office, and so forth. When it comes to sleeping, though, many of those same people are spending eight hours each night, fully one third of their entire lives, on an old, worn out, or poorly designed mattress.
These mattresses can not only interfere with getting a good night’s sleep, but can be the primary cause or contributing factor in chronic back pain, joint pain, frequent muscle soreness, and headaches. Conventional mattresses cause pressure points, concentrating all of a person’s weight upon just a few areas of the body, such as the shoulders, hips, knees and ankles. This can aggravate any existing conditions involving inflammation or pain in the joints such as even early stage arthritis. It can cause tossing and turning that interferes with a full night’s rest. If conditions at our place of employment caused similar problems, we demand that action be taken.
The action we’d most likely demand after looking at the available options would be the immediate purchase of a memory foam mattress. Memory foam mattresses, unlike conventional mattresses, react to the heat of the body to soften and mold themselves around the contours of the body. This contouring effect relieves pressure points and distributes the sleeper’s weight across their entire body surface instead of concentrating it upon the joints.
Furthermore, memory foam mattresses retain their firmness where they are not in direct contact with the heat of the body. This allows proper ergonomic support of the spinal column, reducing one of the primary causes of both chronic and acute back pain. Sore muscles, insomnia, stiffness, and joint pain as a result of a poorly designed workspace would not be tolerated, but those who sleep on conventional mattresses risk all of these conditions when the simple act of replacing their mattress with a memory foam mattress or a memory foam mattress topper could alleviate the situation. Isn’t it time we hold ourselves accountable to the same standards that we expect of others?