Visco Mattresses Versus Air Beds Health Concerns

Many mattress manufacturers and retailers say their products can cure insomnia and/or many other sleep disorders, back pain, joint pains, and so on. The truth is that no mattress can fix these things but they can help ease the pain and improve comfort during sleep, depending on your medical condition, mattress type, and quality. So what do doctors have to say about it?

Mattress Recommendations from Doctors

Many customer reviews say that a Tempur-Pedic mattress or pillow has helped apnea and fibromyalgia patients, insomniacs and people suffering from back and hip pain. There are no relevant medical studies to back up these effects which is why doctors are still skeptical about recommending (or not recommending) visco mattresses.

Air mattresses are subject to the same lack of relevant studies. There are doctors, however, who say that the adjustable firmness principle used by air beds makes them appropriate for people recovering from back or joint surgery.

Back Support

• Visco mattresses will provide good support as long as it is dense enough (4lb minimum), is layered over a firmer core made of good quality high resilience foam, is firm enough (ILD rating of 14-15) and, most importantly, is sensitive to body temperature.
• While air beds ensure correct position and proper alignment of your spine and back, support is, sadly, not one of their highlights. If you pump too much air in, it becomes uncomfortably hard, and conversely, if you pump less air in, it’s more comfortable but softer and less supportive.

Pressure Relief

Health care specialists say that to be labeled as providing pressure relief, a mattress has to have the pressure of 32mmHg or lower, whereas pressure reduction performance is agreed to occur between 32mmHg and 50mmHg.

• A good quality viscoelastic mattress like Tempur-Pedic Swedish mattress and other leading brands were shown to reduce average pressure to around 15 mmHg from nearly 30 mmHg.
• Air mattresses have adjustable pressure, varying from 0 to 40 mmHg, depending on the level of firmness you prefer and, consequently, on how much air you put into the air chamber.

Allergy And Mattress Choice

Unfortunately for allergy sufferers, there are no allergy-free mattresses readily available (except for the ones manufactured especially for people suffering from allergies).

Almost all air mattress beds sold today use foam so comparing them to visco mattresses reveals similar findings:

• They can both host dust mites, even though foam is not a food source in itself, nor does it promote their nesting, due to its dense, open-cell structure. The only way to prevent allergy-provoking mites in both visco and air mattresses is to use dust-mite resistant encasings and covers.