Get Some Restful ZZZzzzz's
Written: Jan 21 '04
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Pros: Gives a very good night's sleep, has a good warranty and return policy
Cons: A little expensive
The Bottom Line: What is a good night's sleep worth? For those in pain it is worth a fortune. For others this sleep set is still a reasonable buy.
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| gamblin_man's Full Review: Tempur-Pedic Swedish Sleep System |
We all spend around one-third of our life sleeping or at least lying down. How much is making that experience the best part of your day each day worth to you? Is it worth as much per day as, say, what you spend to watch television while you’re waiting to get that sleep? If it is, then you might want to consider the Tempur-Pedic Swedish Sleep System. Let me tell you why.
A Little History
I remember as a very young child sleeping in my grandmother’s feather bed. My grandfather had built the frame, lacing it carefully with strong hemp rope. My grandmother had plucked the down from many geese, sewn the cover, and filled it. I can still remember the soft comfort as that mattress enfolded me in its loving embrace.
Jump forward to today, over fifty years later. In between I have tried to recreate that feeling in modern bedding materials. In the fifties I had a foam mattress. I have slept on many incarnations of mattresses with springs, box springs, and padding. As a frequent traveler I have been awake nights on mattresses, awoken with a backache from mattresses, and generally found sleep to be less than the pleasant experience I remember. I have slept on fold-out couches (ouch). I have been rocked in the hammock-like embrace of a water bed. In short, I have never again been able to recapture that now distant memory.
Until last month, that is. The excuse was the arrival of my mother-in-law to stay with us. She is 87 years old now and in constant pain from seriously deteriorated disks in her spinal column. Her normal sleep span has been under two hours since her arrival. We put her on the best Simmons Beauty Rest mattress and box springs in the house. We added a 2” foam pad with variable density and a padded mattress cover. Finally her back doctor said that some of his patients were having success with a bed from Tempur-Pedic. We bit and a mattress, foundation, and steel frame came to our door about a month ago. Eleven hundred dollars left to get it there. They did throw in a free contour pillow, free delivery and setup, and a ninety-day no question free return.
The Purchase Experience
We bought this Tempur-Pedic Swedish Sleep System via a telephone conversation with one of their representatives. They are also available in some selected bedding stores. The experience started with an internet search and ended at their web site. The only way to purchase through their web site is by telephone and we did that. The set came in three days. The delivery people set it up, taking down the old bed it replaces. They were very helpful and in no hurry to leave. It was below freezing out. We live in area at least an hour away from the nearest large city. This truck came from a city an hour-and-a-half away. It was very cold. That is important later on in this tale.
All the people we dealt with were helpful and knowledgeable. We were assured that if this sleep system didn’t work for us they would be back to pick it up any time in the next ninety days. We haven’t tried this option and don’t expect to.
What Came in the Truck
The Tempur-Pedic can be assembled in various configurations and sizes. At the low end, price wise, is just the mattress to fit your existing foundation. At the other extreme is an adjustable sleep system that operates like a hospital bed. We purchased the twin sleep system. Also available is long twin, double, long double, queen, split queen, king, and California king. As mentioned, they threw in a contour pillow. The foundation is solid. The frame is solid and has rug-capable casters. The mattress comes covered with a removable, mite and allergy-resistant cover that has four zippers to make it easy to remove for laundering.
Assembly consisted of putting the frame together, setting the foundation on it, and then setting the mattress on the foundation. It took longer to disassemble the bed it was replacing than to get this one together. The cover was already on the mattress. The manufacture strongly recommends no additional pad or mattress cover, just sheets. No special sheets are needed. The regular ones for the purchased size fit fine.
How It Works
Starting with the frame, it is a typical heavy gauge metal construction. The casters roll easily across hard or resilient flooring. Their footprint is wide enough not to permanently dent most flooring material.
The foundation looks a little like a box. It is a sturdy construction with no give. Lying on a concrete floor will give you some idea of its resistance to give.
The mattress itself is the heart of the Tempur-Pedic Swedish Sleep System. First let’s talk about what it is not. It is not an innerspring mattress. My Uncle spent many years building innerspring mattresses and box springs. He worked at a factory who built for many of the major names in innerspring systems. From his view, they were all pretty much alike. From my experience of sleeping on many, I have to agree. It is not a mattress that uses air or water for its filling. Even the ones with pumped air don’t feel like this one.
It is tempting to call it a foam mattress, until I remember the one I slept on as a teenager. At least superficially it resembles the mattresses and mattress toppers that are made of memory foam. But there is an important difference. The mattress is made up of lots of viscoelastic memory cells. The material was originally developed in the early 1970s by NASA for use in relieving the tremendous pressure on astronauts during the high G-force acceleration phases of space flight. This material is elastic like foam in that it will compress under pressure and return to its original shape when the pressure is removed. It is also sensitive to changes in temperature. As the temperature of each cell rises, its resistance to compression gets less. It gets softer. Each cell operates in these parameters individually. The cells are held together by glue in a box shape that looks like foam.
After NASA developed this material, a Swedish company, Fagerdala World Foams, spent almost ten years perfecting the material for mass production. It was first introduced in Sweden and became known around the world as the Swedish Sleep System. Tempur-Pedic licensed the material and became the US manufacturer.
Two things determine the restfulness of your sleep. One is the straightness of your spine in sleep. The other is the compression of blood vessels due to pressure from the sleeping surface. When blood vessels compress, your brain is signaled frequently and you roll over to restore the blood flow that the compression reduced. When your spine is not straight, nerves exiting the spinal column can become pinched, causing pain and restlessness.
By sensing the heat from your body, the material can get softer where the pressure is the highest, like your hips and shoulders. It remains firmer where pressure is lighter. This, in theory at least, allows the heavier (thicker) parts of your body to sink further with the same support, both supporting your spine in its normal straight path and not increasing pressure in some parts of your body, causing the blood vessels to constrict.
Does it Work?
The quick answer is that it does work quite well. I am an overweight male and I find the depressions left after lying on the mattress awhile to be pretty form fitting. My mother-in-law is a very trim hundred pounds. It fits her just as well. A question that was very quickly answered for us was if that notion of temperature sensitivity was really important or just a gimmick. When the Tempur-Pedic Swedish Sleep System arrived it had been cold soaking in a truck for several hours. When the delivery people set it up, it was as hard as a brick. There was almost no give anywhere on the mattress. It took several hours for the mattress to thaw out and reach near room temperature. It was like a totally different product when it did. We had been told to expect this, but there is nothing like actually experiencing the transformation. My mother-in-law spent her first night on the bed and had an uninterrupted five hours of sleep. To her it was a miracle. When she was away for a few days we all took turns sleeping on this new sleep system. Each member of the family pronounced it a wonderful bed. At last I have found the feather bed of my grandmother once again. I can’t wait for our king set to wear out so we can replace it with this marvel of modern technology.
Another good thing is that this mattress is covered with a 20 year two-step warranty. For the first ten years, the mattress will be replaced if it is found defective. There is a reasonable list of exceptions on their web site. For the remaining ten years there is a pro-rated replacement. This starts at 50% of the purchase price and decreases five percent a year. The mattress we are sleeping on now is a deluxe one we bought through Sears. Five years ago it cost almost eleven hundred dollars. This was in king size. It had a ten year pro-rated warranty. The same warranty also applies to the foundation and frame. The cover carries a two year warranty. Also don’t forget the ninety day return policy. Free return shipping doesn’t apply in Alaska and Hawaii.
I fully recommend this sleep system as a good solution for those folks in pain from sleeping. I also recommend it for those who don’t want to be in pain later in life. It is an economical piece of insurance.
Recommended:
Yes
Mattress Size: Twin
Mattress Firmness: Somewhat firm
Amount Paid (US$): 1100.00
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gamblin_man
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Member: Larry
Location: Pacific Northwest
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