Sleeping patterns

Her unscheduled snoozes are typical of the change in sleeping patterns experienced by many of the older generation. The way older folk tend to sleep differs from the sleep that a typical young person enjoys in several ways:

As well as more daytime napping…

• Older adults frequently wake up briefly several times during the night.
• They will typically experience much less deep, dreamless, REM-free sleep.
• The elderly person’s body temperature falls less during sleep with advancing age.
• Most pensioners prefer going to bed earlier – and that means usually waking up earlier too.

Better sleep for the over 50s

There are many ways the over 50s can help themselves to get a better night’s sleep – most of them founded in common sense advice. At that time of life, it’s largely a matter of changing your everyday routine to anticipate the way that sleeping patterns will change – and resisting at least some of those afternoon temptations to indulge in cat naps.

Exercise: Half an hour several days a week is perfect. A few brisk walks will be enough – but during the day, not in the evening when you’re approaching bedtime.

Limit those cat-naps: Spending too long snoozing in the afternoon interferes with the sleep you want to get at night. If you really do have to nap during the day, it’s best to limit yourself to half an hour.

Get some sun: Studies show that getting a daily ration of natural daylight in the fresh air is a sure-fire recipe for better sleep at night.

Ensure you have the best environment for sleeping: Your bed should be in a completely darkened room with a fairly low temperature and provide you with a supportive but comfortable mattress.

Check any medications: Some formulations have side effects like daytime drowsiness and others may be helping to keep you awake at night. Your doctor will have all the information you need.

Avoid worrying about getting to sleep: It’s a vicious cycle you need to avoid. The more you can relax about your prospects for getting a good night’s sleep, the easier it’ll become.

Decline all caffeine drinks as bedtime approaches: Coffee, tea, chocolate and cola drinks make falling asleep and staying asleep much more difficult. One of the more traditional nightcaps, made with warm milk, is a much safer bet.

Limit the demon drink: Drinking any liquid shortly before bed can cause sleep interruption during the night, but alcohol has a seductive way of initially helping you to relax and fall asleep, but then keeping you awake later on as the night progresses.

Don’t go to bed on an empty or full stomach: Feeling either stuffed or starved when you’re ready to retire will likely mean discomfort during the night that makes it difficult to sleep.

Stick with a routine: Keeping regular hours and going to bed each night at the same time, and getting up in the morning following the same daily timetable, will both help to keep your sleep pattern untangled and your biological clock contented.

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Bedroom atmosphere

You can achieve both style and practicality without having to employ design professionals, simply by examining how each room will function and the pros and cons of various furniture and material choices, such as flooring, lighting, heating, and storage.

You should enjoy waking up in uncluttered surroundings. As well as relaxation and comfort, organisation is key when creating the perfect environment for sleeping soundly. Put the space underneath your bed to work. A bed with drawers hides away a lot of handy storage for bulky bedding and clothing. To gain even more space, make the walls do some of the work too. Shelves above the bed add functional storage to an area that otherwise has no function at all.

A tidily designed bedroom can be modern or traditional, plush or minimalist, subdued or colourful, but it’s always likely to be much more than just a place to sleep. Functionality has moved into the bedroom, and today’s sleeping places are nothing if not versatile, with some serving as private gyms with a workout machine or exercise bike, others working part-time as offices or media rooms and some going completely over the top with a surplus of comfort and indulgent luxury.

If you want a bit of soft comfort in your modern, hardline, minimalist bedroom, try a new mattress or couple of extra-large cushions. The mattress won’t be seen but adds to the overall comfort of the room and the cushions look good on the bed during the day (and you can use them as a soft headboard when you want to relax without sleeping).

Researching bedroom styles and ideas

If you’re really not sure what kind of style to aim for, you can do a fair amount of effortless detective work by leafing through magazines and books full of photographs at your local library, if you still have one.

Stop and take in the illustrations that catch your eye to analyse its ingredients. Quite often, it’s one carefully worked out detail that provides the key – like a crisply tailored bedspread in a particularly ordered atmosphere you happen to like. Other times, it’s the paradoxical absence of certain things.

A rural theme bedroom, for instance, with varnished floorboards, gingham bed drapes and white-painted wooden shutters at the window, owes its simple freshness to the deliberate absence of curtains and rugs on the floor. This sort of thing works equally well in urban surroundings, just as a streamlined sophisticated set-up could work beautifully in a country house – simply because of the pleasant surprise element provided in each case.

The same goes for rooms taking inspiration from exotic influences – where else would the stuff that dreams are made of be as much at home as in the bedroom?

Most consumers are unsure about how often to replace a mattress or bed. As a leading manufacturer and retailer of mattresses we’ve put together a check list to help you work out if a new mattress is on the cards.

Replacing Your Mattress – A Check List

You have pain in your back or neck after waking up

This can be a sign that your mattress is no longer supporting your body correctly.

You wake up with stiffness

Your body is only being supported by part of the mattress, other parts may have sagged or broken.

When visiting friends or relatives you notice you sleep better on their mattress

Their mattress is probably newer and has worn far less. The ‘better’ effect you’re feeling is more support.

You regularly wake in the night

You’re obviously not comfortable and the main culprit is usually your mattress. Rule other possibilities (drafts, noises, partners, etc) out first before changing your mattress.

You can feel springs through the mattress

A clear sign that the mattress has degraded or broken and needs replacing. Consider a pocket sprung mattress for maximum comfort.

You can see a dip in the middle of your mattress

Part of the mattress has broken or worn out. It’s very likely that a new mattress would provide a far more comfortable night’s sleep.

Your mattress is creaky or noisy

Creaks and pings coming from inside your mattress can be a sign that it’s getting old. If you’re also not having a good night’s sleep or have pain when waking, it could be time to replace the old mattress.

Your mattress is around 5 to 7 years old

The Sleep Council recommends changing your mattress or bed every 7 years. Much like any other appliance or product in your house, they won’t last forever and changing them can make a real difference to your sleep.

Hopefully this list gives you a good idea whether or not you’ll need to replace your mattress soon. If you’re still not sure, why not give us a call?

In order to achieve our daily slumber ration, it’s not necessary to know even the most basic facts about our need for regular rest – or why it’s necessary to sleep at all – let alone the intricate mechanisms that make it work.

So why bother trying to understand sleep?

We know so much more about our everyday conscious activities and yet, even though we spend a third of our lives doing it, we’re much less interested in knowing very much about sleep.

Consider first why we have to sleep at all

During a normal working day, we use up energy and tire ourselves both physically and mentally, which means that if we try to do without regular periods of rest, we become exhausted. The only solution is rest, and the most complete form of rest is sleep. For our bodies and minds to be fresh and healthy and to work efficiently, each of us needs to spend a part of every 24 hours in deep sleep.

Of course, our bodies don’t stop working altogether while we’re asleep

We go on breathing and our hearts continue to beat. Indeed, many parts of our bodies never rest completely during sleep: our eyelids flicker, we usually turn over several times and kick about. Some of us talk from time to time and a minority even walk about! But even though the vital processes of living, such as respiration and the circulation of blood, still continue, they do so at a much slower rate.

Brain powered sleep

The centre of operations that keeps these vital systems running during slumber is the brain. Its sleep and wakefulness controls are located in the brain-stem. Unless the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres – the thinking part of the brain – is activated by the brain stem, it is too torpid for intellectual activity and we say it is asleep.

When we are awake, the cerebral hemispheres are at a high pitch of activity, enabling us to understand and respond to the things we see and hear. The spinal cord is also highly tuned; it receives messages from the brain to fire off carefully adjusted nerve messages that travel from the spinal cord cells along the nerves to the muscles that make our limbs move. Responsiveness in the cerebral cortex and in the spinal cord is brought about by electrical influences from the brain-stem.

When we are awake, the brain-stem pours these currents along nerve channels. Just as, when the sun shines, insects and plants become active, so the brain-stem activates the cerebral hemispheres and spinal cord and we wake up.

What causes the brain-stem sleep/wakefulness centre to bring about wakefulness and sleep?

That’s where it gets interesting. Among other things, a sort of chemical clock makes us sleepy every 24 hours. The clock setting is quite difficult to change, as some of us discover after a long flight to a country in a different time zone such as North America where clocks are set five to eight hours behind ours in Britain.

Nodding off early

For the first few days after arrival there, we may find ourselves nodding off in the late afternoon, but waking and feeling bright in the early hours of the local morning. The sleep/wakefulness centre is also affected by lack of sleep, but overriding everything else is the effect of the things going on around us and their significance. No matter how sleepy you are, if someone taps you hard enough, you will almost certainly wake up. In other words, the brain-stem centre is stimulated by physical sensations and especially by changes of sensation. But it is not only nerve messages from the body’s sense organs that are stimulating. The sleep/wakefulness centre also receives messages from the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres, so that a worrying thought going round and round in your mind can bombard the brain-stem with stimulating messages that can keep you awake.

Also important in keeping us awake is variety.

If the sights and sounds around us are monotonous and we are immobile, there is nothing new to stimulate the brain-stem and sleep comes easily. Some continous rhythm, like the drumming of train wheels, adds to the effect. A warm temperature will also help to bring about relaxation.

Understanding the way sleep works can be useful after all. It can help when you travel overseas and it can help at home when getting the rest you need becomes a problem.

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You might also be reluctant to pay good money to watch a film that had anything at all to do with sleeping. But that doesn’t seem to worry a surprising number of movie makers.

How many films do you think you name could with some reference to sleep in the story’s title?

Perhaps half a dozen? And how many more would you guess there might be altogether? Perhaps as many as fifty? Surely there couldn’t be more than a hundred?

The actual number is quite staggering – more than enough to keep a pub-quiz compiler stocked with movie-themed questions for years.

According to that most authoratative of online compendiums, the Internet Movie Database, not only have more than a dozen films simply taken the single word “Sleep” as a sufficiently descriptive title over the years, but the number of productions named with some reference to slumber in general – using either sleep, sleeping or sleepless in the title – has reached an amazing total that exceeds five hundred.

First and foremost, there was “The Big Sleep” (1946), the classic Bogart and Bacall movie – and the best known release in more recent years was “Sleepless in Seattle”, the romantic weepy/comedy with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

But there were many, many more. Although perhaps not all so memorable.

Preceding “The Men Who Stare at Goats” (2009), with Ewan McGregor, George Clooney and Kevin Spacey, there was “The Sleep Room” (1998), a decade earlier true-story dramatisation that was also about CIA research on mind control. Later, and in lighter vein, there was not only “To Sleep with Anger” (1990), a family comedy with Danny Glover; but also “Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy” (2010), a documentary about the “Elm Street” series of horror films with enough unseen footage and behind the scenes revelations for even the hardest of hardcore Freddy fans.

“The Perfect Sleep” (2009), was a crime thriller that begins with a film-noir style voice-over narration intoning:

Just once, just once, I’d like to keep the perfect sleep. You know the one I’m taking about. You fall asleep on a train, or someone’s couch, and it’s perfect. The ecstasy of the unlikely. And then some idiot wakes you up and you can’t get it back, no matter how hard you try. You never knew it was perfect until you lost it. And all you have left is that burning desire to get it back. The perfect sleep.

Of course, that’s what everybody wants – perfect sleep – especially at home where it counts most. And fulfilling that dream is what memory foam mattresses were developed to achieve.

There have even been a few films about mattresses, at least according to their titles. They include the short comedy “Mattress of Solitude”, a tale released in 2000, starring Superman and Batman in an escapade that probably involved rigourous comfort testing of a super king-size memory foam mattress of the kind that super heroes undoubtedly need to get a good night’s rest.

A film about ‘the memory foam story’?

Surprisingly, Hollywood has so far failed to come up with a big-screen epic that tells the fascinating story of how America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) invented memory foam in the 1960s to enhance comfort for fliers, how it was adapted by hospitals to provide mattresses for long-stay patients – and ultimately reached the domestic market in the 1980s, where the memory foam mattress continues to set new standards in chronic pain alleviation and improved sleep patterns to this day.

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Successfully meeting your needs will involve choosing the style that will best suit the range of lifestyle features that you want to continue enjoying in the bedroom. It depends on your personality as much as the lifestyle choices already reflected in the rest of the house.

Design decisions

Strict traditionalists and some others may want to preserve the bedroom for sleeping only and won’t tolerate anything in the room that detracts from its primary purpose. But most of us are more complicated than that and should look beyond the bedroom to decide what we need it to be. To make the best design decisions for the room that is the very definition of ‘personal space’, we need – as the man said – to “First know thyself and to thine own self be true”.

Questions to help you decide

Taking a look at yourself in the round is best done indirectly. Without realising it, answering questions that come at you sideways, and mostly without focusing on the bedroom at all, can reveal something about the needs of the inner person that your bedroom design will have to satisfy.

You can begin, for example, by asking questions like these:

When you get home at the end of a long day, are you someone who is most likely to:

• Hit the couch with a cup of tea and a good book.
• Sit down to dinner with your family and hear about their day.
• Curl up with your significant other for a little one-to-one time.
• Read a few office files and answer a bunch of e-mails.

On holiday, your first-choice accommodation would be:

• A cosy bed and breakfast. An intimate environment rather than an anonymous hotel chain.
• A major chain hotel with free access broadband and docking station for your laptop.
• A large resort with a variety of restaurants and lots of activities.
• A super luxurious 5-star hotel with 24-hour room service.

Your ideal Sunday involves:

• Your kids climbing onto your bed an hour later than usual.
• Reading newspapers in bed with a cup of coffee in easy reach.
• Heading for your favourite pub and then having a leisurely lunch.
• A solitary morning run before the rest of the house gets up.

Your morning wake-up call is usually:

• The beeping of your pager or the ringing of your mobile.
• The sound of the family already up and about the place.
• The light from your silent alarm clock.
• Classical music from the pre-set radio.

What would a quick glance at your bedside table reveal?

• A pile of DVDs and a TV remote control.
• Scented massage oil and a book of poetry.
• A sleep mask and a white noise machine.
• Mobile phone charger and a Post-It notepad.

When it comes to buying sheets for your bed, do you look for:

• Silk – you want the most sensual sheets you can find.
• Flannel – they’ll keep you warm on cold nights.
• A high thread count – the softer, the better.
• Easy-wash cotton – your sheets need to be very low-maintenance.

Your responses might tell you more about what you need in a bedroom than you think…

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Controlling a dream state

This app literally allows you to control your dream state. Users simply select and optionally customise their favourite dream, set the alarm, then place the device on their bed. A sensitive recorder creates a profile and detailed ‘Sleep Graphs’ that pick up even the slightest movements during the night.

DreamMachine HD 2.0 is for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad owners who want to control their dreams and get a much better night’s sleep. DreamMachine enables users to select and customise their dreams and be awakened at the perfect time, using the built-in sleep cycle clock.

Wakes you up gently

From the information gleaned from nightly sleep patterns, DreamMachine calculates the perfect time to initiate dream recordings, which are picked up by the subconscious. This is the part of your mind that eliminates nightmares or stimulates the return of dreaming. Users are able to have a full night’s rest, thanks to the controlling of their dreams, along with the sleep cycle alarm clock, which plays a choice of sounds to awaken them at the least disruptive time – when their sleep is at its lightest and closest to waking naturally.

The results are what matters to people who are sleep-deprived, and DreamMachine promises help for users to finally get a good night’s sleep and wake up feeling fully refreshed.

DreamMachine Features

* Super simple to use
* Control sleep and dream states
* Choose one of 5 built-in dream pre-sets
* Customise each dream
* Detailed information of every night in a SleepGraph
* Built-in Sleep Cycle Alarm
* Choose between 5 sounds or a song from iPod
* Wakeupenvironment – Plays birdsong and other natural sounds to begin wake up process
* Step-by-Step quickstart guide
* Share SleepGraph through Email or Save it to Photos

Available on iTunes

Where did memory foam start out?

You may have heard stories about how memory foam was used by NASA in the spae missions? The story is half true. Yes, memory foam was designed by NASA’s Ames Research Center, but only to improve the safety of aircraft cushions – not space travel. In fact NASA continue to experiment with different types of foam to this day.

Initially known as ‘slow spring back foam’ or simply ‘temper foam’, the commercial product wasn’t released until the early 1980′s.

Memory Foam in commercial applications

From this point companies recognised how useful it’s properties would be in mattresses and pillows, it improves comfort levels and helps to avoid painful joints during sleep.

However, it was designed to give way when pressure is applied and not to provide the support your lower back needs to maintain a neutral sleep position. Without this support your body will naturally sag in the lower back region, adding stress to your body’s musculoskeletal structure.

So why is memory foam used? What should I buy?

Whilst memory foam does feature in our mattresses, it’s no magic bullet. To get the benefits of memory foam but also offer the support your back requires, what you need is a dual layer design – memory foam on top with a high density sub layer.

At the Mattress Factory we’ve added a support zone under the lower back which keeps the spine in the best position to prevent stress during the night. Without this special zone the lower back is not supported, it merely sinks into the mattress which is a major criticism of traditional memory foam mattresses.

In providing this support zone targeted at the lower back, our design is unique and should not be confused with other memory foam mattresses – most of which rely entirely on the “NASA space story” without communicating the limitations memory foam alone can have.

You might be surprised if you thought that beds came in simply single, double and now king size that there are now several versions of many of our well known bed sizes. In particular, there are several variations of ‘king size’, often related to their originating area.

Here’s a quick whistle-stop tour of some of the current bed sizes and mattress sizes on the international and UK market currently with thei corresponding sizes in both metric and imperial sizes.:

Single Bed Sizes

These vary according to their region with continental bed and mattress sizes for single beds being smaller than their North American, Australian and UK / Ireland counterparts.

Extra Small Single

This is mainland European mattress size which is 75cm x 200cm (metric sizes), or 30 in x 79 in (imperial sizes).

Small Single Bed Sizes

Another mainland European mattress size – 80cm x 200cm (metric), 31 in x 79 in (imperial sizes). However, in the UK and Ireland a ‘small single mattress’ is just 75cm x 180cm (metric) and 2’6″ x 6′ (imperial).

Standard Single

UK and Ireland size for a standard single bed is 3′ x 6’3″ (imperial) or 90cm by 190cm (metric).

Large Single

Varies according to the European country that it is native to with some Scandinavian countries (e.g. Norway), preferring longer ‘large single’ beds than other mainland European countries.
Mainland European size for a large single is generally thought to be 100cm x 200cm with certain Scandinavian nations preferring to call large single beds those measuring 120cm x 200cm.

Single Extra Long

An Australian bed size presumably for tall people which measures over 6 and a half foot in length. New Zealand bed lovers also have a ‘long single’ which is the same size in length as the Australian equivalent but slightly narrower.

King Single

Australia and New Zealand have amongst their bed offerings the ‘king single’ which is slightly wider if you’re Australian than if you’re from New Zealand but just one inch in width. Both beds are 80 inches long and in width the New Zealand King Single is 41 inches. In Australia the width of the King Single is 42 inches.

Singolo / Una Piazza Beds

Single beds in Italy are known as ‘singolo’ or ‘Una piazza’ beds and measure 80-90cm (metric) and (31-35 in) imperial size.

Super Single Bed

Native to North America, the ‘Super single bed’ measures 48 inches x 84 inches.

Twin Bed Mattress Sizes (Twin Extra Long)

Commonly used in University and college campus dormitories, the twin extra long measures 39 inches x 80 inches.

Three Quarter Bed Mattress Sizes (Prince Bed)

In North America the three quarter bed measures 48 inches x 75 inches. This bed is commonly known as the ‘prince’ bed or ‘small double’ in the UK and Ireland. This particular size of bed is now considered largely obsolete by many of the major bed manufacturers.

Double Bed Sizes

Small Double Sizes

See ‘Three Quarter Bed Mattresses’ above. Largely obsolete but there are still some bed manufacturers who supply three quarter bed mattresses, or mattresses for small double beds.

Standard Double Mattress Sizes

This is certainly the most popular of the UK and Ireland bed sizes and measures 4’6″ x 6’3″ if you’re following metric mattress sizes and 135cm x 190cm if you’re au fait with imperial mattress sizes.

Queen Mattress Sizes

The Queen size bed isn’t particularly popular in the UK and Ireland but is still favoured in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand regions.

Australian Queen Size Bed

The Australian queen size mattress measures 153cm x 203cm.

Californian Queen

Native to North America and measureing 60 inches x 84 inches or 152 cm x 213cm.

Olympic Queen Bed Size

This is not a standard queen size bed. Rather, this is a novely bed size which was created by Simmons bed suppliers.

King Size Bed Sizes

The size of one of these beds will vary quite dramatically depending upon your ‘purchasing location’, with the UK and Ireland having the smallest measurements. North American king size beds are the largest with their Eastern King beds and other North American beds following. Australian sized king size beds are next in the ‘bed measurement stakes’ with their king size being 72 inches wide. Mainland European nations and the UK and Ireland are way behind when it comes to king size bed sizes at just 5 foot wide. Here’s a quick recap on the size of king size beds across the various nations.

United States, Canada and North American King Size Beds

These are ‘large’ beds but there are several variations of them as follows:

Eastern King (Otherwise Known As The North American King)

76 inches x 80 inches in measurement.

California King

Measures 72 inches x 84 inches. It has several aliases which are ‘The Western King, WC King, West Coast King, Cal King’.

Australian King Beds

There are two types of ‘King’ beds in Australia, namely the ‘King Single’ measuring 42 inches x 80 inches and the standard ‘King’ native to Australia which measures 183cm x 203cm.

UK / Ireland King Size Mattresses

In UK and Ireland a king size bed generally measures 5′ x 6’6″ or 150cm x 200cm in metric.

Super King Size Bed Sizes

Ireland / UK Super King Size Bed Sizes

The super king size bed size for the UK and Ireland is currently 6′ x 6’6″ or 180cm x 200cm.

Eastern King Size Bed

Slightly larger than the super king size at 78 inches or 200cm wide.

Emperor King Size Bed

One of the larger versions of the super king size bed or mattress measuring 210 centimetres wide.

Large Emperor Bed Size

A large emperor bed is considerably larger than a super king size bed and its smaller related bed, the emperor bed, measuring 215cm.

Caesar Size Bed

Caesar size beds are amongst the largest beds on the market internationally currently (excluding bespoke beds). They are normally 96 inches wide (a whopping 8 foot wide bed).

Ikea Bed Sizes

Ikea bed sizes are normally based on Mainland European bed sizes which we have detailed above.

It must be said however, that while the medical explanations for this “myth busting” list are valid – sleep is very much an individual experience, and some of these may work quite well for you!

1. An alcoholic drink before bed will help you sleep

Research suggests that although alcohol can help you fall asleep – due to it’s properties as depressant – it is likely to lead to a disturbed or restless sleep as the alcohol moves through your body.  It is also known to make you wake earlier.

2. Watching TV helps you to fall asleep

Winding down, by watching TV before bed has often been used as a “sleep cure” for some – however research suggests that TV – and even reading – can act as a stimulus to the brain, as there is an element of engagement required.  The recommendation generally for such “background noise” is to listen to relaxing music, which requires less mental interraction!

3. Sleeping pills are risk free

Whilst their safety and effectiveness is unquestioned, medical professionals all generally agree that most sleeping aids carry risks of dependancy.  As such, all UK retailers of sleeping aids are required by law to provide verbal warnings, that these aids should be used temporarily.

4. It is possible to “Catch up” on sleep

The body works on a natural clock – which is relatively easily disrupted.  This is evident in “Jet lag” symptoms.  The body will adapt to new environments, and eventually return to a normal sleeping pattern, although it isn’t possible to physically “catch up” on lost sleep.

5. A regular “nap” will help sleep later in the evening

The benefits of short sleeping periods, or “naps” does differ between individuals, however the general consensus in the medical profession is that a nap taken in the late afternoon or early evening can decrease the brain’s sleep drive, which in turn leads to a restless night’s sleep.

Interested to hear of any myths you have heard, and whether your sleeping habits contradict any of the above?  Please comment!