Category Archives: Uncategorized

Peak Performance and the Pillow

We once knew a Division I volleyball coach who said: “Legs pay the bills.”

In between countless sets of squats, leg extensions and leg sled reps lied the key to success… along with hours of running, jump roping and sprinting.

There’s no doubt that resistance training and aerobic exercise are very important factors in an athlete’s physical performance.  Who doesn’t love the weight room, the suicide sprints and the tailored diets? They work.

Left out of that equation:  the role of sleep. Continue reading

When should you replace your mattress?

We recently found this question on Quora where reader Michael Rasmussen contemplated the question and added: “The only references I find are tied to mattress manufactures and sellers. Their interests and mine are not aligned.”

We wanted to help him out:

We understand your reservations, but how is this for an independent opinion:

The University of Oklahoma conducted a study back in 2006 that compared the perceived sleep quality of 69 test subjects before and after replacing their own personal bedding system with a new medium-firm mattress.

There were two parts to the study: Phase one – the baseline phase – had subjects rate their individual perceived back pain, stiffness and sleep quality for each of 28 consecutive days while sleeping in their own bed. The mean ago of the personal bedding used was 9.73 years.

Phase two had people rate the same three markers each night after sleeping on new medium-firm bedding for 28 days.

The result, in a nutshell, was that all participants — whether they had rated their baseline sleep quality as good or poor — described their sleep quality as significantly improved during phase two. They also reported significant improvements in regard to back pain and stiffness.

Now, as to the exact time frame for change: This study shows that sleepers saw significant improvements replacing mattresses with an average mattress age of under ten years; from that you can deduct that you will reap plenty of benefits if you replace your mattress before ever reaching that benchmark.

My two cents: It is, of course, easy to assume that mattress manufactures only have their own interest at heart when they recommend to replace your bedding at certain intervals. But you could also conclude that some of us simply want to give you an honest answer and the best recommendation for your health and well-being when we suggest five to seven years as an ideal replacement time frame (as I do when I am asked). We do that in the same vein as the manufacturer of my running shoe wants me to replace them well before the shoe has a hole in it, to make sure I always get good support and the necessary cushioning.

We all warranty our mattresses for longer than five to seven years, but please remember that there are plenty of reasons to break with the longstanding, ridiculous mattress industry habit of offering 25-year or even lifetime warranties on a product that gets used more than your car, your shoes, your couch, your washing machine or really most anything else in your life.

Mattresses aren’t heirloom items – even though they used to be thought of as such in the old days; instead they are a piece of performance equipment with a huge impact on your daily life and thus the same rules apply:
Buy the best you can afford and replace when you feel it is time.

Read our original reply to the question on Quora

When should you replace your mattress?

Is Sleep Important? The Parents Have Spoken!

In the opinion of America’s parents, sleep is what keeps them and their children sane. The 2014 Sleep in America: Sleep in the Modern Family poll revealed that parents agree that sleep is the motherload of calm and the fatherland of rest. More than 90% of the 1,103 parents surveyed in the study said sleep was either very important or extremely important in their lives and the lives of their little ones. Continue reading

‘The Wrong Side of the Bed’ and other sleep sayings






Like we’ve said before, we’re a curious lot at Somnium. Between developing amazingly awesome beds and telling the world about them, we like to ponder seemingly insignificant matters of the English language. Today, we’re taking you on a verbal nerd-journey about sleepisms. Continue reading

Fish To Humans: I Know What Makes You Tick

The clock is ticking; just ask the zebrafish.

Doctors at Tel Aviv University have discovered that the zebrafish’s circadian rhythms, the internal timepiece by which your body regulates (among other things) when you sleep and when you wake up, are very similar to those of humans.

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The Super Spring: How Our Technology Delivers Your Beauty Sleep

We’ve got to hand it to you, memory foam. You’ve made everyone believe you’re the savior of sleep. Thousands are crawling into bed with you.

We don’t like the status quo (if you haven’t noticed). We believe memory foam is a thing of the past, just like metal coils. The future of high-performance sleep is gently balanced on our patented elastomer springs.
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Green Mattresses: The Bed On Which Mother Nature Would Slumber

We think soy is a big deal.

Sure, we enjoy the occasional soy latte, that’s not what we’re talking about. If you could put a chunk of our mattress foam under a microscope, you’d find that a whole lot of soy molecules and not a lot of the crazy chemicals you’d find in other mattresses.
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Sleep and Sweat: The Dirty Truth

Those little towels at your gym aren’t the only things that know what it’s like to pass the time soaking up sweat.

Your mattress has a front row seat to all that perspiration. Imagine the germs, dirt and grime that collect under your Egyptian cotton. Nobody wants that lurking between the sheets.

We decided our beds should be an elevated piece of performance equipment that turns the mattress experience upside-down. So, instead of ignoring the surly subject of sweat, we attacked it head-on.
Continue reading