Choosing a mattress for your back health

Choosing a mattress for your back health: Contrary to popular belief, a firm mattress may not necessarily be best for the back, new research suggests. Doctors have traditionally recommended hard beds for people with lower-back pain, but that advice has been based on scarce evidence. Now the first substantial study has found that people who slept on medium mattresses were twice as likely to report an improvement as people using firm ones. Experts said the study, published this week in The Lancet medical journal, doesn’t mean everyone would benefit from a medium mattress, and that trial and error is still the best way to choose. Anyway, there are no standardized gauges for the firmness of a mattress. “This has been very poorly studied in the past,” said Dr. Scott D. Boden, professor of orthopedics and director of the Emory Spine Center at Emory University in Atlanta. “Clearly mattresses can make a difference for individuals, but the question remains whether or not there’s one formula that’s going to work for everyone.” Read the full article at: msnbc.msn.com

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