LouLife

The website MonkeyMeter.com recently rated Louisville a 3.2 — quite a bit above average — on its 5-point road rage scale for U.S. cities. While some might attribute that rating to the need for more bridges, the National Sleep Foundation suggests there’s another factor at work: a national epidemic of sleepiness. In 1910, says the NSF, American adults averaged 9.0 hours of sleep each night. By 2002, our daily sleep quota had dropped to 6.9 hours — a 2.1-hour nightly deficit that adds up to a whopping 31.9 complete days over a year’s time.

Though a good night’s sleep may not lead to wealth or wisdom, statistics galore link sleep to health and its diminishment to health problems, including high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and depression. Sleep researcher Pete Bils, director of sleep innovations at Select Comfort, the Minneapolis-based air-bed maker, considers sleep, diet and exercise "equal sides of the health triangle," adding that "recent studies have linked sleep restriction to premature aging and even metabolic disarray, such as Type 2 diabetes and appetite-control hormones. When we don’t get enough sleep, we eat more starchy and sugary foods to compensate."

The federal government’s landmark 1993 study "Wake Up America: A National Sleep Alert" estimates that "deaths, illnesses and damage due to sleep deprivation and sleep disorders" will affect nearly 80 million Americans by 2010. Unfortunately, Americans aren’t taking the sleepiness contagion lying down. Instead of hitting the hay earlier, we’re attempting to substitute quality for quantity by spending more on bedding that promises to make what little sleep we get deeper and more refreshing.

Pillows, for example, are now designed to address specific sleep styles — back, side or stomach — and conditions ranging from pregnancy and hot flashes to acid reflux disease and allergies. The easy-care, cotton/poly percale sheets of yesteryear have been usurped by 100 percent cotton with high thread counts and high price tags to match.

Strobel Technologies’ Supple-Pedic (left) and water-holding Hydro-Support mattresses.

More profound is the change in the types of mattresses Americans are buying. Innersprings are losing ground to air beds and visco elastic foam, or "memory foam," product types. International Sleep Products Association statistics show wholesale shipments of non-innerspring mattresses grew 25 percent during the first three quarters of 2006, while innersprings declined. And though non-innersprings accounted for only 9 percent of total units, they represented 27 percent of the dollar value. As Josephine Schabel of Gittings Bedding Co., which has been making mattresses on Market Street since 1942, observes, "It used to be that people wanted the best coil count for the money, but now they want what’s most comfortable and what will keep them from being disturbed when their partner gets up and down."

Air Beds
Founded in 1987, Select Comfort is the nation’s leading air-bed maker and offers five models of its patented "Sleep Number" beds. While air beds may conjure up images of camping mattresses, they’re as padded and pillow-topped as traditional mattresses, with one important difference: Innersprings are replaced by air chambers that allow you to adjust the bed’s firmness, as Adam Mynarski, manager of Select Comfort’s Summit store, explains. "The controls pump air in and out to reach your ideal sleep number," which can range anywhere from zero (super soft) to 100 (very firm)," he says.

The beauty of the concept is twofold. First, each side can be adjusted independently — a boon for couples who differ on their firmness preferences. Second, the mattress can change with your body — whether you’ve gained or lost weight, become pregnant, or had a tough day at the gym. "You’re in control of your bed; your bed does not control you," Mynarski says.

Air beds are also made locally by Bowles Mattress Co., which offers three models of its Lady Americana Life Number "Air" Digital Sleep systems at factory direct stores in Louisville and Mount Washington, as well as in Jeffersonville, Corydon, Austin and Paoli, Ind.

One of the biggest myths about air beds: They don’t work during power outages. The fact: "They only need electricity when you’re adjusting them," says Mynarski.

Visco Elastic Foam
Founded in 1992 by Robert Trussell, a Lexington horse breeder, Tempur-Pedic was the first U.S. mattress maker to take advantage of visco elastic foam technology developed for NASA to relieve G-force pressure during space travel. While Tempur-Pedic marketing director Mike Mason is quick to point out that the company’s mattresses are made of "propriety Tempur material" and not generic memory foam, the materials share these general properties: greater resilience than latex foam, temperature sensitivity that molds the mattress to the body, and motion absorption.

Tom Merante, owner of The Better Back Store in Middletown, sells only Tempur-Pedic mattresses. "I’ve worked with a lot of memory-foam products and I believe that Tempur-Pedic is better than any I’ve seen," he says. Tempur-Pedic has also received endorsements from Good Housekeeping and Consumers Digest magazines and the Arthritis Foundation, according to Mason.

Still, there are many other companies in the memory-foam business, two of them local. Gittings Bedding, for instance, will custom-make memory foam — as well as innerspring and regular foam — mattresses for any bed, including hard-to-fit antique and metric European beds, a service not available through Tempur-Pedic.

Jeffersonville-based Strobel Technologies has combined memory foam with its patented "Lever Support System" to create Supple-Pedic mattresses, which president and inventor Mark Strobel says create less contact stress than other types of mattresses. Employing several embedded spring-wire rods with fulcrum centers, the system works like a teeter-totter to provide "the lowest surface pressures" of any mattress on the market today, he says.

Waterbeds
Waterbeds hit their heyday in the 1970s, but they’re still around and vastly improved, says Myra Merrill, president of Waterbeds Unlimited and Futons and self-described "last of the Mohicans" in terms of local waterbed stores. One of the beds’ biggest advantages is their price. "For a few hundred dollars, you can get a mattress with a 20-year warranty," she says, adding that her most expensive model, a Strobel ultra-waveless mattress with lumbar support, costs about $350, excluding optional memory-foam toppers.

With the advent of pillow-top hard-sided covers, it’s difficult to tell the difference between a water mattress and a traditional mattress until you lay on it, says Merrill, who also carries waterbed sheets, mattress pads and comforters at her New Albany store.

Adjustable Beds
While comedians joke about Craftmatic beds, sales of electric adjustable beds are on the rise and not just to the over-60 crowd, says Scott Armstrong, sales and marketing VP for Bowles. "We’re seeing more customers in their 40s interested in our adjustable beds," he says. "It’s not for medical needs. It’s for the luxury of being able to adjust your head and feet for watching TV or reading."

One final note: No matter how comfy your mattress, quantity is just as important as quality when it comes to the recuperative power of sleep, Bils warns. "You hear people brag, ‘I can get by on five hours’ or ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead,’" he says. "Sooner or later, sleep deprivation is going to catch up to a lot of people."

RESOURCE LIST

The Better Back Store
12123 Shelbyville Road, Ste. 105
253-9031

Bowles Mattress Co.
1220 Watt St., Jeffersonville
812-288-8614
and two other area locations

Gittings Bedding Co.
827 E. Market St.
583-7864

Select Comfort
The Summit, 394-0095
Mall St. Matthews, 893-8898

Strobel Technologies
3131 Industrial Pkwy., Jeffersonville
812-282-4388

Tempur-Pedic International
1713 Jaggie Fox Way, Lexington
888-811-5053

Waterbeds Unlimited & Futons
150 W. Main St., New Albany
812-944-0447