Hard mattresses a pain in the back

People who have a painful lower back are better off sleeping on a medium-firm mattress, a new study shows.

People who have a painful lower back are better off sleeping on a medium-firm mattress, a new study shows.The study, which doubts the widely-held notion that using a firm mattress is the best bet for a good night’s sleep, is published in this week’s issue of the journal The Lancet.Spanish researchers, including Dr Francisco Kovacs of the Kovacs Foundation in Palma de Mallorca, recruited 313 volunteers with lower back pain and replaced their mattresses with a firm substitute or a medium-firm one. The people in the study were asked to describe their degree of pain while lying in bed and rising in the morning, as well as their level of disability, both before the study and three months after. None knew the type of mattress they were lying on. People with medium-firm mattresses were twice as likely to report mprovements in pain level and disability and half as likely to need painkillers as those on the firm ones. Back pain is a widespread and chronic condition in today’s increasingly sedentary society, and inflicts billions of dollars in lost production. But, until now, doctors have had limited options for helping patients, other than taking the clinical path of painkillers, physiotherapy or even surgery, said Jenny McConnell, an Australian expert in sports medicine. Physicians will be relieved that the findings can give them practical help. “[They] are not only struggling with the day to day management of patients with chronic low-back pain but are also constantly bombarded by the lack of efficacy of therapeutic interventions, which gives them few validated treatment options,” she said. (Source: Australian Broadcasting Commission Science Website November 2003)