The Plasmabed and Other Recent Advancements in Mattress Technology
It was not too many years ago that the only type of mattress available on the market was an innerspring mattress. Then, it just was a matter of how high-end of an innerspring mattress your budget could afford. After a period of time, the mattress would begin to have wear patterns from sleeping where the mattress would begin to sag. This did not help people have a restful sleep.
Memory Foam Origins
According to NASA, Charles Yost and the Ames Research Center developed a highly-cushioned material to provide pilots and astronauts more protection from impacts and g-forces. This type of foam works so well because it is slow to spring back from touch. For this reason, it was first called “slow spring back foam” or “temperature foam.” The amazing thing about this foam product is that it supports the contours of your body while you are pressed against it, but then slowly returns to shape. It has the ability to provide superior cushioning as well as support.
Better Than Polyurethane
Memory foam, as developed by NASA is not to be confused with polyurethane foam. In fact, according to Polyurethane.org, the latter was developed and in widespread use well before NASA invented memory foam. Polyurethane foam has been a common mattress product for many years. It is not a new innovation.
As a Mattress Product
Companies, like Plasmabed began to experiment with this foam as a mattress product. Generic versions of this material are now known in the mattress world as memory foam or visco-elastic foam. It outshines polyurethane foam because it is intentionally made to be a dense product that can provide more support and absorb more pressure. Companies use layers of memory foam molds in order to create the most supportive mattress for different types of sleepers. According to Science X, memory foam mattresses now account for a third of the mattress market in the U.S.
Why is it Superior?
Memory foam has the quality of making the sleeper feel like they are floating yet being firmly supported as well. It is hard to describe, and one needs to actually try a memory foam mattress to fully comprehend why most people who have tried memory foam as a mattress material are true believers.
The following are the main advantages of memory foam mattresses that can help better describe the experience:
Floatation –As described above, you don’t sink into a memory foam mattress, you feel you are floating on it. This makes it superior to polyurethane foam mattresses, air or waterbed mattresses and older innerspring mattresses. You sink into all of the latter and do not feel supported. The heavier portion of your body will sink lower in the mattress. This sinking of heavier body parts is not the case with memory foam.
Support –Because this is a high-density foam, your whole body is supported. This allows better sleep posture and spinal alignment throughout the night, which will reduce the strain on your back and can help to relieve the aches and pains associated with poor sleeping positions that the other types of mattress materials tend to cause.
Lack of Motion –Since the material has very little motion-transfer, memory foam mattresses do not jiggle or spring as much as other types of mattresses. When your partner gets out of bed, the bed won’t move around. This helps couples sleep better and deeper at night as each needs to get up and visit the bathroom.
Durability –Memory foam mattresses tend to last longer than innerspring mattresses because they don’t have springs that tend to lose their support over time. Springs tend to break down and sag creating deep dips and ridges in the bed that can damage your back. All innerspring mattresses have free-floating surface material that can migrate and shift unevenly to develop uncomfortable lumps and creases.
Advancements to the Memory Foam Mattress
The first memory foam mattresses came out around the turn of this century. In the past two decades, memory foam manufacturers, like Plasmabed, have been working on innovations that support different types of sleepers. For example, Plasmabeds are made of a proprietary formula which is a plasma material that has a true Phase-change™ and is more flexible and feels more fluid than original memory foam.
Also, Plasmabeds can be ordered in a number of molding configurations that target different types of sleepers. For example, the Anti-Gravity bed was designed to take pressure off of the neck and hips. The Cocoon bed helps those with poor circulation by adding another Plasma-GL layer to the original bed. The Dream bed has the CoolFlowtechnology used by the better memory foam mattress manufacturers because of its qualities of dissipating heat and moisture and promoting more air flow around the sleeper.
Another key innovation that Plasmabed offers is that their bed has low VOC or commonly reffered to as “off-gassing”. There have been some complaints about memory foam beds off-gassing. The Plasmabed mattresses have been tested by an independent lab to be low-VOC and are not made with formaldehyde, fire retardants or other ozone-depleting substances.
In the last two decades, through research and innovation, these mattresses have taken the industry by storm creating a sleep environment that promotes a more a more restful sleep by self-adjusting to the body’s contours and virtually eliminating pressure points. The weightlessness and pressure relief allow all parts of their body to be supported evenly across the entire mattress improving spinal alignment and posture. The Plasmabed is helping sleepers with back, hip and neck pain allowing sleepers to experience a more rejuvenating sleep with less need to toss and turn.
