Prevent Disease.com - Medium-Firm Mattress Best for Back Pain



		Medium-Firm Mattress Best for Back Pain Excerpt by Patricia Reaney, Reuters Health If lower back pain is making life a misery, a medium-firm mattress could provide some relief. Although a firm mattress offers better support and is recommended by most doctors, Spanish researchers said less rigid mattress is best for a pain in the back. "A medium firmness mattress is better than a hard mattress for back pain," said Dr Francisco Kovacs of the Kovacs Foundation, a medical charity in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Lower back pain is one of the most common ailments and affects most people at some point in their lives. Americans spend at least $50 billion a year on lower back pain, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The pain, which can last for a few days, months or years, is usually caused by trauma from an injury, lifting, an accident or muscle dysfunction. It is one of the most prevalent ailments in the industrialized world, according to Kovacs. He and his colleagues compared the impact of hard and medium-firm mattresses on 313 people who suffered from chronic lower back pain. The patients were randomly selected and given either a firm or medium firm mattress and were asked to report on the amount of back pain they suffered while lying in bed and rising in the morning. After three months people who slept on the medium-firm mattress reported greater pain relief and less disability than the other group. "The use of a mattress of medium firmness improves the clinical course of low back pain in a higher proportion of patients than the use of a firm mattress," Kovacs said in a report in The Lancet medical journal. He believes that if the mattress is too strong it may not adapt to the natural curves of the spinal column. Jenny McConnell, of the Center for Sports Medicine Research and Education at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said the findings will come as a relief for doctors with patients suffering from lower back pain. "After the study of Kovacs and colleagues, clinicians may be confident in recommending a mattress of medium firmness rather than previously recommended hard bed for patients with chronic low back pain," she said in a commentary in the journal. Reference Source 89 For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use PreventDisease.com's "Quick Prevention Resources".