Subjective rating of perceived back pain, stiffness and sleep quality following introduction of medium-firm bedding systems.

PURPOSE To compare personal and new bedding systems between subjects with reported high and low base line sleep quality. METHODS A convenience sample of healthy subjects (women = 30; men = 29) with no clinical history of disturbed sleep participated in the study. Subjects recorded perceived back discomfort and stiffness, sleep quality and comfort, and sleep efficiency upon waking for 28 consecutive days in their own beds (baseline) and for 28 consecutive days (post) on a new bedding system. Repeated measures analysis of variance was used to treat sleep data. RESULTS Analysis revealed significant differences between pre- and post means in all areas for both high and low sleep quality groups. Analysis of sleep efficiency also yielded significant differences between, but not among pre- and post means. Improvement of sleep comfort and quality became more prominent with time (from wk 1 to 4 post observation). CONCLUSIONS Similar significant benefits of new, medium- firm bedding systems can occur for those reporting both good and poor current sleep quality and variables such as age, weight, height, and body mass index are independent of such improvements.