I should title this post: “Visco Elastic Foam Mattress, or How I Bought a Visco Elastic Foam Mattress Topper and Started Sleeping Like a Baby.” But that’s a little long.

It’s the truth, though. I was one of those people who’s never given much thought to what they’re sleeping on. A mattress is a mattress, right? At some point I realized I was waking up sore every day and it had nothing to do with any physical activity. It was my mattress.

I started doing research on mattresses, but I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a cheapskate and I didn’t want to spend $1,000 on a new mattress, let alone $500! So I ended up buying a memory foam topper — essentially a memory foam mattress pad. It only coast $280 and it’s well worth it.

Here’s how this stuff works. The cells that make up the foam are unusual. When you put pressure on them (by say, lying on a bed) the little cells actually collapse completely and spread the tension to adjoining cells. This means that the pressure of your body is spread among lots of the foam cells. (It’s physics and it feels good!) The memory foam reduces the pressure points in your prone body because of the way the cells compress and stay compressed.

The second key to why memory foam works is that it’s temperature sensitive. The NASA guys who first developed it called it “temper-foam” because of its reaction to hot and cold. At lower temperatures it’sfirm and at higher temperatures (like where your 98.6 degree body is touching it) it is more pliable.

This is the reason memory foam is known as visco-elastic memory foam. The melt-y feeling you get from laying on memory foam — that’s because the foam is reacting to the change in temperature.

When you begin your search for a memory foam topper, there are a few things to consider. First, the price is basically going to correlate to the weight. The heavier the foam, the more dense it is, the more it will cost. But that’s OK because if there is anything I’ve learned over the years, it’s that you get what you pay for.
More money for a denser foam makes sense — it takes more materials to make the heavier foam. The foam is measured in cubic feet, so one cubic foot of memory foam that weighs 5 lbs is considered “5 lb memory foam.”

As you’d expect, the denser memory foam, the more it feels like memory foam. Look for at least a 3 lb weight. Anything less and you get the immediate feel of memory foam but very quickly, it’s gone. And it’s because there aren’t enough cells to absorb the weight long term. Yes, it’s cheaper to buy a 2 lb topper, but why bother when an hour later it feels like you’re sleeping on nothing! If you ask me, spend the extra cash and get a 4 lb foam. My mom got a 3 lb (after hearing me rave about mine) and I just had to “test drive” it one night. It wasn’t as good as mine. (Mom, if you’re reading this…. Sorry! But it’s true.)

Buying a mattress topper is a great way to get the benefit of memory foam without breaking the bank on a new mattress. Do a little research before you buy. I’ll share some of the horror stories I read in doing my research, but for now I’ll just say this: buy American. You really want to avoid most foreign made memory foam because there are no regulations about what is added to the foam. You are going to spend 8 hours a day on this purchase — make it a good one.