Guess what we spend about a third of our lives in?
Not our cars. Our beds.
Yet a bunch of us – a quarter of Canadians are sleep-deprived, according to an Environics Research study released last year on behalf of the The Better Sleep Council Canada, a mattress industry trade group.
The council suggests if you’ve had your mattress for over a decade, and if you wake with aches and pains that dissipate after two to three hours, your bed could be the culprit.
Gulp.
Okay, so I’ve been busy buying other things the past decade.
I get the beddie-bye goods from Michael Marcus of Adjustable Beds Plus.
A third-generation bed expert who grew up in Bayview Mills, Marcus used to help his grandpa make mattresses in his Toronto factory.
Now he sells, you guessed it, adjustable beds at his Leslie St. and York Mills Rd. store.
Before you roll your eyes, let me tell you: adjustable beds aren’t the stuff of tacky infomercials, and they’re not just for older people.
In fact Marcus tells me he often sees people in their 30s, 40s and 50s.
Before I even test out the foam Tempur-Pedic mattress, I learn it has something called memory foam, which conforms to the body and takes pressure off achy muscles and joints.
Our bodies aren’t flat, Marcus says, so we’re not meant to sleep flat.
Good point.
A popular misconception about foam beds, he goes on, is they make the person sleeping on it hotter.
But air chambers along the mattress help the foam to breathe. Though your body will heat up slightly as your blood circulation improves, that’s a good thing: it’s a sign you’re relaxing.
If your significant other is a thrasher, this type of foam mattress will send you into la-la land.
Remember the commercial with the guy jumping on the mattress with a glass of wine on one end? That’s possible because the mattress isn’t spring driven.
After this great sales pitch, I have to try it out.
It’s like sinking into sweet dreams.
Not only that, there’s this nifty remote that controls the whole thing. First I raise the end part of the bed. This helps alleviate back pain.
Aahhh.
Next I try the head control. My body is resting on the bed in a slight v-shape. It feels great.
But there’s more, including a massage function for the head and foot area, and all over, separately or combined. You can even set the remote so the massage comes over you in waves, from head to toe.
I switch all the settings to their max, and slip into a warm and fuzzy daze.
Tempur-Pedics start at $4,150 for a Queen. But they come with a 20-year warranty and they last longer than traditional flat beds says Marcus.
There are also non-foam options for adjustable beds. Marcus shows me the Rolls Royce of adjustable beds, a Simmons twin bed with a wall-hugger base for $2,500.
It’s super cool because when you raise the head or foot of the bed, the base moves and shifts back to the wall, so your bedside table doesn’t get left behind when you crank your bed up to read that good novel.
You can get the same bed without the adjustable base for $2,100.
Then there’s the “Cozy Couples” bed made by Classic Sleep Products, $5,200 for a King and $4,500 for a Queen.
Marcus is the only retailer in Canada to carry this particular mattress base combo, made of memory and latex foam.
If you want to read and he wants to sleep, no prob with this bed. The top part is adjustable, and it splits in two.
The bonus: you can still play footsie even if your heads aren’t aligned. You don’t even have to worry about cutting sheets as Marcus sells special sheets to for the bed and can even custom make them.
But if you want to pull a Fred and Wilma, you can put two adjustable singles together – and you won’t even have to buy new King sheets. Marcus can have your current King sheets retrofitted to fit your new bed(s), free of charge.
There are bed frames available on order here as well, but if you’re like me and have a much-loved old brass bed frame, not to worry.
Marcus can go to your home and do the measurements to see if your new mattress and boxspring will fit. But he tells me most adjustable beds will fit into the bed frames out there.
So bye-bye old beddie, bye bye.
<em>1875 Leslie St., unit 9, 416-444-5800 www.bedsplus.ca.</em>
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