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this episode is brought to you by progressive insurance do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game well with the name your price tool from progressive you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills try it at progressive dot com progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states when mother's day means celebrating your mom your wife maybe even your daughter as a new mom trust one eight hundred flowers to help you celebrate every important woman in your life with double blooms from one eight hundred flowers order one dozen roses and get another dozen for free it's a simple way to give beautifully with colorful blooms that make mother's day feel meaningful for every mom you're celebrating order with confidence and get double blooms at one eight hundred flowers com podcast that's one eight hundred flowers com podcast
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welcome to hacking youg adhd i'm your host william curb and i have adhd on this podcast i dig into the tools tactics and best practices to help you work with your adhd brain hey team so we've got a bit of a different kind of episode today i'm talking with derek hales the founder and editor in chief of naplab a mattress review website while that might not scream adhd i was interested in having this conversation because so many of us with adhd have issues surrounding sleep and what really impressed me with naplab is how they've really focused on turning mattress testing into more of an actual science moving away from the it just feels soft kind of vibes and towards using thermal cameras accelerometers and other gadgets to really see what's going on with each mattress and i know how that sounds but it is actually kind of cool anyway in our conversation today we talked a lot about what goes on in choosing a mattress what makes something good for one person and not the right fit for someone else we spend time talking about a systems first approach to how your bed frame sheets and even the light from things like your alarm clock can either support or sabotage your rem cycles and of course we also touch on some of the unique challenges of adhd and sleep from circadian rhythm delays to just trying to get our brains to quiet down at night if you'd like to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at hackingyouradhd dot com two hundred ninety alright keep on listening to find out how to stop being a victim of big mattress normally i start a lot of these by like i have a really exciting thing to talk about today and i am really excited about sleep but i don't know if everyone is one of those things where people are like yeah but it's sleep everybody does that i'm like but i really like when i get sleep so you run naplab tell me a little bit about naplab and how did you
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end up doing this sure so naplab is a platform where we objectively test mattresses we have a battery of objective and data driven tests we collect as much information and data about each mattress as then we use that to better understand how that mattress performs how it feels and how it compares to every other mattress that we've ever tested and then use all that information to help make some really smart recommendations around what mattresses are best for what types of sleepers and groups of sleepers and preferences and ultimately just trying to help our readers and viewers find mattresses that fit their needs preferences and budget as quickly and as efficiently as possible that is
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kind of like a funny niche to get into though being like mattress i feel like i'm going to very much relate to the story that you're going to tell though because i'm like just imagining why someone would get into mattresses
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yeah i mean it started with just a personal problem my wife and i got married in twenty fourteen we initially were sleeping on my old full size mattress from from high school and pretty quickly we were we were in the market for a new bed we wanted something bigger something that was made in this millennia and so we started kind of the the whole process of going kind of in store trying beds lying on beds and we found stuff we liked but you know the prices were you know four five six thousand dollars we were a newly newly married couple pretty frugal people and just couldn't pull the trigger it was just too much money so we ended up just taking a chance on these kind of online mattress companies that were just getting started in twenty fourteen it was really a very new thing at the time we were able to buy you know a king size all foam mattress for six hundred bucks great deal the mattress ended up not being a great fit for us we returned it but really good return process no issues there and we were able to try another one and we like that one a little bit better and just kind of was like a fun weekend hobby project and just kind of help some other people just put up a website with reviews for each of the beds that we had tried a comparison for each of those beds talked about like what it was like to go in store like that experience and just threw the website up just to see what it would do and it really seemed to strike a chord a lot of people were dealing with the exact same problem that i was dealing with and people really like what we were doing so we were immediately getting a lot of traffic and immediately getting lots of requests for us to test other models so we just kind of kept getting new mattresses kept testing kept adding to the site within a few months it had more than replaced my full time income and i made the decision to leave my sort of full time marketing job to become a professional mattress tester nice yeah it's
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and i mean i just one hundred percent i can see why it took off because that is like such a it's so hard to you when you don't know what you don't know about mattresses and you go into the store and you like lie down and like is this good i don't know will i like lying here eight hours i can't that's not i can't just lie down in the store for eight hours
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absolutely yeah the the in store experience kind of kind of cuts both ways on the one hand it's like it's like great because you do get to try it but like laying on a bed for a few minutes it's just not the same as sleeping on it for eight hours not the same as sleeping on it for eight hours weeks and months and it's breaking in and so it's really hard to know and then you've got the the pressure of the salesman and then you know a lot of these beds and store are you know very expensive you know you're usually talking you know three thousand dollars or more for you know what they sort of deem as a quality mattress in store like you're going to pay a lot and take taking a risk feels could feel pretty pretty risky and pretty bad if you get it wrong
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yeah and then you have the the experience with the online where you're just like man i don't know anything about
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this company yeah exactly i think there it it it cuts both ways in the world of online you've got you know better trial periods and refund policies which is which is great but you have sort of so many options it's almost sort of analysis paralysis fear if you're in store you know they probably only have like you know two or four brands in the store so it's just kind of you're going to go with one of those you're not but if you're if you're shopping online you're looking at hundreds of brands potentially all of them that are telling very similar stories on their product page about how it's the greatest thing since sliced bread and it's the per perfect mattress for everybody it could be just really hard to know you know what information to
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believe yeah and i know the last time i bought a mattress i spent a lot of time you know looking for you know actual like personal recommendations and kind of things because i was like i don't know what to trust
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online yeah the the world of i think online reviews and recommendations is is also complex and i think people have a healthy level of distrust for for online reviews and for good reason i think there's a lot of artificial reviews paid reviews sponsored reviews manipulated it was really hard to know like even if you see a review that looks good like is this review genuine is this a real person is there something here that can be trusted i think it's just one one more layer why it's so hard to to shop for for
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a mattress today yeah and you know especially with like all the like ai review things coming out now and you're just like ugh i don't know so i appreciate the thoroughness behind the site and i'm kind of curious what you're saying so like you're objectively reviewing them so what goes into an objective review
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so we try to pull as much objective data out of each mattress as possible so instead of just me laying on a bed and saying yeah well that feels cool we're using a thermal camera to measure surface level temperatures and see how those temperatures decline over time instead of me you know doing a sort of tempur pedic wine glass test where we have a glass of wine and we're saying oh look the motion's so low we put a accelerometer on one side of the mattress and we drop a medicine ball on the other so we can see objectively through numbers and data exactly how much acceleration is generated on that mattress what's the duration of time that we see motion generated on that mattress and so we have you know quantifiable sort of measurement based data for as many of our tests as possible so that we can look at the numbers and crunch those not just for that specific mattress but against everything we've tested us find some really interesting insights so we can say hey based on the data this mattress is in the top ten percent of everything we've tested with respect to cooling but hey maybe it's got you know higher motion transfer so it's in the bottom thirty percent when it comes to motion that those sort of insights i think really help people you know to to decide and sort of sort of look past sort of all the marketing speak all the brand speak that you see on product pages and say you know this thing is cool but the motion is not great but the response is okay and then you can find the things that are important to you as an individual slee as a partner pair and decide you know which mattress is ultimately going to be the best match
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for your needs i'm kind of interested here too are there certain measurements you find people really gravitating towards as being like the more important measurements the two
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most important things according to our sort of ongoing surveys cooling and pressure relief those two are by far the things that sleepers care about the most having
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anytime i'm at a hotel i'm always just like this mattress is either going to be like rock hard or i'm just going to be insanely hot it's
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it's interesting how many hotels sort of subscribe to that and then you also have sort of either rock hard or or very soft i'll find it like a lot of you know nicer hotels you know they sort of like go the opposite like into the way in terms of like how soft the bed is like it's super super thick big fluffy pillow top but if you like that you know that's great but if you're someone that needs a little bit more support it can feel a bit squishy and unsupportive yeah i also remember
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being at this airbnb a number of years ago that had very old old i think it was like a sleep number but it had like an air pocket underneath that you had to inflate and it just made me roll to one side or the other because it
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was like in the middle yeah yeah the the sort of old school sleep numbers and even some of their newer ones that are more their current line you kind of have like the the single sort of inflatable bag and what it does is sort of make the the edges in the middle very sort of unsupportive and depending on your firmness level you could sort of be pushed kind of like off of the very sort of middle of the mattress which then you're kind of laying on like the foam encasement layer which has its own sort of problems where it's not feeling great so yeah the sort of first generation of adjustables in particular i think we've fortunately come a long way since then but occasionally you'll encounter those at airbnbs and elsewhere if i'm looking
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for a mattress how do i know what i want to be looking for because a lot of times i'll look at these pages of data and i'm like that's great but i don't actually know what's important to me yeah i
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think sort of step one is exactly that what is important to you and so we have sort of a list of questions if you see our sort of how to choose the mattress page it has kind of a full guide that sort of walks you through but we can talk about some of those things so one of the big ones is you know what position do you sleep in if you are a stomach sleeper you probably want something with a little bit more support a little bit less sinkage a little bit of a firmer feel if you are a side sleeper you want something that's a little bit softer a little bit deeper sinkage if you're a back sleeper kind of somewhere in the middle so certainly knowing that's a big big part of it most of us are combination sleepers though which means medium firm feel sort of moderate sinkage depth deep sinkage but nothing too extreme and that's going to work for most of us so that kind of brings us into like the next question which is just what firmness do you need again most of us need a medium firm feel it's a good balance for most sleeping positions and works well for most sleepers i think a lot of times you'll you'll have people that for any number of reasons think they need something super soft or super firm and sometimes that that is true but very often i would say and more often i would say people sort of think that for sort of an erroneous reason for lack of a better word they may think they need something firm but that's just because the mattresses they've been sleeping on are lower quality or just don't provide full support or they may think they need something super soft because that's just where they get enough pressure relief but again that just because you know they've been sleeping on a mattress that's older and the foams are degraded and so there's no way for that mattress to possibly provide the pressure relief but once you get a new mattress with high quality materials and sort of you know an appropriate design you know medium to medium firm fits the vast majority of sleepers beyond that we get into some more kind of specific things like for example if you are over two hundred fifty pounds but especially over three hundred you probably want to go with an hd or a plus size mattress simply because those mattresses are tuned to support heavier weighted bodies or where most other mattresses are sort of going to only going to be tuned to support up to around three hundred pounds you could also really think about your sort of specific needs and preferences like if you sleep with a partner who is you know moving around a lot getting coming to bed late getting up early you might want something that intentionally has very low motion transfer just so that partners can not disturb each other and stay asleep if you're someone that sleeps you know super hot you may want to pay a little bit extra for sort of a more sort of advanced cooling cover because that's going to keep it cooler on the surface can let you stay asleep better wake up less and the last thing is just budget you know how much to spend for most of us we can spend fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars based on sort of my years of testing and data that's sort of the sweet spot before we start to see sort of diminishing returns the performance doesn't really improve all that much and in some cases not at all depending on the specific model as you kind of get over two thousand dollars with very few exceptions there's really just never a reason to spend more than three thousand dollars for a queen size if you're getting like an adjustable mattress with with the electronic ear pumps maybe if you want something that's super all natural all organic okay maybe more than three k but for your sort of typical high quality memory foam foam hybrid mattress there's just no reason to spend more
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than that awesome yeah and so just curious is memory foam kind of like
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the go to now no i wouldn't say that memory foam is an interesting foam there really is no sort of industry agreed upon definition of what memory foam is originally it was a particular type of sort of foam formulation and so you would see that on mattress law tags as viscoelastic polyurethane foam now you'll see mattresses that are marketed as having and using memory foam that just are polyurethane foams but they have more of that memory fo so the way i think of memory foam is it's a foam that creates more hug around the body more contour around the body i think a lot of people like that feel but there are some that really don't because that increase in body contouring hug it can cause the mattress to have a slower mature recovery speed which can make some sleepers feel more stuck in the mattress make it harder to move around on harder to change positions so i wouldn't say memory foam is a pretty the perfect material best for everybody but for the people that again like that hugging sensation it can be great but if that's not you then you probably do want to try to avoid mattresses that contain more memory
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foam okay yeah i was i'm like i'm loving this because i normally a lot of the interviews i get i'm like oh i know all these things and here i'm like there are so many things i just don't know here
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it's a the world of mattresses is a really deep and complex world once you really get digging into it and i think this is among the reasons why it's really hard to shop for matt there are so many brands and so many models within those brands that the mattresses quickly all start looking very similar and unless you are sort of you know able to sort of take the mattresses apart like like we're able to do in our lab here it can be really hard to know just just how these materials different and how the feel is different and and then even if you could understand that which one you're actually going to like you know at the end of the day the best way to know what you like is is laying on it for for days and weeks and months to really understand how it feels and so i just can understand sort of the pain of the shopping experience for kind of all these reasons yeah i mean
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it just seems there's so many things that i don't know about that i wouldn't even know to ask that it's great to have something to be like oh this is kind of the guide of how to get into it absolutely
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yeah so we try to make it as easy as possible you know we break down our reviews from these like the most high level these are the scores this is the top level summary and then we get a little bit deeper a little bit deeper a little bit deeper and by the end you know we're getting into really nitty gritty details that maybe not everybody needs or wants but hey if you want to sort of see our work if you want to go deep dive into everything in the world of mattresses we've got that there or if you just want to you know be able to say click on hey what's here's our list for the best mattresses for side sleepers all right here's some great choices if you go with one of these you're probably going to have a perfect time
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yeah i mean i know when i ever i do like online research i'll like bring up like fifteen top ten lists and be like what's common among these lists yeah i'm kind of curious too so you were talking about like marketing speak earlier are there some of these claims or kind of like gimmicks that you're seeing that people might want
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to avoid yeah i mean i think there are erroneous claims marketing speak and gimmicks practically everywhere you look and so sort of it's hard to avoid them because they're everywhere they're they're ubiquitous across effectively all brands and so i think you have to just understand that the things that a mattress brand says about themselves aren't always a hundred percent true or maybe they're you know just obfuscating certain information every brand from brands that are a hundred dollars to brands that are ten thousand dollars talk about how cool the mattress is that that can't be universally true it just it can't be true and it's not and so i think when you see you know lots of hyperbole around really kind of any particular feature just sort of take it with a grain of salt understand that yes this particular brand may have a cooling cover yes it may use phase change materials and that may be the exact same thing as another more expensive brand that also uses phase change materials and has a cooling cover but what makes it so difficult is just because they both have cooling covers doesn't mean they're the same quality just because they both have phase change materials doesn't mean they're the same type or quality of phase change and it doesn't mean they're the same quantity and so when we look at something like cooling we have to have enough of the cooling material and a cooling material at a sufficient quality level to really make a notable impact otherwise it may be truthful for that brand to say hey we got a cooling coverage and gel foam and phase change and thermo fibers that all may be true but they may just like not have enough of it in the mattress to be sort of meaningfully moving that needle in terms of cooling and that kind of applies to kind of everything that consumers care about in the world of mattresses so it could be it's just really challenging to know what is sort of real information about that product and what's more sort of hyperbolic marketing speak yeah i can
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because it's just making me think of a old marketing example i heard of like some company that was like advertising that they steam cleaned their bottles and it was just like yeah everyone does that that's just that's market standard but by advertising it it made it seem
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like they were so good yeah that sort of reminds me of one during COVID we had brands started marketing themselves as no contact delivery which just means that ups dropped the mattress off in a box at your door and then walked away which is what they were always doing and what they're still doing but they marketed it as no contact like oh my goodness yeah that's wonderful this podcast is sponsored by talkspace may is mental health awareness month and talkspace the leading virtual therapy provider is sharing the message that connection is crucial because good relationships are an essential and sometimes overlooked component of mental well being if your relationships could use some strengthening a licensed therapist from talkspace can help therapy can help you communicate better with loved ones repair conflicts and understand how to address loneliness and build community it's easy to sign up just go to talkspace dot com and you'll be paired with a therapist within two days you'll meet with your therapist online on your schedule plus talkspace is in network with most major insurers and most insured members have a dollar zero copay make personal connections a priority and start today if you're not covered by insurance get dollar eighty off your first month with talkspace when you go to talkspace dot com and enter promo code space eighty that's s p a c e eighty to match with a lice therapist today go to talkspace dot com and enter promo code space eighty
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yeah i've definitely seen some great videos of people like opening up those like really sealed mattresses and them just like popping out because they're not
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expecting it yeah they they they hit my feed for some reason this week i had people sending me multiple of those some of those people i'm really worried that they might have gotten hurt though especially like like older people or little kids i saw one where a guy had his like leg kind of like he was like in the middle of the frame and he was opening mid frame and it like knocked him like back off the frame but his leg was just like oh my goodness this man just break a leg and
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they're they're often holding some sharp implement and it's just like this is so
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dangerous yes exactly i think maybe we
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might want to change directions a little bit because we also talked about earlier about before the interview about it's kind of sleep optimization things beyond mattresses so
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you know my ideas aren't really my ideas are just things that i've read in you know clinical studies and journals and reports on this by actual sleep scientists well i know a lot about mattresses i'm not a sleep scientist but you know the the science behind this in the studies is like pretty clear it's like i think two big things that we can do aside from you know getting a great mattress number one make the room dark when rooms are darker you are able to get to sleep quicker stay asleep longer longer rem cycles and just wake up more refreshed and so do everything you can to make the room as dark as possible so shades blinds little you know covers kind of underneath the door if you've got lights sort of penetrating in from from hallways if you're able to sleep comfortably in a sleep mask that's a great way to get away with it as well and then turning off any extra lights you know putting your your phone either in another room or face down so that if you're getting notifications it's not you know lighting up your room every time it goes off even certain alarm clocks i find can add a lot of light to the room so do everything you can to make the room as dark as possible and then kind of on a similar front make the room as quiet as possible so likewise if you're able to again heavy curtains can help prevent a noise from coming in from outside close your door thing under the door so we're preventing noise from coming in outside also if you're able to sleep with a set of earplugs that's going to reduce anywhere from twenty to thirty decibels a night and again it's all aimed at preventing nighttime awakening so that when sounds happen in the night they aren't pulling you out of rem causing you to then be slightly awake for several minutes before we kind of go back to sleep sleep and so over the years we've just seen kind of countless studies that just show again and again and again dark rooms and quiet rooms if you can do those two things you will find yourself getting much better sleep more restorative sleep and longer sleep as
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well and it's hilarious that that comes off as a recommendation because you're just like if you were like trying to take a nap or something you'd be like obviously i want it to be quiet and dark but i know so many people have trouble doing that in their bedroom and making it a very
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sleep zone yeah it's one of those things that again it's so obvious but it's also really easy to let there be problems my wife had an alarm clock that we were using for years and years and years and at some point i just sort of dawned on me like i was looking up just kind of at the wall at night thinking my god what is that and i was just like this radiant alarm clock clock or like my phone every time i get a notification you know it's you know lighting up the the entire room but just turning that face down you know turning the brightness down on the alarm clock small changes you know can make a big difference in
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these areas yeah and i it's often yeah not something that needs to be like super extreme because i've like noticed was like oh yes it needs to be dark enough room that when you close your eyes you can't tell there's light but if it's you know there's like small amounts of light that you couldn't would never be able to see with your ice clothes it's not so
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much of a problem exactly exactly and it's it's one of the things darker is better but you know get it dark to your comfort and if you if there's just no way for you to kind of fully control that light and the noise definitely consider consider the earplugs consider the sleep mask because those sort of you know cover a multitude of problems very easily so beyond that
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i know there's all sorts of like options with like sheets and pillows and like weighted blankets and all that kind of stuff we kind of where does
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that come in so it's all it's all a factor right if we have an amazing mattress but then a set of sheets doesn't breathe particularly well or isn't very soft well that may make your mattress feel warmer and it's not the fault of the mattress it's just you have sheets that aren't breathing well so certainly with respect to the cooling softness and feel you know get a get a nice set of sheets so i really like these sort of you know high performance polyester the sheets that sheiks and bed gear make they are kind of like a nike dry fit type material so like workout material super smooth incredibly moisture wicking cool and breathable so they just do an amazing job when it comes to cooling mattress protector is another one of those sort of unsung heroes for similar reasons if you have a really nice cooling mattress but then you put a cheap mattress protector on it well then you may find that that your mattress is just not breathing well so spending a decent amount of money to get a quality protector that both protects but also breathes well is really important the protector is like another one that is again kind of the unsung hero we have people often think of you know one they want to protect their mattress but they want to sleep cool and like that's what the protector does more than i think equally importantly the protector is also preventing moisture from getting into your mattress so the human body sort of loses anywhere from half a liter to a liter of every night a lot of that's just coming off through you know perspiration and through you know breathing but some of that is just oils and liquid getting down into the mattress if you don't have a protector that's just getting into the mattress and over time that quickly builds up and can make the mattress form body impressions and sag much more quickly and much deeper so a lot of times you know i'll have you know readers come to me and say oh i've only had this mattress a few years and it's already sagging one of my first questions i ask is well are you using a mask protector because without that yeah you're going to get sagging and body impressions a lot faster so it's definitely worth it to one definitely use a protector and spend a decent amount of money so we can get something that's going to last be cool and also really protect
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B
that bet yeah i can definitely see that because everything you were just saying it all builds up and if you're not it's just the like the general maintenance we have to do on everything exactly yeah and so this is making me think so so there's i've heard things about like rotating your mattress and you know how long a mattress should last what's kind of the truth in
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that stuff in terms of how long mattresses should last i think a quality mattress should last around ten years sometimes a little less sometimes a little more depending on you know body type environmental factors bed frames whether or not used to protector those sorts of things in terms of rotating the mattress definitely rotating the mattress helps the mattress wear more evenly so i think there's you see see a lot of brands sort of complicate this for any number of reasons but as long as you are rotating the mattress on a consistent schedule if you rotate it once a week once a month once a quarter that's fine i think for most new mattresses i always advise rotating at the six month mark and then after that every twelve months if you want to rotate more often than that that's no problem just make sure that you're consistent with your rotation schedule that way it's getting the same amount of sort of even wear across the mattress how do you even
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know when a mattress needs to be
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replaced i think the thing i always say is how are you sleeping are you waking up sore are you waking up in pains do you have low energy during the day are you waking up tired if that's happening to you it could be the mattress this this is to say that there are other things that could cause us there absolutely are but we should consider is the mattress part of the play when you go sleep at you know a relative's house a friend's house when you sleep at a hotel are you sleeping better are you sleeping differently because those are indicators that something's going on with with your specific mattress and then it's probably time to to upgrade that makes sense
- [30:14]
B
yeah i do have a i have a friend with that very fancy eight sleep bed and he's just like he was just telling me he was visiting he's just like i really love my bed the worst thing about it is that it does not travel with me
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yeah i felt that pain my my own my own father i've i've i told him i will send him a mattress for his guest bedroom if he would just let me he will not let me but yeah he has an awful awful mattress and then the guest room that i'm just like i'll just i'll just sleep on the couch dad
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B
yeah i was having some we were trying to put together a guest room thing and i'm just like i don't know how much i want to put into the guest room versus like guests to be comfortable but i don't want to break the bank on the guest
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room yeah and unfortunately you don't you don't really need to i think there are a good number of like really quality sort of you know eight hundred to thousand dollars mattresses that are like a good balance feel for guests and since it's a guest bed you know it's not getting nightly use you know that mattress which should be lasting ten years is probably going to go twenty or more so you don't need to definitely break the bank to get something that'll last a long time yeah i
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think there's yeah i was also trying to do it in like a week where it's like when that friend was visiting i'm like i've got to figure this out in this week and it did not happen so he did not get a good bed but it is one of those things where that's have
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you finished your guest room yet no
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not even close that was just like well he's gone and i'm not expecting guests for months so we're just just shoving this off and hey fair it is very very adhd and one of the things that's like why i was like oh this is a great option for this podcast it's because people with adhd have so much trouble with sleep in general so it was i was like oh this makes i'll be quite honest when i first saw the email like a mattress review why would i have that on and then i thought about it i'm like oh that makes a ton of sense there's a ton of people that have of need this
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service absolutely you know it's interesting so you remark you know the sort of increased sleeping problems with adhd do you think that is more just sort of unable to sort of turn the brain off when you're ready for sleep or is there something else kind of going on there physiologically yeah there's a number
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of things yeah there is definitely that turning the brain off for sleep there is some research into like circadian rhythm delay that shows that like oh yeah you have of you're just not on the same schedule as everyone and that makes it a lot harder to fall
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asleep yeah yeah what would you say is sort of your typical sort of circadian rhythm schedule are you more of a night owl or compressed sleep time or elongated sleep time i would probably
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be a little bit later going to bed if i didn't have kids that i needed to get to school in
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the morning ah yes man i feel that in my soul next year my
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daughter is switching to middle school and their schedule is an hour earlier and i'm just like i'm gonna have to do this but an hour earlier oh
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good luck my goodness this is this
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is not gonna go well for me but what it's that i mean that's one of the issues is just like yeah you can't just not do it
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yeah our world is not built for night owls or anybody else that wants to go to bed closer to midnight
- [33:32]
B
yeah and i mean i guess that is part of the when we were talking about optimization is like yeah figuring out when you sleep best best yeah
- [33:38]
A
and it's it's interesting and i was like i sort of i'm naturally more of a night owl sort of i would much rather kind of you know go to bed at midnight and wake up around nine or so but i also have kids and just kind of you know live in a world in which it's just not possible so as i've gotten a little bit older my kids have gotten a little bit older yeah i just naturally kind of wake up a little bit earlier go to bed a little bit earlier as well just because it's just it's just the way it's just the way our family kind of functions right now and you kind of you got to get on that ship or you can kick and scream and be punished the whole way if you decide not to but it's been a lot easier for me just to try to adjust my schedule a couple hours earlier yeah and and we
- [34:21]
B
were also talking about this beforehand with the daylight savings which that just hit and that's it's which you you luckily don't have to deal with but yes it's one of those things where a lot of times it doesn't feel like it should be such a big deal but like changing your bedtime by an hour like on a drop of a
- [34:41]
A
hat is very difficult yeah you know i never really considered it sort of you know growing up i lived in places that had daylight savings times i was an adult out of college by the time i lived in arizona when we don't have it out here but yeah i mean the notion that i would just all of a sudden wake up an hour earlier or go to bed an hour later seems like crazy now like i i can sort of i got about like a thirty minute window i got about thirty minutes kind of on either side of kind of like eleven o' clock but having to go to bed at an hour in any direction would be a hard hard switch you know i've made those switches before but it's usually it takes you know months to really get adjusted yeah
- [35:16]
B
and i think that's one of the things that people often forget is that it feels i've talked to people this week that they're like oh yeah and i'll be back on schedule in a couple days i'm like not really no
- [35:28]
A
that takes time yeah and it's because
- [35:30]
B
it feels different than like travel because i know i'm gonna have a trip next week where i'm like oh yeah i'm gonna be an hour different but that's not gonna be i'm only there for three days this is a permanent change for me otherwise yeah just just
- [35:44]
A
stuff just suffering for a couple days during travel with jet lag is it's its own you know it's not nothing but yeah i feel like i can kind of i push through that because mentally i know like that's not my schedule like it may be nine o' clock there but i'm thinking oh in my time and so you kind of adjust accordingly but yeah it never feels as bad as what the daylight savings can feel like yeah the only time
- [36:05]
B
i really had a lot of trouble with jet lag is i took a trip to japan when i was in my teens and i'm like that can't
- [36:11]
A
just brush that off yeah no kidding
- [36:14]
B
we've gone through a lot of stuff here and i'm just wondering if there's any other topics you think that would be good to hit before we wrap
- [36:22]
A
up i think we've covered a lot we talked about you know job and fair mattresses things that are that are important sleep optimization of course make it dark make it quiet those are by far the biggest we talked a little bit about sort of you know bedding selections and we talked about protectors and sheets you know giving stuff that's quality and cooling one thing we haven't really talked about much is sort of pillows and bed frames we could briefly touch on that so pillows just how you know you want a mattress to match your sleep position if you're a side sleeper that means you know maybe more like a medium feel a little bit deeper sinkage if you're a stomach sleeper a little bit less a little bit more firmness it's kind of the same thing with pillows we want to match our position so if you're a stomach sleeper get something that is not as tall and the whole idea with that is that tall pillows push the spine and more to a curvature because your your your head your shoulders are sort of like leaning more up up creating this curvature of the spine so we want the stomach sleeper pillow to be as flat as possible so that the curve of the spine is as flat as possible which is going to reduce pressure points and just create better comfort and support back sleepers want a medium height because we need to sort of raise the head sort of up into a supported position but we don't want to go too high because then now the head is sort of you know cranked sort of you know too far forward and out of alignment with the rest of the body and then lastly side sleepers need the tallest pillows the taller pillow you know sort of fills the void between the head the neck and the shoulder again all aimed at creating a neutral spinal alignment when we can create more of a neutral spinal alignment you've just got fewer pressure points better support and better overall comfort the last thing i would you know suggest you know spending a little bit more money on is a nice bed frame frame nice thing about a bed frame is you don't have to buy it you know every time you get a new mattress you know these these could last you know decades if you get a nice one and the reason the bed frame is so important is because it's supporting the mattress and so sometimes we'll see you know people that will have mattresses that sag much earlier than they should form body impressions much earlier than they should if the bed frame is not creating sufficient support for that mattress that's when we see deeper sagging earlier sagging and so it becomes really like a longevity protector for your mattress if you get a nicer frame and foundation so the sort of closer your frame foundation can look to a solid platform surface the better when we see slat frames causing problems it's because the slats are too far apart or they're not wide enough or they're more more flexible they're bowed they're not creating rigid support and or they lack sort of that that central sort of support beam any of these things can basically let more of sort of the mattress sort of sink down between those slat gaps and that's what you know sort of exacerbates the the sagging and body impression so definitely don't don't let sort of the the other things around and under the mattress you know sort of go by the wayside what are we talking about frames pillows sheets protectors these are all super important to making sure that you feel supported the mattress lasts a long time and you're sort of maximizing the performance of the mattress in terms of cooling yeah and again i was
- [39:46]
B
just thinking of the old bed frame i had before we had gotten the current one was janky metal frame that i got off of some company on amazon that had some like like weird names was clearly like some chinese drop shipping thing and i was just like the it didn't matter that our mattress had almost no movement that frame just would like shake back and forth yeah
- [40:09]
A
absolutely yeah motion transfer noise support like the frame is doing a lot more than just sort of looking pretty i think a lot of people just choose the frame just because they they like the aesthetic and don't get me wrong as somebody who who likes a stylish bed frame it's it's absolutely important to get that piece of it as well but we don't want to miss the functionality part because that is just going to determine again overall performance and longevity of your mattress yeah yeah and it
- [40:34]
B
is funny was the current one i had the slight problem that it has like little like it's nice wood frame and has like these little wings at the end and i would just crank my leg into them when i woke up in the night to go to the bathroom or got up in the morning eventually just like put like some little like glow in the dark stickers on it and then like they're not bright enough that i can see them at night but they're definitely i'm like oh there's a little bit of a
- [40:55]
A
glow there yeah yeah that's smart that's a great idea all right well i
- [41:01]
B
guess we're coming up on time here so do you have any final thoughts you want to leave the audience with
- [41:05]
A
hey if you're interested in our work be sure to visit us at naplab dot com that's naplab dot com you can find our reviews comparisons best of guides educational material and a whole lot more we also have our mattress finder quiz there answer a few questions about your needs and preferences that go straight to me or member of my team and we send you back a personalized recommendation within twenty four hours awesome well
- [41:25]
B
thank you so much for your time there's a ton of stuff in here
- [41:28]
A
thank you for having me
- [41:31]
B
thanks again to derek for coming on the show and thank you for sticking with us all the way to the end before you go though let's do a quick rundown of today's top tips one adhd brains can have even more trouble filtering out background stimuli such as lights and sounds in the bedroom which can make it even harder for us to fall asleep things like blackout shades and earplugs can create an environment that's more conductive to getting more restful and restorative sleep two your body's ability to shed heat is a biological requirement for deep sleep to help with this cooling look for materials that actually facilitate moisture wicking and airflow rather than just relying on stuff that has surface level cool to the touch feel three a lot of marketing from the mattress industry often uses a more expensive equals better sleep bottle pressuring us to spend more and more on mattresses derek suggests a fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars price range as the performance peak where the highest quality materials are used and you get the most bang for your buck of course with every mattress you're going to mileage is going to vary so make sure you do your research which hopefully you might have found a place to do that at anyways that's it thanks for listening i'd love to hear what you thought of this episode and honestly would really love some feedback on this one since it's a bit out of range of what i usually do feel free to connect with me over at hackingyouradhd dot com contact and if you'd like links or to read this episode's transcript you can go to the show notes page at hackingyouradhd dot com two hundred ninety and if you'd like even more hacking your adhd be sure to sign up for my newsletter letter any and all distractions which comes out every other week in it i give out my best distractions of the week be they what i'm reading what i'm playing or what i'm watching and everything in between i also try to give out a few bits of actionable advice in each newsletter although your mileage is going to vary there if that sounds like something you're interested in head on over to hackingyouradhd dot com newsletter to sign up i also want to make sure you know about our patreon which you can easily find at hackingrad dot com it's a pay what you want model meaning all levels of patreon receive the same stuff you can pay zero dollars or two dollars or ten dollars it's all the same and you get access to behind the scenes content and early access to every episode you can also check out our discord at hackingyouradhd dot com discord and also don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel which you can find at youtube dot com hackingyouradhd and finally if you'd like another way to to support the show the best way to do so is to tell someone about the show especially if you think a particular episode would resonate with them just click the share button on your podcast player and now for your moment of dad saw an ad for delorean for sale great shape low mileage and only driven from time to time
- [44:19]
A
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