Have you sometimes suspected that your mattress was too soft and often wake up in the morning in a deep hollow with your mattress making ‘water-wings’ on either side of you? It is time, I  fear, to think about replacing it with a firmer one.

Expensive? Perhaps, but after all you spend just about a third of your life in bed and if that third is plagued with insomnia due to an over-soft or worn out mattress is it not wise to consider spending a few dollars in order to improve your health, your spirits and your general well-being? Cheap at the price I would say.

And what about those mounds of bunchy pillows? Do these offenders grace your bed too? Send those packing with that soft mattress. It is essential in sleep that your spine should be held as naturally as possible. If you are lying in the hollow of a feather mattress with your head propped up on a mound of pillows, your poor spine is held in a highly unnatural position so if you do succeed in getting to sleep, which is often unlikely, you will be sure to wake up with morning backache, a stiff neck, a feeling of not having slept at all, and possibly a headache to add to the general confusion. If you suffer from any form of persistent backache one of the finest remedies I know, without doing another thing, is to buy a hard mattress. After you get used to sleeping on it you would never look a feather mattress in the face again. Sleep with as few pillows as possible, one small, firmly packed one is adequate for most people’s needs. Why make your poor neck work hard while you are sleeping? What did it do to deserve that kind of punishment?