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Organic Mattress

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Organic Cotton and Wool Mattress

How did you interpret the title of this post? I presumed (correctly) that you were thinking that the mattress that I am going to tell you in this article is containing natural materials; organic cotton and organic wool. Unfortunately, that is not the case here. This is exactly how some mattress companies play with the words and the structure of their sales pitches. In marketing world, words are wisdom and they can be manipulated; twisted and turned to hypnotize you into thinking what you are thinking. To some extent, some geniuses may be able to perform “make-believe” miracles such as turning a gas stove into a refrigerator. That is how marketing works. That is how you would believe that an organic cotton and wool mattress is a 100% orgnaic mattress.

Read again the title and tell me what you think. Got it? If you still can’t get the “actual” picture here, it is all right. I won’t blame you. These days we are so used to see thousands of ads everyday; newspapers, TVs, magazines, stores, hypermarkets, Walmart, and almost everywhere. It is easy to be misled by these types of ads and sometimes we just laughed at how idiot we were when we first read the lines. We didn’t read in between the lines. Our brain is a complex organ yet a stupid one unless we train it to be able to interpret one simple phrase into several meanings.

Whenever you go to a mattress stor and the sales rep told you that their mattresses are made from “organic cotton and wool”, you should be very wary about it. Ask him again; is the mattress made from “organic cotton” and “organic wool”? If he startled a bit (the trick didn’t work), then most probably the mattress he showed is not a 100% natural organic mattress. You have just been tricked into believing that the mattress is totally a organic mattress. This trick is commonly used since it works almost all the time. Why does it work? Because the moment someone said “organic”, your brain picked up that word and interpreted the whole phrase as one; therefor you would believe that the mattress is made from both organic cotton and organic wool.

So how to recognize or identify which mattress is a total 100% natural organic mattress? In my last post, I mentioned about NAOMI, an association that put up some standards to certify a mattress as organic. However, as far as I am concerned, the mattres association has not yet received any recognition from the whole industry that produce natural organic mattress. In other words, the standards produced were more like a self-proclaimed statement by certain companies to create hypes that their mattresses are the only certified organic mattresses. Well, I don’t want to go details about that so I leave that to the experts to decide. However, the standards produced by the so-called association can still be used to get the basic idea to decide whether the mattress is “natural” enough for you or for your kisd. You can visit my post here at Natural Organic Mattress.

Some of the standards listed described what type of wools can be called organic wool. Organic wool should be free from any chemical substances. Chemical-free means the wool should be obtained in an environment that is free from any chemical usage such as the foods given to the sheep (there have to be organic food), the process taken to garnet and card the wool, and so on. If any of these standards are not followed, then the wools produced are no longer 100% organic. But hell, we have been already living in a world full of chemicals (cars’ smokes for instance), why can’t we live with a 90% to 95% organic wool? We may not get the purest but as long as we know that the materials are made from controlled environment, that should be fine. To me, at least.

Wool is used in mattress production due to the fact that it is a plushy material. Plushy means comfort and comfort means you will get a good night sleep. A good nite sleep then means you will wake up from your bed feeling good and fresh like a princess. Or a prince, if you are a guy lol. That is why wool has been used in producing mattresses for years and since now we know the importance of using organic materials for better helath, organic mattress manufacturers have taken efforts to ensure all the materials used are at least 90% to 95% organic.

We all know for fact that kids are exposed to all sorts of threats every day. We do our best to avoid and to prevent bad things from happening to them. Asthma is one of those threats. Can we avoid our kids from getting asthma? Yes, we can but there are no guarantees to that. What we can do though is we have to do our best to avoid using allergenic items around our house. Stop feeding our kids with allergenic foods. Start using organic mattress for our kids.

Another good thing about using wools in producing organic mattress is its ability to insulate where then your body can naturally regulate your body temperature during the nights. You won’t feel hot or cold spots when sleeping and therefore you are less than likely to turn and toss on your bed. In short, you will be sleeping more comfortably on organic mattress than the regular comfort mattress.

How do we avoid our mattress from breeding dust mites? It will cost you a lot to buy repellants to repel dust mites. By the way repellants got chemicals in them and therefore they just defeat our intention to not using inorganic materials in our house. This is where organic mattress gains more popularity than standard mattress. Why? It is because of the wool. From what I have learned, each strand of woll has a coating of lanolin (wool wax or fat) that help to repel dust mites. This is due to the fact that each wool’s strand create a dreary environment that make it impossible for dust mites to settle in. As you know, mites only live in a damp environment. So they just can’t stand the dryness.

I believe so far we have covered few things that you should know before making an informed decision to get yourself a natural organic mattress. There are still few things we need to cover and we will do that in our next discussion.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Natural Organic Mattress

What actually defines an organic mattress? Does it have to be made from totally 100% organic materials to be qualified as an organic mattress? Well, when the term organic mattress was first coined, no one actually able to define the mattress whether it is an organic product or not. We can’t simply define the product by following each of its words’ definitions. It is hard actually to fully understand the concept behind organic mattress. Since people these days are aware of the importance of living in a healthy environment including sleeping on an organic mattress, an association was established to help in defining what is considered as organic mattress and later when the association has been recognized by the country, any organic mattress produced have to follow the guidelines provided by them to be qualified as organic mattress.

The association is commonly known as NAOMI. “NAOMI” is actually an acronym for National Association of Organic Mattress Industry. All mattress manufacturers that are the members of Naomi organization should comply with Naomi’s standard to produce organic mattresses. So far there are eleven guidelines laid down by the National Association of Organic Mattress Industry (NAOMI) for a mattress to be certified by the organization as organic. If any of these guidelines is not followed, then the mattress is considered as “normal mattress” and cannot be called organic mattress. This is where the term "Naomi organic mattress" being coined to differentiate the differences between certified organic mattress and none certified organic matterss.

Guidelines to Qualify an Organic Mattress as an Organic Product

The first thing that a mattress manufacturer should ensure is the mattress has to be free from any synthetic fabrics or fibers. To understand what synthetic fabrics are we should first understand what synthetic fibers are. Synthetic fibers are normally produced from synthetic materials such as petrochemicals. There are also synthetic fibers that are manufactured from natural cellulose such as rayon, nylon, polyester, and zylon. Therefore we can define synthetic fabrics as fabrics that are made from synthetic fibers. To process the synthetic fibers to be available as fabrics, more chemicals are added and therefore the end products contain more chemicals. In other words, any organic mattress to be certified as “organic mattress” should be free from these types of fabrics and fibers.

The second guideline is related to the first guideline where if fabric is used to manufacture the mattress, the fabric used cannot be treated with any sort of toxic chemicals. Chemicals such as “phlates” which I have many times explained in previous posts are chemicals that are toxic and dangerous to health and therefore cannot be used in producing organic mattress. Some companies may claim that the chemicals that they used in organic mattress production are “good” chemicals and not that toxic since they were classified by scientists as low-level chemicals. If you heard such claims, you should avoid from buying that so-called “organic mattress” as the National Association of Organic Mattress Industry has clearly said that none of toxic chemicals should be used in treating the fabrics used to produce organic mattress.

If the organic mattresses produces are using wools, then the organization has outlined another rule to qualify a mattress as organic where the wools should always be from sheep that are have been raised organically. The sheep are not supposed to be fed with chemical-made foods they are breed in chemical-free environments. Later we will go into discussions to check why wools are used in producing organic mattresses.

There are also other rules laid out to qualify the wools to be used in producing organic mattress. Just like the fabrics, the wool used should not be treated with any sort of chemical substances. Therefore the production of the wools has to be from factories that are not producing other chemical-based products such as polyester. Furthermore, the wools used to produce chemical-free organic mattress have to be tested first to ensure that they are free from arsenic and lead. In short, no chemicals should be used in any circumstances. I can see now that this could be the reason why some mattress companies are not producing organic mattresses since the standards and the rules to be complied to are really tough to be precisely followed and practiced.

Other rules that I have left out are more detailed descriptions on what an organic mattress should be made from. I can safely say here that to ensure that an organic mattress is really is an organic product, everything about it should be following organic standards. Starting from the selection of the materials to be used to processing each of the materials and then processing and combining all of the materials, none of them should involve the usage of chemicals. If there is, then the mattress is no longer qualified as organic. It should be sold and quoted as normal mattress.

However, there are exceptions to these rules. Materials such as the thread and the metal springs used in supporting the mattress to be firm and solid have no specific guidelines anywhere in this world to qualify them as being organic or not. Therefore these materials can freely be used in producing organic mattresses. Unless one day someone managed to create organic springs, then maybe for a mattress to be qualified as organic, the mattress should only used organic springs. That may sound funny today but hey who knows, hundreds of years ago no one would believe you that you can speak to someone thousands of kilometers away from you!

As I see it, an organic mattress is supposed to be made from only natural materials. This is my understanding and although it is hard to find one mattress that fit my criteria, I have to be patient to finally find one so that I don't have to feel guilty for not providing my family the best products to protect their health and their life. I don't mind spending thousands to achieve that goal as long as they got the best from me and that's my aim; to provide the best for them.

These days, you are more than likely to stumble into stores that are selling comfort organic cotton mattresses. Either you are in Portland or somewhere else, the possibility is there to find a mattress store. As I have extensively outlined to you what should qualify as organic mattress, you should now be able to identify a mattress to be organic or not. At least, you have some basic ideas on what questions you should ask the mattress sales rep. Isn’t it fun to see the sales rep who looks like Katrina Halili runs to her sales supervisor to get confirmation that the mattress you asked does not contain any phlates? It will be funnier if you know that she was actually asking about the meaning of phlates lol.

That’s all for now and if you are interested to find more information about Organic Mattress in Michigan, you may read that post. I will elaborate more about all organic mattresses either by updating previous posts or through new posts. If you have any inquiries, please do not hesitate to leave your comments. However, I recommend you to read more about mattresses and organic mattresses either from reading “mattress blog” or join any forums that talk about choosing the right mattress for your bed.

Note : From what I have learned from my friends, it seems like the so-called NAOMI association does not have any other members apart from the site who produced the standards to certify a mattress as organic. As far as I am concerned, no one has yet to take the initiative to unify all of the organic mattress manufacturers into one organization.

Organic Cotton Mattress

I have noticed that these days people are quite conscious about their health and how items around their houses can affect their health. Lifestyle is no more about having latest gadgets in the house. Lifestyle is about enjoying a healthy one. A healthy lifestyle means taking care of the family and buying household items that are contributing directly or indirectly to the health. Fortunately, the household items industry is well-informed of this trend and therefore they have taken additional efforts by researching for more ways to manufacture and produce better products. That is why it is quite easy to find organic cotton mattresses in the market.

An organic cotton mattress is considered one of the best solutions to help in preventing breath-related diseases from spreading in the house. Breath-related diseases such as asthma and pneumonia are dangerous diseases especially to babies and kids and therefore it is crucial to choose the right household items to be purchased and placed in your house. Since we live in the era where people are sleeping on mattresses, mattress is the main source of dusts and mites. The mattress’s beddings and pillows as well as bolsters are also sources of dusts and mites. How do we stop the dusts and mites from heaping up in the mattress?

For many years, we don’t even know what it means by organic mattress. We are clueless of the importance of using organic materials in the mattress to prevent unwanted diseases from spreading in our family. We don’t realize that the standard lab-made mattresses that we use contained chemicals that are harmful especially to children. After many years, some researchers found out about this and then we learned about chemicals called “phlates”. Only after that we learned that the “normal synthetic mattress” that we have been using for years is harmful to our kids.

Currently there are many mattress manufacturers that produce organic mattress. Some are made from 100% cottons and some are made from 100% wools. There are also organic mattresses that are made from both cottons and wools. These mattresses are called “organic” since they are made from “organic materials”. Cotton is an organic material. So does wool. Both cotton and wool have special capabilities that qualified them to be processed to make organic mattresses. Even some of their unique capabilities are known to us and yet we don’t realize them.

There are many pros and cons when it comes to using organic mattress. “Pros” are the advantages that are usually cheered by the marketers to build the reputations for organic cotton mattress. “Cons” are disadvantages of using “organic cotton mattress” and as you correctly guessed, they usually are words from traditional synthetic mattress producers. Simmons for example is a well known mattress manufacturer and they have been producing many great mattresses; thanks to their intensive research and developments. However, Simmons is not the first mattress manufacturers that produces organic cotton mattress. Its technology so far is still with the standard synthetic mattress.

So if standard synthetic mattress is bad for your health, why organic cotton mattress is good for your health? The answer to this question is still subjective to this date but we can always conclude that “organic” is always good for your health. Everyone knows this fact. Organic water is always a better choice than recycled water. Organic foods are better than foods that contain chemicals such as preservatives and synthetic flavors. In short, I can assure you that an organic cotton mattress is suitable to produce a good and healthy sleeping environment for your kids as well as for your family. As I have mentioned earlier, cotton is a friendly organic material and that is why it is used widely in producing organic mattress.

Using an organic cotton mattress means you are using a chemical-free mattress. The mattress is made from natural resources such as cotton and wool. Wool is used for various reasons and one of them is because of wool capability of absorbing moist therefore it helps to keep the mattress dry at all times. However, some people are really concern about man-made items and since wools gone through several processes before it can be used, cotton mattresses appear to be 100% natural mattresses.

The Popularity of Organic Cotton Mattress

If there is organic cotton, then there must be conventional cotton. Conventional cottons are produced widely in many countries. Unfortunately, the cotton farms are heavily sprayed with pesticides and chemical fertilizers are used to keep the crops pests-free and fertilized. These pesticides that are commonly used on cotton crops especially in the United States have been identified as chemicals that could cause cancers and therefore they are harmful to humans. Some chemicals are also dangerous since they could cause birth defects and other rare diseases. The worst part is when the cottons are used in clothing productions as well as in furniture industry. During the manufacturing processes, the conventional cottons are added with more toxic chemicals. Would you want to sleep on this kind of mattress?

This is where the natural organic cotton comes into place. The natural organic cottons are considered “natural” and “organic” when they are grown in crops that are not sprayed with any kind of chemicals. If they happened to be planted in sprayed fields, the fields have to be free from being sprayed at least for three years before they are qualified to be chemical-free fields. Of course the cottons produced from these types of crops are lesser in terms of their quality but since they are nurtured naturally, they have more values to human health and therefore if they are used to make household items, they are good for your health.

The natural organic cotton mattress is probably high in price due to its exceptional values. Of course, a good product comes with expensive price tag but I rather spend thousands on this kind of mattress than spending the money to buy synthetic mattress. Why would I waste my money on products that are harmful to my kids and my babies? I would spend my money to buy an organic cotton mattress, an organic mattress cover, toppers, and so on. The more organic products around, I will feel more comfortable and at least my mind is free from thinking about dangerous things that could happen to my kids in my own house.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Organic Mattress for Your Bed

A mattress is put on the bed to ensure that the sleep time is going to be the best time ever. No one wants to sleep on the couch or just barely on the floor only to wake up feeling uneasy and uncomfortable. That is why a mattress is used and for centuries, the mattress has gone through a lot of developments. Mattress has been improved drastically and these days it is common to see a variety of mattresses. People are looking for mattresses that are comfortable to be slept on and in these past few years, people are more into finding a mattress that is also good for their health. There are many types of mattress including comfort mattress and organic mattress.

There are many mattress manufacturers out there and some of them are reputable companies and well-known for producing good and comfort mattress. These companies take the effort to do many researches and they have failed few times before they can successfully manufactured comfort mattresses and good-for-health mattresses. They don’t simply go and produce mattresses just to make some money. No, people these days are more intelligent and more well-informed about many things. If a company is scamming people, then more than likely the news about it will spread across the country in seconds and within hours, the company is down. No one likes to be scammed by anyone especially when it comes to mattress.

How do you define a good mattress or a comfort mattress? This is actually a subjective question and you can have more than one answer. Depending on your needs, the comfort level of the mattress is determined by numerous factors and the only thing that you need to do to make the decision is to test the mattress on your own. You don’t ask your friend to go shopping for mattress on your behalf. The mattress may feel comfort to him or her but not necessarily comfort for you. The only way to decide is to test the mattress on your own.

These days many have realized that the standard comfort mattress is no longer good for health. Some researches performed by scientists have shown a shocked result where there are actually a bunch of chemicals in the standard mattress. These chemicals are responsible to cause asthma and breathing difficulties for children and therefore the mattress is no longer safe for your kids. Thankfully, the alternative to that is to purchase an organic mattress where the mattress is made from natural resources.

Organic mattresses are chemical-free mattress and therefore they are free from any dangerous chemicals. They are made from organic materials such as cottons and wools. Compared to the standard synthetic mattress, organic mattress is much safer since they don’t provoke any complications to anyone’s health especially babies. They are usually designed and created from selected imported wools and natural cotton and therefore they are environmentally friendly. It is a bonus if you can find an organic mattress that is also comfort and later you can enjoy sleeping in peace and feeling great the next morning.

Buying an organic mattress is just like buying the standard synthetic mattress. You should always test the organic mattress at the mattress store by lying down on the mattress for a few minutes. Then only you will be able to decide whether the mattress is comfort enough for you. If you are sleeping with your partner, then it is best to go together with your partner to the mattress store and test the mattress together. If both of you feel comfort on it, then the mattress is the best one for you. It is not necessarily be the most expensive mattress in the store but it can also be a cheap one as long as you are happy with the mattress and you feel comfort enough sleeping or lying down on the mattress.

The best part about using organic mattress is its ability to absorb liquid or moist. Natural wool has this capability and therefore the mattress is kept dry all the time with little effort from you. Apart from that, a mattress that is made from natural wool is also dust-mite resistant and due to this fact, it helps to reduce itching and skin irritation especially for babies and children.

There are many places in the country that are selling organic mattresses. You should always go to few mattress stores before deciding to buy one. Do not fall trap to sales pitch by the mattress sellers. Take their words at face value only and then go to other stores and check whether the information you gathered is wrong. If you happen to get all the right information about the organic mattress that you have decided to purchase, then make sure you test the organic mattress by lying down on the mattress. If you are from Raleigh North Carolina, I believe that there are a lot of mattress stores scattered all over North Carolina.

If you are buying for your children, then I recommend you to purchase the organic mattress. The organic mattress is good for kids’ health since it is free from any chemical substances and in other words, the organic mattress encourages better health. A good and comfort organic mattress is certainly how you keep your family happy and sleep well at nights.
Is there a difference between organic mattress and the old mattress?