Is your mattress healthy for you?
Our brains, like our physical bodies, need some rest from the strenuousness of everyday living. While the brain may rework and reconnect the information we gathered throughout the day while we sleep, sleep gives the brain the chance to enter a state where its awareness of external events that goes on is reduced. So perhaps sleeping is the only time in which our brains can sleep.
But while the mattress you sleep on gives you a restful sleep, is it a healthy one? A mattress’ main temptation should not be its comfort levels, but its ability to contour to your bone structure and body weight. Rather than your body adjusting to the surface of the mattress, the mattress surface should adapt to your body.
While we send a considerable amount of time sleeping, there are still things that we are not aware of when it comes to getting a proper sleep. In western cultures, there is a concept called ‘Healthy sleeping culture’- their sleeping habits depending on better economic, technological and socio-ideological factors.
We spoke with Mr. Udaya Marasinghe- Chairman and Managing Director of Agrotac Group of Companies, whose subsidiary OLIVE Sleep Makers (Pvt) Ltd is now introducing sleeping culture to Sri Lanka, along with a range of affordable spring mattresses. The following is an excerpt of the interview.
Can you tell us about this new product that you are introducing under the OLIVE brand name?
Under the OLIVE trade name we are introducing “Healthy Sleeping Culture” for the first time to this country. This is a well settled concept in developed cultures in the world that Healthy Sleep is essential for a Healthy life. To introduce this concept to our country our company is introducing these mattresses for a healthy sleep and as a result of this, it will create a Healthy Society. Our main obligation is to introduce this great concept while giving sustainable price to our country men.
What, in your opinion, constitutes as a healthy sleeping culture?
A human spends an average one third of his life sleeping on a mattress, which is about 25 years of his life. The interest that we have in a mattress, the investment we make on a mattress is probably the most important investment a human can make. Unfortunately, in Sri Lanka, the situation is the opposite due to the high prices of quality mattresses.
Customers purchase mattresses depending on money rather than on a healthy sleeping habit. I view a mattress as the beginning of a healthy country, because a good mattress gives us a healthy sleep and gives our bones proper balance.
An unsuitable mattress can cause respiratory problems, damages to the spinal cord, and muscle aches. That’s why a proper mattress is necessary for a healthy life.
Have consumers man aged to get a good sleep on the mattresses available to them up to now?
Sri Lankans may have managed to sleep, especially considering the stresses and problems they face. It may be a comfortable sleep, but it is not a healthy sleep. We define healthy sleep as calming your mind and body while you sleep. In such a sleep, it is impossible that the sleeper could get sick or wake up to aches and pains.
I doubt many people have gotten a healthy sleep, especially on foam mattresses.
What is your opinion on the most common mattress in Sri Lanka, the foam mattress?
We have decided that foam mattresses are the most common in the country based on the pricing. In the mattress market, there is a clear line that separates foam and spring mattresses. Foam mattresses are used largely by low to mid-income earners, and the grass- root level. Spring mattresses are a luxury item, catering to a niche market.
But go to a western country, and the situation is widely different. There, the most common mattress is the spring mattress. The situation is unusual in Sri Lanka because of the price difference and the lack of awareness among the consumers.
What is the difference between a foam mattress and a spring mattress?
Foam mattresses are made using a combination of three toxic chemicals. It’s difficult for a human to even be near a processing centre of a foam mattress due to the fumes. Foam mattresses are a product like that. I view foam mattresses as bread dough. Put a bottle on top of the dough and it sinks.
In foam mattresses, which are made like a block, air doesn’t circulate. Foam mattresses also soak about 3- 4% of the water in our bodies. It doesn’t shape around our body; rather the surface sinks down depending on our weight.
Whereas in a spring mattress, the air flows out proportionate to our body weight. The springs adapt to the shape of our body and weight.
But why do people persist on choosing foam mattresses?
Foam mattresses have penetrated over 80% of the market share in Sri Lanka. One of the main reasons for that is that spring mattresses have been introduced as a luxury item and comes with a high price tag. So the common consumer thinks that the foam mattress is the only one within its price range. Coupled with the general unawareness about the two mattresses and the benefits of a spring mattress among the people of Sri Lanka, foam mattresses have managed to grab the market.
As a businessman, how do you view the health of the consumers?
Before I as a businessman consider the health of the customer, I have to mention what Lord Buddha preached 2500 years ago about health: r gyaParam l b . As a humble man that is also what I have to say- that health is your greatest wealth. That’s why we are trying to introduce the healthy sleeping culture to the country.
Some might accuse you of using this as a marketing gimmick. What do you have to say about potential accusations?
If I took marketing gimmicks, I could have continued manufacturing foam mattresses, the most popular mattress in the country with high revenue. I diverted from that avenue and began introducing the healthy sleeping culture concept, because this is our country.
Continued on Page 20