Sleep.  We don’t want it when we’re little, and we can’t get enough as adults.  It’s more elusive to a mother of young kids than drinking your coffee hot, right? And with everything that we have to face these days with keeping our homes healthy, keeping our families healthy, we don’t realize that we also have to work at healthy sleep.  But how do we ensure that we maintain a level of non-toxic sleep that will help us to heal chronic illness and allow our bodies to regenerate?

It’s so important that we prioritize good quality sleep when we are focused on healing.   Our bodies all require long periods of high-quality sleep in order to restore and rejuvenate, to grow muscle, repair tissues, and heal the body from illness.  

This is exactly why when we are sick, we sleep so much.  Our bodies literally crave rest in order to facilitate healing, and once we start skipping out on sleep to stay up late and work (or write blog posts), then we start to feel off. 

This always happens to my husband.  If he goes through a period of time where he’s up late every night working on a project, and starts really suffering in the sleep department, then he gets sick.  Every. Single. Time.  And then you know what happens; man cold. Oh boy.

What Makes Sleep Toxic?

Due to regulations put into effect in 2007, all new mattresses are required to be highly flame retardant so that even a blowtorch won’t cause them to engulf in flames.  While I understand the premise behind this regulation (those that used to fall asleep smoking never stood a chance because their mattress went up in flames so quickly), I feel like it’s much less of an issue these days.

Even so, the toxins that are put on mattresses are not ideal to be breathing in.  Let’s face it; we spend on average, 8 hours a day sleeping on our beds, breathing in the off-gassing chemicals that have been sprayed onto them.  No thank you.

One of the main chemicals sprayed on mattresses to ensure resistance to flames is PBDE’s (polybrominated diphenyl ethers).  PBDEs are known for distorting how hormones are released into your body, and they can disrupt thyroid hormones in pregnant women and newborns. It is now illegal in some states and in the EU, but is not completely outlawed in our country.

There are more chemicals than just PBDE’s in our mattresses; BDE 47, BDE 99, TCEP, TDCIPP and BB 153 are just a few.  None of these chemicals have undergone quality safety testing, and many are linked to an increase in thyroid cancer.  There are better and safer ways to fireproof our upholstered furniture, but the cheapest way always wins.  And the cheapest way is usually the most unhealthy option.

How Do We Achieve Non-Toxic Sleep?

While we understand the need for some protection against fire and upholstered furniture that we fill our homes with, it comes down to the basic (and one of my favorite) arguments; where there is a risk, there must be a choice.

The problem with most natural and organic mattresses, is they are expensive, though they are great quality.  (Want to save on an Avocado Organic Mattress? Here is a code for you!)

Thankfully, we were sent a wonderful mattress from Tuft & Needle to try out, and I have been really impressed.  I did some research on them and found that they are low VOC and Certi-Pur certified, which makes them free of formaldehyde, carcinogens, and heavy metals!  That’s a great start if you ask me.

It showed up to our door in a box, and once I unwrapped the mattress it was normal size in about 30 seconds.  I was so impressed at how easy it was to get set up!  The best part about this mattress is how affordable it is – the KING sized mattress is less than $900 brand new, shipped to your door.  We are getting twin sized ones for the kiddos for Christmas and they are only $375; you can’t beat that for a non-toxic mattress!

The biggest thing I noticed; there was no awful chemical smell.  When we first got a memory foam mattress pad (before I realized how toxic they were), the off-gassing was so terrible that I had to put it in the garage for a week before we could use it; and even then I could still smell it while we slept.  

This Tuft & Needle mattress was such a relief!  I knew we were well on our way to non-toxic sleep, and I couldn’t be happier.

Have you looked into greener mattresses for non-toxic sleep?

*Tuft & Needle sent me a mattress to try and provide an unbiased review.  All opinions are, as always, my own.