Why I Replaced My Tempur-Pedic with an intelliBED (& You Should Too)

Though intelliBED provided us with a Relief Perfect bed, we purchased the Tempur-Pedic all by ourselves and regretted every minute of sleep on that thing. Post may include affiliate links.

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In February I shared the story of why, when it came to buying a new mattress, we started with Tempur-Pedic and switched to intelliBED after only three weeks on the ever popular memory foam. Each one of the top 5 reasons we disliked our Tempur-Pedic was a game changer.
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I followed up that original intelliBED post with a fabulous interview with intelliBED founder Bob Rasmussen, who shared how intelliBED, with its patented Intelli-Gel technology, is helping thousands of people (including those in critical care centers) improve their health by perfecting the science of sleep.

After sleeping on an intelliBED for over 8 months, I’m here to tell you they’re totally doing it.

Though not every reason listed below is scientific that doesn’t make it less important, especially if you can’t remember the last time you had a good night’s rest on your current mattress. So without further adieu, here are the seven reasons why I replaced my Tempur-Pedic with an intelliBED.
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WHY I REPLACED MY TEMPUR-PEDIC WITH AN INTELLIBED

(& YOU SHOULD TOO)

Pressure Relief & Support

The marriage of these two makes a happier marriage for us. As a back sleeper on our old pillow-top mattress and on the memory foam, Nathan experienced on-again, off-again upper back pain. Massage therapy helped but never truly fixed the issue. With our intelliBED Posture Perfect mattress, his back pain significantly decreased. (If we could minimize work stress, we’d be golden.)

As a side sleeper, the 15-year-old pillow top sadly lacked support and the Tempur-Pedic felt like cement once it finished compressing. I woke up with a crink in my neck nearly every morning and my hips always felt like they weren’t aligned correctly with the rest of my body. You’re not supposed to toss and turn on memory foam but I sure did. The intelliBED perfectly supported and aligned my body and relieved pressure on my shoulders while sleeping on my side. It’s been heaven!
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Temperature

Nathan always sleeps warm, and I go to bed wearing fuzzy socks half the year. Both the pillow-top and memory foam mattresses had him kicking off his covers in the middle of the night because he was hot—and this was in the middle of winter. He’d turn down the furnace to cool down the room and then get an earful when I walked in and my teeth started chattering. That magical Intelli-Gel manages body temperature so much better than other mattresses. I don’t know if it’s the unique open column design or the temperature-neutral materials (it’s made from mineral oil) but it’s made it so Nathan doesn’t get a cold shoulder from his wife at night.
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Non-toxic Materials

You wouldn’t think something on which you spend about a third of your life would be toxic but many of today’s mattresses are filled with synthetic materials (e.g., synthetic foam), which break down with use and release chemicals (aka off-gassing). These materials can also cause headaches, rashes and more serious issues like a flareup of an autoimmune disease. Polyurethane foam is made from chemicals that are known carcinogens, but that’s not all. PBDEs (aka boric acid) is used in many mattresses as a flame retardant. By law all retail mattresses manufactured for sale in the U.S. must contain fire retardants; unfortunately PBDEs have been shown to have negative health effects in animals and are so toxic Europe is phasing them out completely.

The ideal mattress should use non-toxic, hypo-allergenic and anti-microbial materials and NOT make you smell like a memory foam mattress in the morning. For those first couple weeks on our Tempur-Pedic, I would wake up with the smell of memory foam in my hair and all over my pjs. Sure, you can tell me that will eventually go away but I’m going to question your advice. Do you really think it a good thing to sleep on something that leaves a chemical smell all over your body?

Trust me when I say it’s much more pleasant waking up smelling like an intelliBED because an intelliBED mattress DOESN’T SMELL. Intelli-Gel is made from natural, non-toxic materials that are hypoallergenic and anti-microbial, which is similar to what is used in baby bottle nipples. The rest of the mattress uses steel springs (for the best support) and organic cotton. And the fire retardant? A natural one, of course.

Intelli-Gel is so safe it is used in hospitals to cushion patients with the severest wound care situations like bed sores and burns.
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Movement

One of the biggest selling points of Tempur-Pedic and other memory foam mattresses is its ability to conform to your body and hold you in place so you toss and turn less while sleeping. It sounds awesome until that memory form conforms in a way that leaves you uncomfortable—in my case, an achy neck and hip—making it so you need to constantly adjust your sleeping position. I think I burned more calories trying to move around on my Tempur-Pedic than I do in Zumba because that memory foam resists position changes. And if you need to get out of bed in the middle of the night, good luck. You’ll need a 10-step escape plan. With how difficult it is to move and reposition yourself on memory foam, it seems a suboptimal (and unhealthy) solution for those suffering from chronic pain, alignment issues or any illness where movement could exacerbate the problem.

Personal experience on an intelliBED has taught me that a little movement at night will happen (I have a specific way I fall asleep at night: back, right side, left side), but it is minimal…and requires minimal effort. And when a child starts vomiting at 2:00 a.m., I can hop out of bed in two seconds versus 10, keeping collateral damage to a minimum.
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Durability

You should get a good night’s rest on your mattress for the entire warranty period, but memory foam wears down as you sleep on it. Not so awesome when you invested a few thousand dollars in your mattress. Leggett & Platt, the leading supplier of mattress materials, conducted a rollator test (a 6-sided roller weighing 230 pounds is rolled back and forth over a mattress 200,000 times) on the leading type of mattress materials. Here’s what they found:

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That memory foam experienced some serious wear while getting rolled. What you can’t see from the graph is most of that wear occurred during the first 10% of the test. That means your memory foam mattress is not only breaking down 4 to 10 times faster than Intelli-Gel, but it’s doing most of that in a relatively short amount of time. It’s good to know my intelliBED was designed to meet the company’s goal of changing less than 5% during the entire 30-year warranty period.
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Guarantee & Warranty

intelliBED lets you sleep on one of their mattresses for 60 days (with a mattress protector), and if you’re not experiencing “the best rest of your life,” they’ll take it back, no questions asked and free return shipping. They also offer a 30-year limited warranty—a warranty that’s a good 10 to 15 years longer than the rest of the industry. Not that you need it since your intelliBED will last up to 10 times longer…

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Recreational Activities

I’m going to get real with you right now. Sex on a memory foam mattress is less than awesome. After 19 years of marriage, you know what works and what doesn’t, and when what works no longer works because that damn memory foam absorbs any and all movement (and makes quick changes difficult), it’s reason enough to get rid of it. I doubt the inventors of Intelli-Gel had “better sex” on the same list as “non-toxic,” “pressure relief,” “proper alignment” and “durability” but it’s just as important, at least for this gal.
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If you’d like to give intelliBED a try, click on my super awesome quote below (or click here) and you’ll receive 10% OFF your purchase AND a that 60-day risk-free trial.

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