I recently bought a memory foam mattress from Ikea. I read at Ikea that it was made of ‘natural wool’ so I thought great! I can get a natural mattress along with the memory foam? That’s a double win! I bought the mattress and got it delivered and was excited to sleep on it for the first night. I setup the new bed and mattress and put my organic eucalyptus sheets on the mattress. I drifted off to sleep in my little gravitated pouch created from the memory foam fairly quickly. There was one thing I noticed before I went to sleep though, I had noticed that the smell of the mattress was rather strong… in fact, the whole room smelled like this new mattress.
So before I went to bed I googled a few terms like ‘how to remove toxins from mattress’ and ‘how to remove new chemical smell from mattress’ and got some good tips. One thing you can do is cut up onions and place them under your bed, so I did that! I went to the store and got the biggest onion I could find and cut it up and placed it under my bed hours before I even went to sleep that first night.
I also read that you could put vinegar into a cup and place that near the mattress so when the vinegar evaporates it will help to absorb the toxins and chemicals. I took two cups and used this as well. So I used the onion and vinegar method for removing the new toxic chemical smell from the mattress and to hopefully absorb as much of the toxins and chemicals before I went to sleep that night on this new mattress. The smell was still strong when I went to sleep but I didn’t think too much of it, I figured it would go away quickly and figured the onion and vinegar would hopefully work quickly.
The next morning I woke up feeling a little ‘off’ would be the best way to describe it. My head felt different. I had tension in my head and I knew right away it was from the chemicals and smell from the mattress because I had never had any feeling like that in my head before. I believe it was because I was directly breathing in these chemicals for 8-hours or so and I just felt it in my head. It wasn’t quite a headache, it was more of a shallow/hollow sensation in my head.
Regardless, it didn’t feel healthy or normal by any means. I got up, drank some water and started my day. I went to the restroom and urinated and noticed that my urine smelled different than it normally did. It had a very foul smell and freaked me out a bit. The tension in my head, the foul smelling urine all in the beginning of the day this early? What was going on? I was convinced that the mattress was full of some sort of chemical/toxin that I just happend to breathe in the whole night which wasn’t too smart on my behalf. Imagine breathing in toxins and chemicals for 8 hours a night, 365 days a year, for the rest of your life. One third of your life is spent sleeping assuming that you sleep 8-hours a night. I continued with my day and asked a few family members who had newer beds if first they had this strong smell and what they did to remove this smell from their mattress. Neither of them had much advice for me so I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Ultimately I decided I would rather sleep on my old smaller mattress (that doesn’t even fit the bed frame) and wait to find the right organic naturally made mattress.
I thought that the weird mental tension and fogginess was weird, to add the foul urine smell to that made me think further about it but even later in the day as I started moving more I had yet another quite nasty reaction from the mattress. I had gas, and that gas smelled exactly like the chemicals my mattress was putting off. Initially I was a little frustrated with the smell and that they used so many chemicals and toxins in the mattress but the morning after sleeping on it made me quite frustrated. To have mental fogginess doesn’t make me happy, I want to keep my mind as sharp as possible for as long as possible and it’s very important to keep my mind healthy. I truly believe that the body follows the mind when it comes to health. The healthier and sharper your mind, the more crisp your mental process is the longer you will live and the higher quality life you will have.
When I had foul smelling gas and urine this naturally frustrated me because my body absorbed a lot of what this mattress was emitting even though I didn’t want too. Your mind is very important but can you guess what is also another very important function of the body that you use every day? Your digestive system! and if I had foul smelling urine and gas and bloating from that gas then this was obviously affecting my digestive system as well.
I’m now searching for an ALL NATURAL mattress that is made from organic materials and is something I can go to sleep on each night knowing that 1/3 of my life is spent in a organic, pure and healthy environment that isn’t spewing toxicity into my body while i’m sleeping. There aren’t many organic mattress companies out there but we can change this… how? Become aware and make smarter purchasing decisions. The more of us that buy organic mattresses, sheets, pillows and products the cheaper these products become for all of us. The only reason a regular memory foam mattress is cheaper than a typical organic mattress is because the demand is much higher which makes the materials and production cheaper.
One company that I admire that is doing great things is SleepingOrganic.com, they have organic mattresses and sleeping in a cloud of toxins isn’t on their product list!
To sum up this article, most mattresses contain many chemicals and toxins such as formaldehyde which is a very toxic carcinogenic chemical found in memory foam mattresses along with many others as well.
I hope you make the smart decision when purchasing your next mattress, I know my next mattress will be much better for my health and recovery while sleeping than the previous one!
Please like, comment and share this article! I really feel this is an important message that isn’t being discussed enough.
Pura Vida! (Means ‘Pure Life’)
David Benjamin
P.S. Really think about what you are sleeping on, if you are sleeping on a mattress like memory foam that is full of chemicals and carcinogens you are breathing these in for 1/3rd of your life while you sleep! When you are sleeping you want this to be a peaceful, quiet, dark and non-intrusive recovery process. You don’t want to be breathing in chemicals that your body has to process and recover from while you are sleeping. This will lower the quality of your sleep and have you waking up foggy. I felt out of it for a few days while my body was detoxing whatever was in that mattress. Here’s a great video from Mercola on mattresses and the potential dangers of chemicals in them:
It’s not only memory foam mattresses that contain these flame retardants and chemicals. You can find them in pretty much every mattress on the market unless you buy an organic mattress
1. Cut up a full-sized onion into about three pieces and put all three pieces underneath your bed near the head, center and feet of the bed. Onions will help to soak up chemicals from the mattress removing them from being diffused into the air.
2. Get a few air purifying plants and put them in your bedroom, this will continue to purify the air! You can also leave your bedroom windows open (one or all of them) during the day so that it airs this out over time.
I hope these tips help!
