Sleep is one of the absolute most important factors in good health and energy levels — arguably as important as nutrition. It’s a top priority for me and my family, and when we moved house last year, I set out to find the best bed for our needs. I had some simple criteria: It needed to be non-toxic, first and foremost. Also, it needed to provide the right comfort and support and actually have research showing that it enhances sleep better than other mattresses. And, it needed to be last a long time without losing the support and comfort qualities (note: as most natural or non-toxic mattresses are worn out within 2-3 years after purchase). In this podcast, I want to take you on the journey with me and show you everything you need to know to find the best non-toxic mattress for amazing sleep.
In this podcast, I interview Robert Rasmussen, cofounder of Intellibed. Robert has made it his life’s purpose to develop mattresses that help people have amazing sleep (and great health and energy as a result), He will uncover the truth about mattresses and how they can affect your sleep and how to find the best non-toxic mattress for amazing sleep.
I will also share my personal review of the Intellibed and why I recommend this bed to EVERYONE who is looking for a new mattress. (Also, listen in to the podcast — or read to the end — to check out the special discount that Intellibed is offering, and the amazing bonus I am throwing in to sweeten the deal.)
In this podcast, we’ll cover:
- The 3 main types of mattresses
- Why you need both comfort and support in your mattress (and why most mattresses only give you one.) Is it possible to have both?
- Are coil springs necessary in a mattress?
- The average lifespan of a mattress (this might shock you)
- Is an all organic mattress the best choice?
- Why there are toxic chemicals in your bed
- The role of dust mites in the toxicity of a mattress, and what to do about it
- Should you be concerned with EMFs and coil springs in a mattress?
- What is Gel Matrix and what makes it superior to conventional foam mattresses?
- And much more…
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How to find the best non-toxic mattress for amazing sleep with Robert Rasmussen (plus my Intellibed Review)- Transcript
Ari Whitten: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Energy Blueprint Podcast. I’m your host Ari Whitten. And today, we’re talking all about mattresses. So I recently moved into a new home and one of the things that I wanted to do when I moved was, get a new mattress. If you’re familiar with me, you probably know that each time I purchase any sort of product or do really anything, if you’ve read my content, you know that I really, really go deep into the research to try and figure out what the absolute best option is.
Now mattresses were actually a tricky subject that I took an unusually long time to research and figure this out, and there’s a lot of conflicting information out there and it’s really hard to make a decision on this subject. I ended up going with a company called Intellibed who make a phenomenal mattress and I am honestly extraordinarily happy.
I could not be happier with my mattress. I think it was the absolute best decision I could have possibly made. So at the end of these months of, you know, I think it was three or four months of research that I did on mattresses in order to arrive at this decision, I wanted to bring someone on who could help give you guys the big picture of the landscape of mattresses and talk about all of these different factors that I had to research and figure out, and why I ultimately decided on Intellibed as being the mattress that I wanted to personally go with. So I brought on the founder of Intellibed, Robert Rasmussen. Now I’ll just read you a little bit about his background here. So Robert graduated from the University of Utah Engineering School in 1983. Upon graduating he worked for a Fortune 50 company, Honeywell based in Minneapolis, as a sales engineer, and after a 10-year career with Honeywell, he was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and helped found a high tech R&D company called EdiZONE. One of the first products this company developed was an advanced wheelchair cushion, designed to prevent decubitus ulcers.
His work in the wheelchair industry launched him into a 25-year career in high tech cushioning. In 1998 Bob acquired the rights for another advanced cushioning material called Gel Matrix, and with his partner Sean Clark formed Intellibed in 1998, 20 years ago, whose mission is to improve people’s lives through better sleep. Bob has become one of the foremost authorities on the difficult challenge to properly and safely support and comfort the human body during sleep. So with that said, Robert, welcome to the show.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Thank you, Ari, it’s a pleasure to be here. You can call me Bob. I go by Bob. Robert sounds a little formal to me. Let’s get comfortable with each other.
Ari Whitten: Cool. It sounds good. One thing that I want to mention to everybody listening, I brought in the founder of Intellibed, but I have specifically asked him, and this is also an important thing for him as well. I’ve specifically asked him to be an objective reviewer. Now obviously he is biased in the direction of Intellibed, that’s his company of course. But I wanted this podcast to be a really objective review and just talk about the facts of different mattresses.
What’s good, what’s bad, what are the pros and cons of different things, different materials used in the mattresses and what are the different factors that someone should be aware of when they’re purchasing a mattress. So Bob, obviously you’re uniquely positioned to do that. You’ve been in the industry of cushioning for over 25 years and you know all about all these different mattresses and the different technologies used and the pros and cons of each thing. Now, one other thing I want to mention before we get into that is just why this is even important.
What to look for when looking for the best non-toxic mattress for you
And now, if it’s not obvious, sleep is an extraordinarily important part of energy levels. This is The Energy Blueprint Podcast. That’s what we’re all about. If you’re sleeping poorly, and having a good quality mattress is a big part of that, if you’re sleeping poorly, you inevitably are going to suffer the consequences in terms of daytime sleepiness and fatigue. So needless to say sleep is extraordinarily important, and within the realm of sleep, mattresses are extremely important.
So Bob, what I’d like you to do to start off is maybe just give like a very broad picture of some of the different factors, some of the more important factors that someone should be aware of when it comes to what kind of mattress to get.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: I first wanted to just make a comment on what you just said.
Ari Whitten: Sure.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: It really, to a large degree doesn’t matter, and I’m not gonna say doesn’t matter. Everything that you do during the daytime, whether it’s your diet, exercise or whatever. All of that will be undermined, if you’re not getting good sleep.
Ari Whitten: 100 percent.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: So you are exactly right, but you know, the thing that I’ve learned in being in the industry for 25 plus years is that most people don’t link the poor feeling that they have during the day with their mattress. They just think, “Oh, I’m getting older, I’ve got too much on my mind.” Whatever the excuse is, they don’t link it back to the mattress. Where in my mind, that’s the obvious place to start. Right? So let’s just talk about the general classes of mattresses that are available today so that you can kind of understand the challenges behind what sleep surface is going to give you the best opportunity to get the restful sleep that you need at night.
There are really, discounting waterbeds… I don’t think that anybody or very few people actually sleep on waterbeds anymore because back in the sixties when everybody slept on them, they all started to develop bad backs, because they’re incapable of supporting the body properly. But there are three general classes of mattresses that are available.
You’ve got innerspring mattresses which are a combination primarily of an innerspring and some sort of foam. And the industry has kind of repurposed those mattresses as being hybrid mattresses today. So that’s what a hybrid is. It’s a combination of springs and foam. You’ve got foam core mattresses, and of course Tempurpedic is the leader in these. They don’t have springs in them. Many years ago Tempurpedic convinced the consumer and spent millions and millions of dollars convincing the consumer that the problem with mattresses was that they had steel, uncomfortable steel springs in them.
And then you have essentially air mattresses. Sleep Number is the leader in these air core mattresses, which essentially is an air chamber with foam on top of it. So you’ve got springs with foam, you’ve got foam with foam or you’ve got air with foam. Those are 90 percent of the mattresses that are made today are those three classes.
But everybody pretty much understands that the weak link in mattresses is foam. And all of these mattresses contain foam. Foam is the primary cushioning material that is used in mattresses and much of our furniture. But the reason that your mattress doesn’t feel anything like it did when you first bought it is because foam breaks down relatively quickly. It breaks down. So the challenge of the mattress industry is simply this. In order to give yourself the support that you need at night, right? The heaviest part of our body is the lower torso.
And so gravity is trying to pull our lower torso, our hips further into the mattress because it weighs more, right? And as soon as the mattress allows that to happen, to sag into a hammock shape, even to a very small degree, it doesn’t take a significant misalignment to cause a problem, then we have lost support. Support is absolutely critical.
We believe it’s the most important thing a mattress needs to provide for you. So you need to start with good support. And so I always challenge and think about these various classes of mattresses in their ability to support you properly. Right? So if you have foam on foam, like you do with the leading memory foam mattress, and that foam is breaking down, where is it breaking down the most? In the center of the bed where most of the work is being done, right? It’s under the heaviest part of your body, and so the foam starts to break down and what happens after a couple of years is your hips start to sag further into a hammock shape.
And that just happens more and more the longer you sleep on the bed. You have the same problem with air, only you are actually adjusting your support. You’re not adjusting your comfort, what you’re adjusting is your support. Because as soon as you let air out of that air chamber, the heaviest part is going to sink further into the bed. So unless you keep that air bed on a very, very high firm setting, you have lost your support. So let’s talk about these hybrid mattresses where you have a combination of springs and foam. Most of those mattresses are 12 to 14 inches thick. The inner spring in those is only about six inches thick. So you’re sleeping on six to eight inches of foam. The same thing happens with foam. It starts to break down more in the center of the bed, your hips are sagging more and more into the mattress, and then as the foam breaks down, it doesn’t protect you from the firmer sublayers in that mattress. And you’ve not only lost support, but you’ve also lost your comfort.
And so in the past you could buy a firm bed which was better for your back. It doesn’t let your hips sag into that hammock shape. Or you could buy a softer bed that is better for your hips. But because those soft materials tend to break down faster, you’re losing your support faster. And all of us have experience with a big body impression that dips in the top of the mattress that you get.
That’s because the foam has broken down. And so when we got involved in the business, we knew that we needed a better alternative to foam. Foam is the weak link in mattresses, and so if we were going to create a better bed, we couldn’t do what everybody else in the industry was doing, which was to restack all these various different types of foam, call it, you know, put a different cover on it and call it a new bed. We couldn’t just reinvent the distribution channel, which is what all the beds in a box did, right?
There’s nothing new in those beds. The innovation that the bed in the box group came up with was a better distribution channel. So they smashed the mattress flat, roll it up so that they can UPS it to you. You’re still dealing with a foam core mattress with foam on foam. They could not possibly solve the problems that we’re talking about here.
And so when we got into the industry, you mentioned that I worked for this R&D company, and our goal was to develop a better cushioning material than foam to comfort and support the human body. And the result of that, after many years of hard work and labor was a material called Gel Matrix. And Gel Matrix is what sets Intellibed apart from any other, any of these other manufacturers, and they solve these problems that we’re talking about. We’ll get more into that as we talk.
Why Ari decided on the Intellibed non-toxic mattress for his family
Ari Whitten: Excellent. So, yeah, on that subject, I should mention that one of the things that happened during my search for a good mattress was actually something I really did not expect and was very resistant to. So I’ll mention my older brother is a chiropractor and has actually been a huge advocate of Intellibed for, I think maybe almost 10 years now. And he’s been recommending them to his patients and seeing amazing results with people who have low back pain or various kinds of pains in different parts of their back or their neck or their shoulder. And really amazing results. And I was, to be honest, I was actually always somewhat resistant to getting one myself, despite the fact that my older brother, who was very much a mentor to me growing up, you know, who has been health conscious since I was 12 and 13 years old, and he was a personal trainer and nutritionist first, and then became a chiropractor later on.
But, you know, he’s very much someone I respect who has been a mentor to me, I still was resistant to it. And the reason why is that you guys have this Gel Matrix material which is technically a synthetic material. And I was, I just immediately discounted that I would… I immediately, you know, kind of brushed off Intellibed because I thought, you know, I’m very naturalistic in my orientation. I want something that’s natural materials, that’s organic cotton and wool and things like that. And I thought I was really going to go in that direction. And one of the reasons that I didn’t, the biggest reason that I didn’t, was reading all these reports of people saying, “Well, yeah, this mattress felt great initially, but six months later or a year later it all of a sudden feels like a totally different mattress and is no longer comfortable. And it’s sagging and has, you know, divots in it and soft spots. And, or not soft spots but, you know, divots or just kind of impressions in the bed where it has sunken in.” And then, you know, basically you got to replace the bed at that point.
So my choice at that point was, okay, well if I go in the direction that I’m naturally inclined to go, which is, you know, based on my sort of naturalistic orientation towards these natural materials, then I’m going to end up having to get a new mattress every one or two years. And that’s what really opened me up to the possibility that maybe Gel Matrix was a superior choice.
The factors that make the Gel Matrix technology in Intellibed superior
But I know it’s not just that, it’s not just the durability aspect. There are other benefits of the Gel Matrix. So can you talk a bit about why the Gel Matrix is so superior?
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Very, very much. You’re exactly right though. It’s something that we struggled with. We wanted to make… while our primary objective, our first objective was to make sure that we were taking care of what… the structural aspects of the mattress. So we’ve got to support the body correctly, right? We can’t let your hips sag into this hammock shape. But every component that we’ve selected has been carefully vetted to make sure that it is nontoxic.
So this Gel Matrix material is among the least toxic materials I’ve ever seen. We’ve had cytotoxicity tests done on it, hemolysis tests were done on it. At our manufacturing line I’ve taken VOC meters out there to measure the VOCs that are coming off the line itself, off the manufacturing line. This smoke, or smoke is really the wrong term, but the materials that are coming off the production line. And there are less VOCs coming off the production line then I was measuring in my office.
Ari Whitten: And I’ve actually seen one of the pictures, I forget exactly who it was, but there was some, I think it’s like a mommy blogger, who actually went to your facility and herself took a VOC, a volatile organic compound device that measures VOCs in the air, and actually took it and measured VOCs in your actual factory that’s manufacturing the Gel Matrix technology.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Yeah. That’s the same thing I did. When she heard about that she said, “I’ve got to come and see this, I’ve got to try.” She did and it proved to be the same. But your point is exactly right. And the most health-conscious people are concerned about VOCs. They’re looking for something organic, but you are exactly right.
These organic materials are… they just cannot hold up to the stresses that are placed on a mattress. And so you pay a premium for them, right? You’re paying five, six, seven, $8,000 for these beds and after a year they are incapable of supporting you correctly. And so we determined at that point, as we evaluated all these materials that our objective was going to be to go after nontoxic. And that has been our objective all along, to be as organic as we possibly could while accomplishing the other needs of the bed. But to be nontoxic.So let’s talk about Gel Matrix, introduce this Gel Matrix material. Hopefully, your listeners are getting an idea of the fact that you need, physiologically speaking for your body, there are two things that you need. And in the past, well, you need both firm support so that your back is not sagging into this hammock shape, your hips are not sagging into the mattress. And so we call that support. The second thing that you need is pressure relief. But I want you to think about this because these two terms are actually, are diametrically opposed to each other, right? So here is the challenge of the entire mattress industry.
It’s the challenge that we think at Intellibed that we’ve solved better than any other mattress manufacturer out there, and it’s what makes Intellibed different.
The challenge is this: how do you apply pressure to your hips to prevent them from sagging into a hammock shape and then relieve the pressure point that’s been caused by applying that pressure to your hips. Your hips and your shoulders stick out further than any other part of your body. You’ve got these bones that are literally trying to push through your skin, right? So you’re pushing on your hips to prevent them from sagging, that’s what firm mattresses do. But then how do you relieve the pressure points so you’re not tossing and turning? You solve one problem, but you create another significant problem.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. And let me rephrase this in a slightly different way. We obviously have curvatures in our spine, right? You know, for everyone listening, we have these curvatures, sort of an “s” curve in our spine. So when we lay on a surface, certain parts of our body are more in contact or less in contact with that surface. So, you know, the back of the head and then the upper back shoulder area and then kind of the hips and butt area. And in between there’s kind of spaces that are less in contact.
And then on those points of contact, if you have basically a really soft mattress, then it sags a lot in those spots and then kinda creates uneven support. But if you have a really firm mattress then you create more even support without too much curvature of the spine and so on. But, on the other side, if you have that really firm mattress, then you create pressure points in those areas, which my understanding is that those pressure points cause enough discomfort as you lay there to actually disturb your sleep and cause you to toss and turn subconsciously throughout the night and actually impair sleep quality. Is that a… would you agree with everything that I just explained?
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Absolutely. You explained it very well. So you’ve got these two needs that you have and in the past you had to choose between the two. You could buy a firm bed which was good for your back and you weren’t waking up with back pain anymore, but suddenly you’re interrupting your sleep cycles, right? It takes about 90 minutes. We go through four to five sleep cycles in a typical night.
It takes about 90 minutes to complete a sleep cycle. So you have to arouse out of the deeper stages of sleep. And really the objective of these sleep cycles is to get down to the bottom of the sleep cycle, which is where the Delta sleep occurs. And it’s the Delta sleep that allows the body to rebuild itself, to regenerate. It builds our immune system. It consolidates our memory. There are so many benefits associated with Delta sleep, or stages three and four of sleep. But you have to go through the various stages to get down to those deep stages of sleep.
And if you’re interrupting them, fragmenting your sleep, you might think that you slept all night long. But the truth of the matter is, if you’re not getting the amount of Delta sleep that you need. And that has been linked to many of the significant disease states that we have right now, including diabetes, heart disease, most of the autoimmune, we’re learning that most of the autoimmune diseases are caused by lack of Delta sleep stages three and four of sleep.
So on a firm bed, you have solved your back pain problems, but now you’re fragmenting your sleep. On a soft bed, you solve a lot of your deep sleep problems, but you’re waking up with back pain. The truth of the matter is we don’t need a firm bed or a soft bed. We need both. We need both a firm bed for our back and a soft bed for our hips and shoulders. And that is the breakthrough of Gel Matrix.
Ari Whitten: So let me interrupt you real quick because probably there are some people listening to this that are like, “This guy’s crazy. This is nonsense. What the heck does it mean that something can be hard and soft at the same time?” So I know what you mean because I’ve experienced it. I lay, I sleep on an Intellibed and I have experienced exactly what you’re talking about. But please explain this concept of hard and soft simultaneously.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: I will. And if you watch the accompanying Webinar that we’re going to add to this podcast, you’ll be able to see visually exactly what I’m talking about. But the Gel Matrix material is different than… if you think of a slab of foam, right? That’s a solid material. But the Gel Matrix is configured into what we call a comfort grid. And this grid consists of… it looks kind of like a checkerboard. And if you go to intellibed.com you can see a picture of what I’m talking about. But it’s this grid with these hollow columns. But it’s the support grid itself that behaves differently than foam does. So it has both a firm element to it and a soft element to it.
So if you were to put, for example, a 12-inch square, a one-foot square piece of plexiglass on the top of our material. And you start putting weight on it until it starts to indent, it will actually support between 50 and 60 pounds on that square foot. If you do that same thing on even a very high-quality high-density foam, that foam will only support about 15 pounds before it starts to indent. So in that manner, it is about three to four times firmer than any other material that’s out there. But under point loads, like under your hips and shoulders were… and if you think about it when you lie down, right? Because our bodies have curves and so forth. Most of us are side sleepers, so if we lie down on our side, for example, the first thing to contact the mattress is our hips and shoulders.
And so most of the weight… the firmer the bed, the more weight is being transferred through our hips and shoulders. And that’s why we get these excessive pressure points on the hips and shoulders that cause us to toss and turn all night long. Under the point loads what happens is these, this comfort grid, this, these walls will collapse. So if you think of a bridge, for example. A bridge is held up by columns and these columns, you can load stuff on top of the bridge. Really, really heavy stuff and it’s going to hold. But it’s going to reach a point if you put one thing, one more thing that’s stronger than the column, then the column collapses, right? And when it collapses, the bridge falls down and it’s incapable of supporting the weight that was up there. It’s exactly how Gel Matrix behaves.
So it is engineered so that right at the point where it would be uncomfortable on your hips and shoulders, this grid collapses. And when it collapses, it allows just the hips or just the shoulders to sink deeply into the mattress.
Then the broad surfaces of the body, like the back or the side, and the legs come into contact with the material, and the weight that was on your hips and shoulders are transferred to your side or to your legs. So in that way, it is both firm and soft. It’s firm exactly where you need it. And it doesn’t matter. It’s not like you’d take some computer to figure all this out, right? These columns are engineered so that they buckle right where they need to.
And so what happens is it doesn’t matter where on the sleep surface you’re lying. You can lie to one side to the other, to the top, to the bottom. The engineering built into this Gel Matrix material is designed to… that’s why we call it Intellibed. It intelligently senses exactly where you need the pressure relief, where you need the support and it adjusts automatically. And it’s… that is the breakthrough of this material. It’s so simple in the way that it behaves, but we believe that this is the most significant breakthrough in the mattress industry since the development of memory foam maybe back in the ’60s. So it’s a remarkable, remarkable breakthrough and it’s the reason that this material behaves so well.
And so this is the result, Ari. The result is that you get the firm support that you need so that you’re not waking up with back pain, and you need, you get maximum pressure relief. So I talked about the pressure relief. We have pressure mapped thousands of people on these various sleep surfaces to see which are best at relieving pressure points of the hips and shoulders.
Ari Whitten: And real quick, can you just explain what you mean by pressure map?
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Yes, yes. Thank you. So they make these sophisticated computerized systems that have like a bed size mat. You can lay on this mat and it’s full of these sensors that will measure pressure. And it gives you a computer readout to show you where the pressure points are. So you can see exactly where your hotspots are. And so the objective is to get rid of those hotspots.
happens with excessive pressure points is this: the body knows, the brain knows that if we don’t move, if we allow that pressure to stay on the skin, then we’re going to develop a bed sore. What happens with a bedsore is that we’ve created enough pressure on the skin to cause the capillaries in the skin to close off. And when the capillaries close off it denies the skin of the nutrients that it needs and it dies.
It dies from the inside out. And bedsores are a nasty thing that takes months and months and thousands of dollars to heal. But our mind, our brain knows that we’re going to get a bed sore and so it wakes us up to turnover. So we need to equalize the pressure on our bodies. That’s the challenge.
And so what the Gel Matrix material does that is better than anybody else is, compared to foam, Gel Matrix will relieve pressure between 50 to 80 percent better. So you get a firm surface that you need for your hips and shoulders, for your back, I’m sorry. And you get the softest of materials for your hips and shoulders so that you’re not tossing and turning all night. That is the breakthrough. That is what nobody else can do in the industry. And that’s what sets Intellibed apart from everybody else.
Ari Whitten: Yes, and I will speak to that point on a personal level. You can literally feel that. I mean within moments of laying on it, you feel exactly what you’re talking about. That you have firm support, almost as if you’re laying like on a really hard surface and you know, there’s a nice feeling to it. Like I actually lay on, you know, every night before bed, I will lay on the hard surface of just the ground, on a flat surface to help relax my spine. It’s actually amazingly good for the spine just to lay on a really hard surface just for five or 10 minutes. And there’s a beautiful effect that occurs from that.
Now, if I tried to sleep on that same hard surface that may be relaxing for a short time, I develop pressure points and it becomes terribly uncomfortable and I develop like actual pains that not only disturbed my sleep, but actually hurt the next day. So Intellibed has that like feel of something that creates that relaxing effect on the spine with that firm support, but simultaneously you don’t have pressure points. So it’s amazing. And I’ve actually, I mean, you can literally feel amazingly deeper sleep from the first night of using an Intellibed. It’s just, it’s palpable.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Well that Gel Matrix is the secret. If we didn’t have Gel Matrix we would be like every other bed company. In fact I wouldn’t be in the mattress industry I can tell you that. Gel Matrix is that different. There’s a couple of other key benefits that I wanted to mention about this Gel Matrix.
We talked about the fact that so many of these foam beds breakdown, and after two years, they don’t feel anything like they did when you first bought them. And you’re not… you’re waking up with a little more pain and you’re thinking, “Man, I just must be getting old. Something’s going on here.” You’re not attributing it to your mattress until finally, you know, after a few years you think, “Oh my gosh, maybe my bed is the problem” because you’ve got these big cavities, body impressions in the top of the bed. You’re sleeping in a taco bed, right? Until you finally get around to replacing it. One of the amazing things about this Gel Matrix material is how durable it is. This material that forms the basis of the Gel Matrix material is a very, very strong but very soft rubber-like material. It’s actually classified as a gel. That’s why we call it Gel Matrix, but it’s not gel in the way that you think of a gel. It’s not a viscous liquid, right? It’s a very, very soft rubber that’s formed into a grid pattern. It’s about two and a half inches thick. And in all of our mattresses it makes up the primary cushioning material that’s in that bed. Now we do use a little bit of foam in our bed. But we use so little and the quality of that foam is the best that we can find.
And so what happens is, because the Gel Matrix is doing all the work in the bed, it actually preserves the life of the foam. And if you only have a couple of inches of foam as opposed to six to eight to 12 to 14 inches of foam in there, then you don’t have the breakdown effect that you have with these other materials. And so even though this is a very complex buildup, when I say buildup I mean the materials that are used in the various layers of the bed, every component that was selected in there was selected on the basis of its durability, and of its non toxicity, and of its ability to be both firm and soft at the same time. So those things are the significant breakthrough of Gel Matrix. It is the only material that is firm and soft at the same time.
And it’s non-toxic and it’s durable. And we haven’t talked about this, but it sleeps cool. Foam traps heat against your body. Gel Matrix dissipates the heat. So it dissipates the heat into the lower surfaces of the mattress. You don’t sleep cold, you don’t sleep hot.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, absolutely. So to recap, main thing is we’re getting rid of pain points that disturb sleep or pressure points that disturb sleep and fragment sleep, and we’re simultaneously supporting the spine properly.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Exactly right, exactly.
Why the Gel Matrix technology in Intellibed mattresses is the biggest breakthrough since memory foam
Ari Whitten: Okay. So one of the other things you mentioned in passing was it’s the biggest breakthrough since memory foam, which was what, what did you say, back in the sixties or something?
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Yeah, the early sixties. NASA was kind of involved in the development of memory foams. They were looking for ways to get rid of the G-forces when going up into space, and so memory foam was born. Tempurpedic acquired the patents to it. And so nowadays everybody thinks you need memory foam in your bed. We have no memory foam in our beds.
Ari Whitten: Right. Well, so that’s an interesting point because you’re framing it like, “Hey, this was a big breakthrough.” So my question is, why not just use memory foam if it’s such a great breakthrough? Why is there a need for Gel Matrix technology in Intellibed?
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Well, because memory foam is like any other foam. It behaves like any other foam except the rebound is slower, so you sink in. But once you have sunk in, it’s like any other foam, right? The problem with foam is this: it has only one component of comfort and that is that it will allow those areas to sink in. But the further you sink in, the harder it pushes back. Well, that’s the problem on our hips and shoulders. They want to sink further into the bed. So it’s pushing back harder there. And actually if you push on a piece of memory foam and it stabilizes, then you realize that you’ve bottomed out into that foam and you’re actually on your hips and shoulders. You’re into the firmer surfaces down beneath, and so it doesn’t relieve pressure any better than any other foam.
So what you need is you need another, a material that just doesn’t compress. And Gel Matrix will begin to compress but then when the pressure gets, exceeds the point where it would be comfortable to us, then the support members in the Gel Matrix collapse. So it compresses then collapses. It’s got two elements to provide what you need for comfort on your hips and shoulders. But then it’s firm enough that when just the hips and shoulders sink in it will stand firm against the other parts of the body. So you get an, like I mentioned before, it’s like four times firmer over broad surfaces of the body than memory foam.
So you get the firm support where you need it and the soft comfort where you needed it is, truly a remarkable breakthrough. It’s so simple in the way that it behaves. But it’s not necessarily just about the Gel Matrix in the bed. We use in all of our beds, we don’t have a foam core, we use tempered steel inner springs in these beds. So they are a true hybrid bed. They are an inner spring with a couple layers of one or two thin layers of foam, and then the Gel Matrix, one or two layers of the Gel Matrix material in there mixed in. And they’ve been carefully engineered and carefully evaluated to make sure that we’re accomplishing these objectives of making sure that we’re giving the best support and the best pressure release simultaneously.
Ari Whitten: Excellent. So to go back to memory foam for a second, there’s one more aspect of this aside from the physical characteristics of it and the comfort aspects of things. One of the other things that I read when I was doing all this process of researching about mattresses, to buy my own personal mattress, was off-gassing concerns. There seem to be some mixed opinions on this subject. But, it was very important to me, especially since I have a son who’s, he’s about to turn two years old. At that time he was closer to one. It was very important to me that he was sleeping on a mattress that does not off-gas any chemicals. And for people unfamiliar with that term it just means to release various chemicals, usually toxic chemicals, things like formaldehyde or volatile organic compounds or benzene. There are various different chemicals that can be released. But basically it releases them into the air where you can then inhale them and then they end up in your body.
The impact off-gassing has on your health and how that relates to your mattress
So one of the concerns that I read about memory foam was around off-gassing. And also simultaneously, one of, and we mentioned this briefly earlier, but one of the other concerns I had with your materials, especially given that they weren’t, it wasn’t just like organic cotton or wool or something like that but it was something that you guys have created, something synthetic, is my immediate, where my head went was, “Oh, this might off-gas.” And, so it was very important to me that I actually saw objective data showing that it does not off-gas any significant chemicals, which we talked about that I was able to see and you’ve measured and someone else has actually come into your factory and measured. But what’s the deal with off-gassing of various materials in mattresses?
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Well, I’m really glad you brought that up because it’s a huge concern to so many people. And especially since literally your face, your nose, your respiratory system is buried in this material for eight hours a day. So it’s something that you have to be concerned about. So you’re exactly right. I mean, any of us who have had a memory foam mattress, a memory foam pillow, knows the odor that comes off of those. There’s a lot of concern around that odor. And unfortunately for the consumer, the mattress manufacturers are not required to disclose the materials that are in there. The only thing that they’re required to do is to prove that it meets certain burn tests, right? Well, that actually created more problems than it solved because the materials that they were using to make the mattresses not burn up in these tests were toxic.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. And just to be clear, we’re talking about flame retardants.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Flame retardants. Exactly. Flame retardants that are used in mattresses.
Ari Whitten: Because back in the day when people were smoking cigarettes while laying in their bed, there were several people who accidentally let some embers go onto the bed and then the mattresses basically just caught on fire and people were dying so…
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: That did happen. It did happen. But the government’s biggest concern was that here you have a foam mattress that when you light it on fire, it creates a tremendous heat source. And so what they were really trying to do was to prevent the mattress from adding to the heat source in the case of a fire. It wasn’t necessary, although this did happen, people smoking in bed and their beds caught on fire. It took a long time for the fire to get down to the mattress because you have sheets and all these other things on top of the mattress. But the bigger concern of the government as we didn’t want to add to the heat load of the bedroom. And so the house caught on fire and then all of a sudden the mattress caught on fire and you have an infernal, right?
So that was their objective and, you know what, it was a good objective. But the problem is that they didn’t monitor the materials that were used to create or to make the beds flame resistant. They didn’t ever make them flame retardant, they made them flame resistance. So what the standard calls for is that the mattress can actually catch on fire to pass the test. It just can’t give off more than a certain heat load. So anyway, that’s probably a lot more information than you ever wanted to know about…
Ari Whitten: No, well, thank you for clarifying. I was thinking that it was just from, you know, it originated with just cigarettes. But it does make sense, of course, that if somebody’s house catches on fire and then you have a mattress that is extremely flammable, that really adds to that effect and makes it burns out very fast such that people don’t even have time to get off their bed or exit the bedroom. This could be a big problem.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: That’s right. And it makes it very, very difficult to put the fire out, right? In the center of the room. You’ve got this thing that is creating so much heat that it’s preventing everything else, from the fire going out, right?
So it was a good objective, but unfortunately, like the materials that are used in the foam and so forth, the government didn’t require mattress manufacturers to disclose the materials that they were using in the foam. And there’s a lot of discussion about the materials that are used to make polyurethane foam become memory foam, to give it that slow rebound characteristic. And there was a lot of concern about, around the fact, well, how do we make the beds more flame resistant?
Ari Whitten: And just, and sorry to interrupt, but just to be clear, this is a government mandated thing for all mattress manufacturers that they must manufacture mattresses that display a certain degree of flame resistance.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: With one exception, and that is that you could actually go to your doctor and have a prescription written and that would allow you to go to a mattress manufacturer and say, “I don’t want any of this flame retardant stuff in my bed.” But you could do that, but very rarely done. In fact, I’ve never heard of it being done. So yeah, all of us are bound by this need to make our beds pass this fire, this flame test we call it. And so a lot of companies have just taken the easy way out, the cheap way out. The cheap thing to do is to spray a fire retardant on the inner parts of the bed and it’ll pass the test and we’re good to go. But there are ways to make the bed so that it passes these tests without using any of these harmful chemicals.
I wanted to go back, you were talking about memory foam earlier and we got a little bit sidetracked there. But a lot of the concerns around memory foam is just the odor that comes off of this and what’s in there? And can I breathe it? And so many people were complaining about the side effects of the VOCs, which really included things like headaches and dizziness and respiratory irritations. Even nausea and vomiting and worsening of their asthma symptoms.
They were, everybody was complaining about the Internet about these things because they bought these memory foam beds, And you’re right, it’s exactly what you said before. VOCs are chemicals usually used in the manufacturing process that can easily become airborne. And it, the effect is worse when you first get the product. But then as they air out, then you don’t smell the odors. That doesn’t mean that it’s still not off-gassing. You just don’t smell the odors anymore. And so it’s a huge concern, but it’s one that’s almost impossible for the consumer to really vet out before they buy the bed.
Ari Whitten: Unless they’re going to go get a VOC meter and go to different factories where, you know, they have these mattresses and actually measure the amount of VOCs coming off of each mattress, which I would imagine most people are not willing to do.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: It’s a very difficult thing to do. Very difficult.
Ari Whitten: One thing I want to mention, a subtle point, but I want to mention to everybody listening. This is something that I’ve encountered. It’s kind of, It’s interesting because it’s a very simple and very obvious thing to some people, but it’s actually a novel thing for some people as well. People, certain people don’t actually realize this. But some people are unaware that if you are smelling something it’s not just sort of an odor. Like you’re not just smelling something and having the sensation of smell.
You are smelling something because there are literally molecules of a particular substance that are entering your body. And you are inhaling them and they’re getting into your lungs and they’re then getting into your bloodstream. So, you know, some, like I mean, I’ve encountered people who are smelling, you know… For example, like you know gardeners who are landscapers, who are using leaf blowers and things like that that are putting off all these gasoline exhaust fumes.
They often think they’re just smelling exhausted fumes and it’s just a sensation of smell. But they are literally inhaling all of these chemicals. Same is true with these memory foam mattresses. If there’s a big odor, a strong odor, that’s because there are lots of chemicals entering your system. And as you pointed out also, the absence of a detectable, overtly detectable odor doesn’t necessarily mean there’s nothing present. It just may be below the threshold of what is detectable on an overt level as far as your smell.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Yep. You’re exactly right there. And what you’re smelling is, you know, each of these compounds, let’s call them. The molecules themselves have their own distinct characteristics. One of them is odor, right? So as the molecules themselves release into the air, they become airborne and then you’re breathing those molecules. And you’re right, they can enter the bloodstream and they can get lodged in the lungs. All of those become something that you need to worry about.
And there’s been a significant effort among the health industry to try to identify those things and to see if we can eliminate most of the toxins that are present in your home. Our goal, you know, one of our beliefs is that that really starts certainly in the bedroom with your mattress.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you’re, like you said earlier, if you’re spending eight hours with your face buried into something, hopefully it’s nontoxic and not, you know, for those eight hours not continually releasing chemicals into your respiratory pathways and your bloodstream that are harmful to human health. Which unfortunately actually is the case with a lot of these mattresses. Because you know, as we were just talking about, they’re required by law to have a certain degree of flame resistance. And people, you know, accomplish that with spraying chemicals into the mattress. But they’re not required by law to have a certain threshold as far as what they off-gas or to have a certain compatibility with human health.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: It’s ironic, isn’t it?
Ari Whitten: Yeah. It’s like don’t catch on fire, but you know, and kill you in an instant, but we’re going to kill you slowly over years and decades.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: The likelihood of you burning up in your bedroom is so remote compared to the health risks that’s caused everyone of us. Every one of us are sleeping on these things, right? So that is affecting every one of us. Whereas, you know, one in a million or whatever the statistic is, I’m not sure what it is, is affected by the mattress catching on fire. It’s ironic.
How dust mites in your bed can affect your health and energy
Ari Whitten: Yeah. So one of the other things that was interesting to me as I was doing research was dust mites. And, you know, the possibility that even these natural mattresses that let’s say are made of just organic cotton or wool that don’t off-gas anything. Let’s assume you know, they are organic, there’s no pesticide residues or something like that that are potentially off-gassing. Even there, they might over time get filled with dust mites which poop, basically.
The feces of dust mites is something that can then get into the air and into our respiratory tract and still become sort of, it’s not, I don’t know if you could call it off-gassing per se, but it’s sort of the same idea that toxins are getting from the mattress into our bodies. And so that was another issue that even these sort of purely natural nontoxic options that don’t off-gas any chemicals might still be problematic in that way.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Yeah. Well that’s a good point. There are a number of ways to handle the dust mite issue. What we do, what we recommend that you do is just get a good quality mattress protector. Dust mites feed on your skin, the skin that sloughs off your body and gets into the surface of the mattress. If it doesn’t have any food, then the dust mites can’t live.
And so we put a protectant that’s designed to work with our material on top of the bed and that keeps the dead skin and all the body fluids and all those kinds of things out of the bed so there’s nothing for the dust mites to feed on. And you just peel that off when you need to and throw it in the washing machine and hang it out to dry and you’re good to go.
Do you get EMF exposure from a mattress’s coil springs – true or false?
Ari Whitten: Got you. So a couple of other concerns that came up during my research. One was EMFs in relation to springs, to coil springs in mattresses. I’m curious if you have looked into that at all.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Absolutely. We have looked into that and what we have discovered, in fact, I can send you some research that we’ve recently seen, that you’ve got your coil springs in there. They emit virtually no EMFs. So you always have a trade-off. It doesn’t matter what material you use, there’s always some type of trade-off. The question is how can we limit the risk of those tradeoffs the most? And that’s really what we’ve been all about, right? So you know, one of the tradeoffs that we have with our mattresses is these materials that we’ve used are very, very high quality and they’re expensive materials so our beds are not cheap.
But when you consider the fact that they’re going to last you for 15 to 20 years and still give you very consistent pressure and support, then you realize that you’re actually paying less for this bed than others. And so as I mentioned, there are a lot of concerns around these things. I’ve got a link that I’ll send to you, Ari, that talks about these EMFs. And what this link will show you is that there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that coil springs inside a mattress create detectable EMFs. And so…
Ari Whitten: Excellent. Well, I’ll post that on the page for this podcast and the link will be theenergyblueprint.com/mattress. So just for everybody listening, theenergyblueprint.com/mattress. And you’ll be able to obviously get the transcript of this episode as well as any links like the ones, the one that Bob just mentioned.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Yep. Good.
Does an expensive mattress mean it’s the best mattress in the market?
Ari Whitten: So one other thing that I want to talk about. Actually I’m curious if I can just ask this very candidly. There is, there were two other companies that I was looking into. I was initially kind of, like I said, looking into some of the organic cotton and wool mattresses. But then when I found out, you know, that I was probably going to have to replace the mattress every one or two years because they were going to get worn out and no longer be comfortable like they were initially, I kind of ruled that out. But one of the other aspects of this, or the other… a couple of the other companies I was looking at, one was called, oh geez, now I’m forgetting the… I don’t think… it’s Saatva, I think, a hybrid mattress with latex foam and…
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: That would be what we would call a bed in a box.
Ari Whitten: Right.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: And that did have an innerspring, Saatva’s do have innersprings in them. Now what’s the other?
Ari Whitten: So there was, man, I’m trying to remember this company. It’s a, I think it starts with an “s,” but it’s like wooden planks, I think almost like bamboo, like a bamboo bottom. Like it’s like flexible wood sheets and then a mattress that goes on top of that. Samina, that’s what it is. Have you, seen their company, that company?
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Well, what you’re describing, if you’re talking about, wood slats that go underneath the bed?
Ari Whitten: Yeah
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: On top of these, wood slats and so forth. Those kinds of things are very common. In fact, one of the things that we get questioned about a lot is what about adjustable bases where the head and the feet articulate and the mattress sits on top of those things? The only thing that I’ll say about those things, the bases in general, that you need a good supportive surface. If you put it on a slat, for example, that gives in the center, then you’ve lost your support. The mattress cannot overcome that. So you need a good box spring, you need a good, a good base underneath it. You need a good foundation under the mattress. But as far as Saatva and a lot of these other companies, there’s been a whole range of companies that are bed in a box.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: We call them bed in a box. They roll them up and they ship them UPS. That’s the big advantage. You don’t have to go down to the mattress store and check these beds out. You just get on Amazon, and you order the bed and it shows up a few days later and you take it up in your room and you take the plastic off and it pops up and wow, that was fantastic. But let me just ask you logically, does it make sense to you that if you could compress a mattress to a fraction of its original size and then roll it up like a sleeping bag, does it make any sense to you that that mattress could possibly provide the longterm support that your body needs?
Ari Whitten: Probably not.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: No no. So that’s the challenge with those. Yeah, you can buy those things for a thousand, $2,000, right? And you have to…
Ari Whitten: Well, actually, so the one that I’m talking about, Samina, I think it’s a latex bed. Latex and rubber are essentially equivalent terms, are they not?
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Yes, latex rubber.
Ari Whitten: Okay. So I think it’s a latex foam mattress. It uses very high-quality materials, but I think like on the low end they’re like $15,000 and so I just, and I think on the higher end, maybe close to 25 or maybe even higher than that. And I just really could not justify purchasing…
There are lots of mattresses like that, we’ll call that ultra-luxury. But it’s out of the price range of most people. And you know, typically, let’s talk about a latex mattress. It’s essentially the same thing. Most latex mattresses have a polyurethane core or an innerspring, and then the latex material and various densities and softnesses above the core. And unless, my belief after 30 years in the high tech cushioning business is that you should never buy a mattress that doesn’t have an innerspring in it.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Tempered steel, inner springs provide the best long-term support. That cannot be argued because inner springs are firm enough and tempered steel inner springs particularly won’t break down over time. And so most tests show that they’ll lose, over 20 years, less than five percent of their resiliency, which means their ability to rebound with the same force. And so when you’re talking about support, you don’t want your midsection sinking into the mattress as we talked before.
The core of the mattress needs to prevent that from happening. That’s really the role of the core of the mattresses. And that’s why we discount the air beds and the foam core beds. They cannot provide good longterm support. Tempered steel inner springs can, if you put the right materials on top of the innerspring. So what a lot of manufacturers do is, they put materials that break down on top of it. You’ve completely negated the benefit of this spring when you do that, right?
: Because the spring has to provide the good base foundation to prevent your hips from sagging in there. But if you’re just going to pile a bunch of materials on top of that, that break down quickly and still get body impressions in the top of it, then you have, you’ve negated the effect of the inner spring. And so again, that’s where Intellibed is so different than anybody else is the materials that we use on top of the inner spring don’t break down like that. And so you get consistent comfort and consistent support. I slept on the same Intellibed for 15 years. I brought it into the office the other day. We opened it up, we looked at the materials that were in there and it showed virtually no breakdown of any of those materials. So…
Ari Whitten: Wow.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: The point is that you don’t want good comfort and support for just the first year or two years that you sleep on it. You need consistent comfort and support for many, many years. And if you don’t have that then honestly you need to be replacing your bed every two to three years. Because most of the beds that are built today could not possibly support you correctly after two to three years. Even though they still feel comfortable to you, even though you might not be waking up with back pain, in time, you’re going to… you have allowed your skeletal structure to deform to the shape of the bed and eventually that’s going to lead to pain.
The best mattress – Intellibed warranty
Ari Whitten: Yeah. And then this was actually a big issue for me and part of what ultimately caused me to end up choosing Intellibed. But just to contrast that, what, I already know the answer to this, but what is the warranty length on Intellibed?
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: We have a 20-year non prorated warranty, which is unheard of in the industry.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. And this is a big deal. So just to repeat that, 20 years. A 20-year warranty. You guys guarantee that your product is going to stand the test of time and continue to provide comfort, not just a couple of years but for decades.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Exactly right. We’ve been selling beds for 18 years now. We spent less than $20,000 last year on warranty repairs. Tens of thousands of these beds. And so they don’t break down. We’ve made actually quite a few improvements even since a couple of years ago when you got your bed, because we’re always trying to innovate and so forth. But I slept on the same bed for 15 years. I loved that bed. The only reason I stopped sleeping on that bed is we developed a new design and I wanted a personal experience with that so I started sleeping on it. It’s incredible by the way. But I still loved the bed that I slept on for so many years.
The best mattress – Intellibed vs. Purple
Ari Whitten: Yeah. Excellent. One other candid question for you. There’s another company and… I’ve been recommending Intellibed among my Energy Blueprint members in my private community for over a year now. But one of the questions that sometimes comes up is Purple mattresses, which this is another company that seems to be using technology that at least on the surface appears, you know, very similar to the Gel Matrix technology. So what’s the difference between Intellibed and Purple mattresses?
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Well, there’s really a couple of differences. Purple has gone after a completely different marketplace than Intellibed does. Intellibed stands for wellness, Intellibed stands for luxury and support. Only the best materials are used in Intellibed. That’s why the Intellibed is more expensive than a lot of these. It’s in the range of a Tempurpedic or a Sleep Number, for example, a high-end bed. It’s not like the 15 or $20,000 beds that you were mentioning before. So it’s in the upper end of what we would classify as a luxury category. Purple is essentially one of the beds in a box and they’ve gone after a different consumer. They’ve gone after primarily the millennials out there and they have these clever videos on the Internet and so forth. And you know, for the price range for what they are designing and building it’s a great product. But the main difference is they use a different raw material. Their Hyper-elastic Polymer, as they call it, is a totally different formulation than what we use in our Gel Matrix. And even though the two materials look the same, they’re formed into a comfort grid, for example, they really behave very, very differently. And so if you want the consistent longterm comfort and support that we’re talking about, they really don’t compare very well. And so, yeah, I mean if you can only afford, you know, a thousand or 2000 bucks, it’s not a bad option. But if you really have serious health problems and health issues… and they’ve really kind of tried to capitalize on the durability of our Gel Matrix material, but they’ve only been in business for a couple of years now, right? So they don’t have the pedigree that we have. They don’t have the hospital pedigree that we have where we’re actually curing bedsores. They’re not in hospital beds. And so that’s the main differences between the two.
Studies have shown why Intellibed has the best non-toxic mattress for sleep efficiency
Ari Whitten: Excellent. Are there any other factors that you think are worth mentioning here? We’ve talked about off-gassing, we’ve talked about dust mites, we’ve talked about the flame retardants, we’ve talked about durability. We’ve talked most importantly about the different aspects of comfort and support and how to avoid pain and how to simultaneously support great sleep quality. And you know, how those two things are kind of diametrically opposed and how Gel Matrix solves that problem and makes them not diametrically opposed anymore. Are there any other factors that you think are important to mention when somebody is looking at choosing the best mattress?
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Yeah, just two things. The first is we actually launched a study several years ago with a research, a Stanford sleep research doctor, his name was Dr. Robert Troll. And Dr. Troll did this study where he actually wired up patients, he had a Tempurpedic, a Sleep Number… And his objective was to look at the higher end beds and see which provided the best sleep efficiency. Sleep efficiency he defined as the amount of deep restful sleep that you get throughout the night. And so he actually wired people up, you know, with the… so he could measure the brainwaves. He could actually…
Ari Whitten: And Bob, actually, sorry, do you mind if I just interrupt you because I think that point of sleep efficiency is a really important concept. This is something that I teach about quite a bit. I just want people to grasp it is possible to spend a certain amount of time in bed, let’s say seven to nine hours, and wake up not really refreshed and not having slept that deeply, actually gone in, spent a lot of time in the deep restorative, regenerative phases of sleep. And it’s possible to spend the exact same amount of time in bed, but have, for each of those hours that you were asleep, to have actually resulted in much more regeneration and deep healing sleep.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Yeah. And let me just point out to you. In fact, I’ll see if I can find a link to this 60 Minutes …
Ari Whitten: Yeah, please, and we’ll post that on the page as well, theenergyblueprint.com/mattress.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Yeah. So 60 minutes did this, it wasn’t necessarily a study. What they did was they were trying to look at the effects of what happened when you interrupted your sleep and you didn’t get the deeper sleep cycles. They took a perfectly healthy 20 something-year-old adult male, no issues whatsoever. And what they did was they wired him up at night and he’d go to sleep and every time his brainwaves slowed down, like they do when you get to Delta sleep, every time they got to the point where he’d go into Delta sleep, they interrupted his sleep. They, I can’t remember if they shook him or rang a bell or something like that, but it aroused him enough that he never got down into the Delta sleep.
Ari Whitten: And if was him I definitely would have punched those researchers in the face.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: He agreed to do it. I don’t know how much money they paid him to do it, but they would have had to pay me a lot more than I think that they paid him. He was a 20 something-year-old so…
Ari Whitten: They were probably like, “Here’s 30 bucks.” And he’s like, ‘Score!”
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: So anyway, what they found is within a week, I want to say within three days, he was already showing prediabetic conditions. Perfectly healthy, just by interrupting his sleep. And when he woke up in the morning, they asked him how he slept, “Felt like I slept pretty good, right?” So when we talk about sleep efficiency, what we mean is the quality of our sleep, not the quantity of our sleep. So if we’re completing our sleep cycles properly and we’re getting the proper number of those at night, it might be possible for you to sleep five or six or seven hours and still get better sleep than you would if you had slept eight hours with this fragmented sleep. So fragmented sleep is a huge issue. We’re just starting to learn about it and the problems caused by it. But suffice it to say that there is enough evidence out there to suggest that if you’re not getting the Delta sleep, if your sleep is being interrupted for any reason, and one of the biggest, what I call “sleep robbers” is your mattress.
Ari Whitten: And that physical discomfort that’s happening on a subconscious level as we were talking about earlier.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Exactly. So back to this study that Dr. Troll did. He measured people up and he actually, we’ve been pushing him hard to publish this study. He hasn’t published it yet. But what he, his comment was that Intellibed provides the best restorative sleep of any of these mattresses, compared to Tempurpedic or Sleep Number, that’s out there. And what he meant by that was that he could actually measure the fact that they were getting deeper sleep, these deeper stages of sleep, which is so critical to our health and our wellness, then these other mattresses that were out there. So that’s the first thing that I wanted to mention. The second thing is that we’ve worked out a deal together so that your followers can get the best deal that’s out there on one of these beds.
The incredible Energy Blueprint and Intellibed offer
Ari Whitten: Yes. Thank you for mentioning this. And I appreciate you guys doing this for my audience. I reached out to you guys basically saying, “Hey, I love this product.” This is a product… you guys, just to be clear, you guys didn’t gift me. I purchased this myself for myself and my family because after all the research that I did, this is the product that I arrived at and said “I believe this is the best thing on the market.” And now having slept on it for over a year now, I am very much convinced that I made the best decision possible. Hence why I’m reaching out to you to now have you on and why I reached out to try and negotiate a deal for my audience. So you guys, I’m very grateful to say, have offered my audience a 10% discount on this product, which when we’re talking about products in this price range makes a huge difference. So thank you for that. I really, really appreciate that.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: So let’s be specific about that.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: I’m going to give your, on any of the products that they order from Intellibed, they can either call us directly. We’ve got a toll free number 888-gelbedz, 888g-e-l-b-e-d-z, beds with a “z.” They can call in to 888-gelbedz, talk to one of our sleep consultants. They are very good at helping you pick out the right bed that’s for you. And if you just mentioned the code “energy blueprint” then you get the 10 percent discount plus what you’re offering.
Ari Whitten: Yes. And also, can they mention my name? Would that also work? Just to remember the code… they could just say, “Hey, I heard about you on a podcast with Ari Whitten from The Energy Blueprint Podcast”?
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Certainly they can mention that.
Ari Whitten: Okay.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: If you go to the website, though, and you order it on the website, you’re going to have to put the code in “energy blueprint.”
Ari Whitten: Okay. So yeah, if you call them just mention anything and it’s probably worth calling, right? Because you have a few different options of mattresses. You know, obviously different sizes, but a few different options of technologies as well. And so it’s, you kind of work with people to help figure out what’s right for them.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: They’re really, really good at listening to what your specific likes, dislikes and sleep problems are, and helping you pick the right bed so that you don’t have to go through, you know “Oh man, did I get the right bed or not?” They’ll spend whatever amount of time and typically, you know, we’ll hear these guys talking to a particular customer for half hour, 45 minutes, just making sure that they understand exactly what you need. They’re really, really good.
Ari Whitten: Excellent. So one other thing I want to add to this for everybody listening, I also went in on this negotiation and put my money where my mouth is and I want to offer all of you listening an opportunity to get my program, The Energy Blueprint, which is normally $497, normally $500 basically. I will give it to you for 50 percent off. Get $250 off the normal price of the program if you just purchase an Intellibed, any Intellibed. Whatever option is right for you I’ll give you 50 percent off my program. So all you have to do is just send me the receipt after your purchase and I will arrange that for you. If you just contact [email protected], we’ll get you taken care of. So that’s just another way of me trying to incentivize you guys to actually do this for a couple reasons.
One is, obviously for a lot of people these products are, they’re significantly pricey. This is not a decision that you just make lightly and say, “I’m going to, you know, put this money down and you know, it’s just no big deal.” For most people, it is a big deal to make a decision like this. So I just want to help you out in any way that I can. In addition to that, we haven’t talked about this Bob, but I actually would also like to offer my audience scholarships to anybody who would like one of these beds, but genuinely it’s a really, really difficult decision for them.
I will actually give you, I will gift you The Energy Blueprint for free for anybody that is in extreme financial hardship. So just send a message to [email protected] and let us know your circumstances as far as, you know, the details of your financial situation, and, but you know, the fact that you’re going to purchase one of the Intellibeds anyway. And then I will actually gift my entire program to you as a thank you for supporting your own health by making this decision.
And this is something that I believe in that much. This is not something I’ve ever done before. I’ve never offered a discount on my program like this. I’ve never incentivized anybody to purchase product. But I just believe in the power of sleep to support people’s health and energy so much. And I believe in your product, Bob, Intellibed, that this is literally one of the best decisions that someone can make to support their health possible. So I want to do everything in my power to support everyone in making this decision.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Well, I appreciate that. That’s wonderful. And we’re pleased to partner with you, Ari. We believe that our objectives are completely 100 percent aligned. Helping people build their energy starts with their sleep. And it continues during the day when, you know, so many of the decisions that we make, including the things that we eat and our lifestyle, our ability to exercise, all the things that you stand for. It’s a perfect complement between the two. So 888-gelbedz with a “z.” Call and we can really begin to help you continue to understand this and get you the right bed.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. Well, thank you so much again, Bob, I really appreciate you offering this discount and working with me to make this happen. And one final note I want to mention, the study that you just mentioned as far as like actually showing that Intellibed was superior in actually helping people have higher sleep efficiency and get deeper restorative sleep. That was one of the big needle movers for me to actually make the decision. I’m a science guy.
Everybody who listens to this Podcast knows that about me. I need to actually see the data and you guys were pretty much the only company that I saw actual objective data saying this stuff works. So, and now, like I said, I’ve experienced it and it really does. It’s amazing. Everyone listening, I highly, highly recommend that you go out and get one of these mattresses. So make it happen and I’m here to support you in every way possible to make that happen for yourself and for your family. So Bob, thank you again so much. Really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to do this with me. And, have a wonderful rest of the day.
Robert Rasmussen – Intellibed: Thank you.
How to find the best non-toxic mattress for amazing sleep with Robert Rasmussen (plus my Intellibed Review)– Show Notes
What to look for when looking for the best non-toxic mattress for you (4:34)
Why Ari decided on the Intellibed non-toxic mattress for his family (12:52)
The factors that make the Gel Matrix technology in Intellibed superior (15:31)
Why the Gel Matrix technology in Intellibed mattresses is the biggest breakthrough since memory foam (34:45)
How dust mites in your bed can affect your health and energy (50:01)
You get EMF exposure from a mattress’s coil springs – true or false? (51:46)
Does an expensive mattress mean it’s the best mattress in the market? (53:58)
The best non-toxic mattress – Intellibed warranty (1:00:35)
The best non-toxic mattress – Intellibed vs. Purple (1:02:05)
Studies have shown why Intellibed has the best non-toxic mattress for sleep efficiency (1:04:50)
The incredible Energy Blueprint and Intellibed offer (1:10:10)
Links
You can find more information on the Intellibed non-toxic mattresses here.
In order to get 10% off on your purchase, use the code ”Energy Blueprint”
For the link to the study on EMF, go here.
