For Better Health THE NEWTOWN BEE, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2025
The Importance Of A Proper Mattress By Sam Cross Everyone sleeps, and moreover, everyone sleeps a lot. About a third of life is spent asleep, so a proper mattress is paramount to a good night’s sleep. Bob Zukowski, owner of Custom Sleep Technology Inc (CST), sat down with The Newtown Bee and shared everything about what makes a good mattress, and why getting proper REM and slow-wave sleep is important to living a healthy lifestyle. Zukowski ’s company makes completely custom mattresses designed to fit each customer. He explained that the spine needs to be straight and aligned for proper sleep. “You level the spine, and that gives you a greater opportunity to experience REM and slow wave sleep … When you’re on a mattress that is not made for your body, it can cause pressure points discomfort, and you move. You move your body to adjust, and you may not come to consciousness, but you come out of a deeper sleep, and you adjust. And the more that your mattress is forcing you to do that, the less opportunity you have to get into that deeper, restorative sleep,” Zukowski explained. Humans need to sleep. During sleep, the brain and body are doing a lot of silent work that most people do not realize is happening. Slow-wave sleep is the third stage of sleep that lasts about 20-40 minutes. Slow-wave sleep supports memory; it is when the body repairs tissue, supports the immune system, and eliminates waste surrounding the brain, which helps to fend off Alzheimer’s disease. REM sleep, or rapid eye movement
Custom Sleep Technology, Inc has a few “Design Platforms” at the shop located at 317 South Main Street. Customers can test out the mattresses and try different densities of the Talalay latex before leaving the store. —Bee Photos, Cross sleep, is when vivid dreams occur. At this time, the brain also processes memories and helps solidify what was learned throughout the day. Zukowski shared his own personal experience, saying that if he gets a good night’s sleep, he performs better the next day. If he does not get good sleep, he feels more sluggish and his “brain doesn’t work as well.” Not only did he share his experience, but he used himself as a “guinea pig.” Zukowski tracked his own sleep over a two-week period. He explained for his age, his REM sleep
should be between 18-22% of his total sleep a night, and his slow-wave sleep should be around ten percent. After the two-week period, he calculated his running average of both. While his REM sleep was about 21%, his slow-wave sleep was about 20% of his total night of sleep. How It Works Zukowski ’s customers fill out a body profile online, and, using formulas that are run on AI, the correct densities of Talalay latex are determined for each customer. There are
several densities of this latex, which is manufactured here in Connecticut, to choose from. However, not everyone’s densities are the same. Most married couples share a bed, but the couple will not have the same body type, shape, or sleeping position. Zukowski individualizes each side of the mattress to the person so the couple can sleep in undisturbed harmony. Then, after the body profiles are calculated and the right densities are chosen, Zukowski helps the customers pick out the right kind of pillow. “When we design the bed, obviously, if we’re allowing your shoulders to sink in, we’re changing the geometry of your head to the mattress. So, where you may have used a firm pillow in the past, now maybe a medium density pillow, or a soft density pillow, is appropriate,” Zukowski said. “We actually give people the right pillow. We send it with the mattress. We’re trying to align the neck and the head with the spine. It’s kind of counterproductive to go through all of this and then have the neck with a kink in it.” Zukowski assembles every bed he ships out himself, with a very small crew of other workers. He glues each part together by hand and sends them out. Each latex layer is put into an organic cotton cover, and then another organic cotton cover goes over the entire mattress. With these latex beds, there are no rigid parts, so they can be used in adjustable mattress frames as well. A proper mattress and the right pillow only go so far, however, as there is ( continued on page FBH-6 )
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