My doctor recommended I prop up the head of my bed 4-6 inches to prevent acid reflux at night, using bricks, wooden blocks, or special made bed risers like these
I would make a 6" high wood block for each of the posts at the head end. I would then make 3" blocks for the center posts. I would also angle the tops of these blocks slightly so the posts will sit flat… Fine tuning will probably be required so there are no undue stresses on the frame. I would make the blocks considerably bigger than the footprint of the bed posts so that movements will not cause the bed to fall. Six inches seems a bit excessive to me. I would think 4 inches would be adequate. jmho
Please, people, let the expert speak–that would be my wife, who went online and found this:
The frame fits inside your existing bed frame and for the head of the bed you install the 2", 4" or 6" upright (for king size you get two frames–one for each box spring). Ain’t cheap, but my GERD has fled the scene.
The pillow doesn’t bend you at the waist. It’s a very gentle slope, maybe 30 degrees. You position the narrow end of the pillow against your hips, not your waist, so your whole upper body is raised.
Tilting the whole bed is preferable, but if it’s not possible…
Put 1 brick under each center leg and 2 bricks under each head leg. It looks like your center legs are equally spaced about the mid-point of the rails which makes this work. (?)
Better yet, get a couple of 1" x 4" boards and put one on each side, under the support legs. Then put bricks or whatever spacers under th head end until it is raised the amount you want (3-4 inches, probably). Then put additional shorter spacers underneath the boards ar appropriate places to support the boards. The boards keep the whole frame straight, without any excess stress on it.
I’ve done this for my acid reflux (which thankfully hasn’t been a problem since I’ve lost a lot of weight) and here is something to consider:
I first tried the method of adding risers/blocks under the legs/supports of the bed. The problem was that then my tall headboard looked really strange angled away from the wall so much. I also worried about the lateral stress this configuration would put on the legs. So I decided against this method.
I have a box-spring underneath my mattress, so I cut some lengths of 1x4 lumber to the width of my bed frame. I screwed 5 of the 1x4 pieces together and put them under the box-spring at the head of the frame, and screwed another 3 together and put them under the box-spring about halfway between the head and the foot of the bed, for support in the middle. It worked well, it was cheap, and it didn’t make my bed look like it was trying to sit up.
I looked into those wedge pillows, but the vast majority were that half-length size that only reaches to your hips. Well, I sleep on my side. I don’t want to substitute a back problem from sleeping in a bent-sideways position for acid reflux. I went with the props under the legs at the head of the bed.
That entire slanted bedframe thing looks interesting, though. If the cheap plastic blocks I’m using now ever give out, I’ll look into that one.
Something like that might work with the Select Comfort if you put a board under the mattress (on top of the frame); the SCs have little internal structure so without the board, it would just sag through the open bits.
That said: try the triangular pillow first. The waist bend isn’t that significant, and it’s a cheap and easily-removed solution. I used one for a bit when they thought I had rapidly-worsening GERD. The downside is, I like to fall asleep on my side and that made it VERY tough to do.
The “whole-mattress” pillow thing that Miller suggested looks interesting. The possible downside of it with a Select Comfort might be that the SC is so light, friction wouldn’t keep it from sliding off the pillow. We have a SC and ours tends to shift side to side just from normal getting on and off the bed.
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