My main issue with EM is that I wake up hot every night and have great difficulty getting back to sleep. Lack of sleep is what ran my health completely into the ground (I’m surprised I didn’t die to be honest) – and what has made it immensely difficult to get my health back. Luckily I’ve been able to improve my sleep with herbs and supplements and my health has SLOWLY, SLOWLY improved as my sleep has improved – which is great. But I still need to get better sleep in hopes of having a normal life and normal health again.
I didn’t realize until yesterday that water cooled mattress pads exist. A youtuber I already subscribe to just happen to do a video on the The Pod Pro – the “Cover” version I believe.
If I understand correctly it automatically regulates a set temperature based on room / body temperature, but I’m not 100% sure.
If anyone has tried this, or anything like it, I’d be interested in your experience. I’m concerned that the bed might be too cold to start with and I’d have problems falling asleep cold. Unfortunately, I need to be WARM to fall asleep, but then wake up super HOT, with my hands and feet roasting, around 3-4 AM.
There are some other water cooled mattress pads I just discovered as well, although The Pod Pro seems to be the most effective at cooling and have the most features (from what I’ve read so far).
Chilisleep makes two coolers as well: “The Cube” and “OOLER”. The main difference seems to be that the OOLER has a sleep scheduler built in, although the external form-factor looks different as well.
Anyway, does anyone have experience with these, or other water-cooled mattress pads?
Hi Nathan
I bought a Chilipad to try because they let you have a trial period with a money back guarantee. It really does cool the bed very efficiently. Unfortunately, although my legs and feet burn, the top half of my body needs to be a normal temperature and the Chilipad cooled the whole bed. Ideally, a pad that fits the bottom half of the bed would have worked for me but they don’t make a small enough product. I had no problem returning the pad and the customer service was excellent so it could be worth a try.
Hope this helps
Di
Awesome – thanks for the feedback, Di! I think I might try the Pod Pro Cover – it is in the same ballpark as the OOLER, price wise. But all the reviews seem to prefer the Pod Pro Cover.
I can relate the the issue you had though – my knees get cold even when my feet and hands are hot. So I don’t know if it’s going to work, for me, as well. I guess all I can do is try it. The Pod Pro has a 30 day trial. I’d hate to send it back if it doesn’t work but the price makes it a big commitment. The “cover” is $100 off this weekend and the video I posted had a code for another $100 off, so I guess that takes a wee-bit of the “sting” away.
I’m doing a lot of outside painting this weekend but should probably spend some time deciding if I’m going to take advantage of the sale. I wish the price wasn’t so high.
Your going to find your comfort is of most importance for your well being. If you can afford this and it works for you then it is a good investment.
I know I would suffer without central air. No matter the cost, I will pay it for my health and well being.
Best wishes to you.
I took the plunge – the queen “cover” was $1600 – after $200 in discounts. Ouch.
I’m a bit apprehensive after more research regarding their poor customer service and trying to reach someone today with no luck – although it is the day after the 4th of July and a holiday for some. My guess is that they are a young and rapidly growing company and facing growth / staffing issues. I’ve worked in that environment before, so I can kind of relate.
Anyway, I think I can live with the drawbacks I’ve looked into – except one possibility: A video review which mentioned that it uploads 11GB of data a month. Yes – UPLOADS (not downloads)! I’m on an archaic internet connection in a rural area and that amount of uploading would totally cripple my internet, which would be a no-go – as I work from home. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get ahold of anyone today to confirm the upload sizes (live chat was ignored as well as my voicemail requesting a return call) but I didn’t want to lose the sale opportunity, which expires at midnight. It is back ordered and isn’t set to ship until the 19th – at the very soonest – so that should give me time to talk to someone and cancel the order if needed.
I’ll keep the group updated on my experience. It may be a few weeks before I even get the product – assuming I don’t cancel the order due to upload requirement.
68 degrees is the ambient air temperature at which exposed skin begins to lose body heat. The forecasted low temperature for your location over the next week is between 54-58 degrees at night. Wouldn’t it just be cheaper to open a window and/or sleep with less bedding?
If the ambient air temperature of a room is 68 degrees or less, you’re not going to be waking up hot. You will end up cold unless you’re under a mountain of covers—and if it’s the bedding that’s the problem, changing it is a lot cheaper than $1600.
On the other hand, if you’re waking up “super HOT” because of EM flares, that’s because your parasympathetic nervous system predominates at night and blood vessels dilate, leading to the sort of increased blood flow that is problematic for individuals with EM.
A $1600 mattress cooling pad is not going to stop that from happening.
I’ve had the Ooler for the last 3 months (If I remember correctly it was $600) and cannot recommend it enough! I was having to cool my house to arctic-level temperatures to be able to sleep with my EM because it flares at night, but this way I can directly cool my bed. With fairly shitty A/C over here, it’s been a lifesaver. What’s awesome is that you can schedule the pad to have different temperatures throughout the night. So you can start with it room temperature if you don’t like feeling like you’re being refrigerated while you’re falling asleep, but then have it cooled down and ready to go around the time your flares tend to start.
I generally keep the windows closed unless I want to air out the house temporarily:
Neighbors in my area like to illegally burn, at night. So smoke comes in the house almost nightly. I haven’t figured out who is doing the burning and I don’t know what they are burning either, nor how toxic it is. Complaints to the county fire department have not resolved the issue; they don’t know where it is coming from either.
I live just beyond viewing distance of train tracks but the train horns are extremely loud and carry for miles.
My neighbor leaves for work at 3:30am every morning, with his mufflerless V8 pickup truck, which wakes the whole neighborhood up, as well – every single day.
But the number one reason why I keep the place sealed up is debilitating
seasonal allergies. I’ve improved these dramatically within the last year with supplements and immunotherapy, but even a single sneeze can wipe me out for the day (in a fog and feel like someone whacked me over the head). Unfortunately, my allergies are the worst in the morning, right after waking up.
I’ve had good success getting significantly better sleep with supplements. I’m always experimenting with new things, but it seems like they can only do so much. Hoping the mattress cover can fill in the gaps!
If it helps anyone else: These supplements are helping me the most – wouldn’t be where I’m at now, without them: phosphatidylserine, apigenin, and “Calms” (homeopathic), and melatonin.
It use to take me 3 hours to fall back asleep, once hot. But now I can generally get back to sleep within 45 min or less – although I still remain too hot with low sleep quality.
I just wanted to give an update / mini-review on my purchase.
I would 100% recommend the 8 Sleep Pod Pro Cover if waking up hot at night, and not being able to sleep, is destroying your health. Along with some herbal supplements I take before bed, this device has helped me regain a very significant amount of health (although I still have a way to go).
It’s not perfect though:
The bed is spendy, of course. But I can’t afford to NOT have it, unfortunately. I know I wouldn’t have been able to regain this much health without the bed.
It firms up whatever bed you have, quite a bit. This is probably the BIGGEST downfall, by far. My bed was already very firm, and with this cover firming up things even more, it was questionable whether this would work for me – as the circulation was getting cut off in my arm, due to the sleeping position and firmness. Luckily I’ve been able to work around it, and it seems to have softened just a bit.
It can take a little while to heat up and cool down, but you are heating and cooling water, which needs a lot of energy, so this is expected. I have the bed on full manual control, but if you give it a schedule it will warm / cool the bed to WELL before your pre-set bed time. So it’s easy to work around, if that’s a problem.
The bed must be controlled by your phone and the app is pretty slow – and sometimes freezes. But it’s not too big of a deal.
The app analyzes all kinds of other things about your sleep, but I can’t comment on that, as I haven’t dove into any of those features – they don’t add value to me.
It took 3 weeks just to get the bed. Not the end of the world, but something to be aware of.
There’s a 30 night sleep trial, so it can’t hurt to try. You can usually find codes for $200 off the regular price, so that helps with the cost as well.
I WOULD recommend getting the extended warranty – because this is basically a computer with a heating and cooling element. I think it comes with a 2 year warranty and you can extend it another year. You must buy the extended warranty at check out though. I got them to add it later, once I was sure I wanted to keep the bed, but it was a big hassle.
The only other downfall I can see to using this bed is that everything is sent to the cloud. When you open the app, on your phone, you connect to the cloud. Then the cloud connects to your device, then the device connects back the the cloud, then the cloud back to your phone. I think this is why the app is laggy. ANYWAY, my point is, if the company were to go out of business this fancy bed cover would be totally USELESS. Because I’m pretty sure if the servers were to go down you would have no way to connect to your bed. If the company were going to shut down hopefully they would release a patch so the bed could bypass the cloud and work directly with your phone.
The bed cover is very spendy, but on the other hand I’m EXTREMELY grateful someone makes this.
We have used an EB cooler which was a company that made a medical pad that was used by people for rehab and medical conditions. A lady in the Astronomy club who had back surgery and used one for rehab sold me her used one after she let us borrow it. It worked well. But the company went out of business because they were sued when a patient got frostbite and lost their feet from the cold water which caused them to lose their feet and the company couldn’t survive after paying a several million dollar fine. EB coolers used to be available on Ebay for about $50 used and we actually bought a couple extra ones so we’d have a backup in case our original one went bad. They had a small chill pad that was put on your foot, ankle back or whatever you wanted to chill. The body will try to open up blood vessels and send more blood to the hands and feet at night so EM symptoms can become worse at night due to the way our bodies work in nature. There are other newer pads that circulate cold water, some have a fan that may cool the water loop, some may use water which can have some ice in it and can be quite cold but regulate temperature of the “HEAT SINK” Pad. . . my term for it by speeding up or slowing down the water cooling loop via control. There are modern coolers like this one ANNI STAR 2021 Mattress Cooling Pad Mattress Topper 100% Cotton, 75” L x 39" W | eBay which are made in China and run only a couple of hundred dollars. I haven’t tried this but some are used and may cost less as well on ebay. This one is a full pad for one side of a mattress. I’d recommend if you tried it just let part of it by you’re feet cool the area where you’re feet are. You can also use a warm weather sleeping bag on you’re bed to crawl into and let you’re feet and angles and maybe thighs hang outside of the bag while the rest of you is covered. So the chill pad or fans are chilling the legs and ankles at night but the rest of you is warm and comfortable. I also want to add a chill pad with water may be to cold for you’re feet if it has an ice water loop inside it. You may want to cover it with a thin piece of cloth to reduce the direct cooling effects and it may still cool that area and help your feet stay cool. A ice and water based system can keep you’re feet cool for hours like 8 or 10 hours between refills which is way better than some homemade systems. One can make a home made chiller and I have but I’ve never made a chill pad myself that was water based. The pad portion with the soft rubber tubing inside would be perhaps challenging to create. A small pump would send water up through the hose but commercial units are out there that are easy to purchase. You can also make an AIR CHILLER that is based on a large box that you’re feet sit inside and that can have 4 inch air ducts that are long air ducts for dryer vents and feed cold air from a cardboard box which is using a plastic flange inside the box which is shaped and crafted to fit on the front of an AC unit and it can send air directly to a box via 4 inch aluminum dryer vents. You will get AC cooling from the cool aluminum covered tubing which is flexible but the direct air on the feet will cool the feet and the temperature control and fan speeds and blower are already in a window AC unit, so the tube and feed box are easy to construct with some tape and a plastic flange you can get from a Home Depot or Lowes or even online and you can have a tube feeding air toward you’re bed or foot stool. We use a cheap footstool which is very cheap and made of plastic covered with a pillow taped on the footstool and a fan or cool feed can blow on this footstool. With tape and craft skils one can make a feed system using a air conditioner unit for a window AC system. One could also perhaps use one of those portable AC units that roll on the floor but feed a tube to the window to vent warm air but we haven’t tried that.
I used to work on a more elaborate setup with more than one feed tube for a plastic box a large plastic box that had more than one port which could sit on the end of the bed. The idea was to have a two or more feed tubes from a little more elaborate cardboard box setup that fed air to the chill box portion of the large tupperware like container. And a return feed to the air conditioner return intact providing a closed loop. but all the tubes running would be an issue and having a closed system wasn’t very beneficial. The idea for the air based chill box was to chill a very small room, the box where the feet would be inside and we even could drap a small blanket over the chill box to cover the opening and have it colder inside. In a nursing home we had the EB chill pad inside as well providing more cooling to the box in the 2 day nursing home from HELL visit. We cooled the feet although the room was 88 to 90 degrees. This was done but without a window AC unit as that unit was not used at all it was a heater or cooler for two patients and it was on HEAT. So the chill pipes themselves which were vents were filled with about a 1/2 cup of ice and had drain holes in the aluminum tubes which were small an that tube on both sides both tubes had ice which melted, but the tubes had to have holes in them and be eleavated inside plastic waste baskets or buckets which could fill with water as the elevated air hoses had water leaking out of them into the bucket. The hoses were inverted U shaped in the buckets and ice was down in there. So air blown from two fans literally was chilled swamp cooler style by the ice cubes which melted through small holes into the buckets the air hoses were dangling and attached to. So that was a two fan swamp cooler and worked well up to an hour per load of ice. But that was for portable use and meant two fans and a swamp cooler setup would work in AN RV on the road with little power and work if we did that in the future. But at home we use a simple setup and now just take the hose with AC to the footstool. Foot stool (needs to have the towel changed so sorry for the somewhat dirty towel in this photo) but the footstool may have stuff from cream off moms foot stain it and I simply tape the towel with masking tape over the pillow and hold the pillow on the simple plastic footstool. This is not a nice foot stool but cheap and works out. The box can be formed from any cardboard box and a flange from the internet can be ordered which is a duct flange for duct work for air flow dust systems. It’s a black PVC flange for a 4 inch duct. And the 20 foot 4 inch aliminum vent hose for a dryer is used to bring air to the patient and if it is placed near the foot blows cold AC air right onto the area of the feet. One tube is pretty good, two might be better but the air in the house is chilled already as AC is often running and part of out house is chilled for mom and the furnace in the winter may warm other parts of the house. Dehydration is a thing we deal with with dry air from a furnace and also from AC units and our eyes may dry out in dry air. We don’t use humidifiers enough and sometimes use artificial tears for our eyes. Having you’re eyes dry out can actually cause the surface of the eye to be so dry it will wrinkle if you fall asleep with you’re eye partially open. And that may give you eye sight problems that will resolve over time if you keep the eye wet with artificial tears. So all the environmental changes for chilling the feet can have side effects even on the healthy members of the house. The boxes I’ve used at times are shipping boxes some of the medium sized ones with packages from Amazon work quite well or boxes from a local store that has them with groceries you may take home. So the feed box on the AC unit is free and just a home craft construction project with masking tape and cardboard and a black flange inside. I have a string which is fed into the AC unit with one of the metal flanges tied to the unit a bit so if mom pulls on the tube to much she won’t pull the cardboard box or tube off the AC unit. Tape alone may not always hold the horrible looking cold air feed box on the AC unit. This is built quickly and not for style, just basic function. Cost of a feed tube is basically under $30 or so in old prices including the flanges. Cardboard boxes are free from stores and masking tape doesn’t cost much. Mom also uses gloves to keep her hands warm and puts on basic gardening gloves and wears vinyl gloves over them to grip stuff better. She also uses a LOT of plastic spoons for pills and other things preferring light weight plastic spoons over heavy silverware.
