There is nothing like a warm bed on a cold night to relax and soothe you to sleep. A heated mattress pad will warm the bed underneath as well as the pillow and covers. The heated mattress pads are comforting and enable deeper relaxation much faster so you can wake up more refreshed in the morning.

Although some people are building houses that have incredibly efficient HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) systems installed, many people still live in houses with poor insulation and HVAC. Older houses are particularly prone to these problems. In the winter, this can make the house too cold for comfort and result in astronomical heating bills.

Heated mattress pads (electric) may be a good alternative to keeping the heat running constantly, or to piling on blankets, and can drastically cut heating costs. However, it’s worth investigating how much electricity electric mattress pads really use if you want to determine whether the pad will result in real savings. The following sections give information on the wattage used by electric mattress pads, as well as data on what can affect the wattage. Typically heated mattress pads consume approximately 60 to 90 watts on the high settings. This usage is per side, however, so an entire pad can consume 120 to 180 watts on average. Translated into money, this means the average pad is consuming about 2 to 3 cents if run for an entire night!

The size of the heating mattress pads impact how much wattage is used. A twin mattress pad, for example, can use 60 to 85 watts, which is about the same amount as the wattage of each side of a larger pad. If you have a larger pad, you can expect to use more electricity because there is more pad to be heated. Small wires and circuits have increased resistance. This means that it takes less voltage to heat them up than it does for large wires, so mattress pads that have wires that are larger than others will need more electricity to get the same amount of heat. Wires in heated mattress pads typically have become smaller over time, so the newer your mattress pad, the better the odds are that it is more efficient.

A heated mattress pad can offer more than just snuggly comfort on a cold day. According to the Electric Blanket Institute, approximately 25 percent of people who have bought an electric blanket or heated mattress pad have done so for health reasons. Research has shown that using a heated mattress pad provides health benefits for some specific conditions, such as arthritis, fibromyalgia or muscle stiffness and soreness.

The Heated mattress Pad has the following health benefits for its users:

1. Determining whether a heated mattress pad will help a patient involves researching what role the long-term application of heat plays in combating a particular condition. Health information web sites such as revolutionhealth.com or webmd.com can be useful. Asking a doctor, nurse or physical therapist also can help avoid any confusion.

2. Heated mattress pad can reduce the pain, stiffness and soreness that results from arthritis. The Arthritis Foundation’s Pain Center recommends using heated pad to fight pain. Patients with arthritis have reported that using a heated mattress pad first thing in the morning significantly reduces stiffness and increases flexibility.

3. Researchers have also found that heating pads, such as heated mattress pad, can help treat the pain of fibromyalgia as well help patients with sore or stiff muscles. Although doctors are not sure how the heated pad helps fibromyalgia sufferers, evidence shows that it works. For patients with stiffness, the heat helps relax tense muscles.

4. Although one of the many approaches to low back pain suggests that alternating heat and cold can help reduce pain, researchers at the National Institutes of Health advise against the use of a heated mattress pad for low back pain because it provides long-term exposure to heat. The NIH instead recommends short-term hot compresses alternated with cold ones for low back pain, suggesting that not all conditions that are treatable with heat are treatable with a heated mattress pad.

5. Heated mattress pad offer patients with specific problems some comfort, but patients should use them with caution, especially when setting the temperature. Exposing the skin to very high levels of heat for long periods of time could cause inflammation or burning.