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This Is How Often You Should Change Your Bed Sheets According To Science

This Is How Often You Should Change Your Bed Sheets According To Science

And you really should be.

Mark McGowan

Mark McGowan

It's an unrivalled feeling when you have fresh bed sheets. The smell, the feeling, the knowing that you're going to have a great night's sleep - it's just phenomenal.

There's just one problem, and that's actually changing the bedding. It's a ball ache. It seems like a simple task, but it's not until you've stripped the bed and have put one new pillow case on that you realise you just cannot be bothered.

A lot of the time it's just left. "I'll do it tomorrow," you'll probably say, which then results in it not being done for another week, because we're far too lazy and minimising the amount of effort in one day is essential.

Credit: PA

But a microbiologist has said how often you should be changing those sheets so we're not sleeping in a "botanical park" of bacteria and fungus.

Philip Tierno, from New York University, says that your sheets should be changed once a week as the things that linger in every small fold can make you ill, should it be left to long.

In reality this means we have to choose between prioritising our health or our procrastination, with many people presumably picking the latter.

IFLScience report that we spend a third of our lives in bed and that we sweat an estimated 26 gallons in bed every year, with the moisture becoming an "ideal fungal culture medium."

A recent study by researchers found that samples of feather and pillows that were one and a half to 20 years old held up to 16 species of fungus each. This, which comes from your sweat, sputum, skin cells, and vaginal and anal excretions, IFLScience say, is paired with "foreign microbes" that include pollen, dust and feces.

Credit: PA

"Even if you don't have allergies per se, you can have an allergic response," Tierno said. "Just like Rome over time was buried with the debris that falls from gravity, gravity is what brings all that material into your mattress.

"If you touched dog poo in the street, you'd want to wash your hands. Consider that analogous to your bedding. If you saw what was there - but of course you don't see it - after a while you have to say to yourself, 'Do I want to sleep in that?'"

Minging, isn't it?

Because of our faces being so close to our beds for large periods of time all of this can cause a reaction within a week, which of course is not ideal.

If you're reading this in bed now, get up. Get the sheets washed, you filthy animal.

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: Bed