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Viewers Disgusted At How Often Woman Changes Her Bed Sheets

Viewers Disgusted At How Often Woman Changes Her Bed Sheets

Ew.

Mark McGowan

Mark McGowan

Changing your bed sheets isn't exactly the best chore in the world, if anything it's a ball ache. But at the end of the aching there's fresh bedding and a good night's sleep, so it has to be done.

For some people though, that's still not enough, and so they leave changing their sheets for an oddly long time.

Karen Aldridge, who appeared on This Morning, revealed to the nation just how long she leaves the chore, much to the dismay of viewers.

Consumer expert Alice Beer went into Karen's house to have a look at her bed, extracting all the filth from her mattress. What came out in a bowl was rather disgusting, but still the type of guck that'd be found in anyone's bed. But the fact Karen admitted to only washing her sheets once every four weeks really got some people.

Credit: ITV/This Morning

Luke Rutterford, another expert, was called in by Alice and said: "One of the issues we have are dust mites. They are only tiny, between one to 1.5mm, and they can move down beneath the bedding and get into the mattress itself."

"I would leave it three weeks, maybe four when things are hectic," Karen said.

A microbiologist recently 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 from 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: ITV/This Morning

Topics: This Morning