Washington State…What is in Your Bed Other Than You?

Most people look forward to the end of a long day by laying their head down on a pillow and getting a good night sleep.  That may all change after you read this.

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Amerisleep, an Arizona based company that has been in the mattress business since 2010, recent published result of a study they did that details what is in your bed beside, and besides, you.

Amerisleep, to their credit, did the heavy lifting to compile the data for this study.  The teamed up with volunteers who let them examine the microscopic parts of their mattresses and bedding for four weeks without washing them.

They also took samples from mattress ranging in age from 1year to 7 years.  the goal was to determine how often you should be changing your sheets and pillow cases as well as the lifespan of your mattress.

We'll Start with Your Pillowcase

You're not going to like this...at all.  After one week of sleeping on your pillowcase it accumulates roughly 3 million colony forming units (CFUs) of bacteria per square inch.  That is 17, 442 times more bacteria than a toilet seat.  It steadily increases from there.  After four weeks your pillowcase alone has just under 12 million CFUs per square inch, or 39 times more that your pet's bowl.

Now for Your Sheets...

You expect your sheets to contain more since the rest of your body lays on them, but how much more?  After one week your sheets have around 5 million CFUs per square inch which is 24,631 times the amount of bacteria found on a bathroom door handle.  Your sheets don't accumulate at the same rate as your pillowcase, but after four weeks under 11.5 million CFUs are on your sheets.  That is 5.4 times the amount of bacteria on your toothbrush holder.

What Does All This Mean?

There are different types of bacteria.  Gram Negative and Gram Positive Rods inhabit your bedding.  Negative is bad, positive is good.  Unfortunately, the study shows nearly double the amount of negative rods vs positive.  The average amount of time people go between changing sheets is 24 days.  At the conclusion of this study, Amerisleep. along with other entities, suggest changing your sheets and pillowcases weekly.

Amerisleep has their own retail stores in four states, including Oregon, and they also have retailers in Washington State.  You can see the full results of the study, as well as methodology, here.