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After a long, awful day out in the world, there's nothing quite like coming home to curl up in bed with a good movie or a nice book.
At least, that's what you think you're curling up with--you're also exposing yourself to dead skin, bacteria, fungus, mites, and fecal matter.
Gross.
Yahoo! Health polled well over 1,000 readers to find out their bedtime routine as well as how often they wash their sheets. Turns out, everyone needs to pull out the Tide and change their sheets way more often than they do!
Of 1,187 readers, 44 percent of women said that they washed their sheets once a week while 31 percent said they wash theirs twice a month and 16 percent said they do so just once a month.
While most changed their sheets at some point during the month, over a third of women said that they never switched out their pillow cases. Remember, ladies, your pillows will carry tons of bacteria and germs from your face as well.
Philip Tierno, Jr., Ph.D., director of clinical microbiology and immunology at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, recommends that people wash their sheets at least once a week.
Why?
The minute that you crawl into bed, you're leaving dead skin cells, bacteria, germs, as well as lotions, makeup, sweat, hair, and anything else you might have picked up during the day, like pollen, pet dander, fungal mold, and dirt particles, between the sheets.
All those things can carry some not-so-good-for-you bacteria. Case in point: sweat can carry with it E. coli as well as fecal matter. Not to mention, sweat and skin attracts dust mites. While dust mites themselves aren't necessarily harmful to humans, their poop sure is. Turns out that they excrete allergens that can cause redness of the skin and itching.
“A lot of people don’t realize that they spend one-third of their life exposed to these allergens,” says Tierno.
Enough said. Wash those sheets ladies!
What do you think about all this? Let us know in the comments!
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