Ewww to these facts below! I bet most people don’t give this much thought…

1. Every person loses an average of 250ml of perspiration every night. If you share your mattress with someone, this increases to around 500ml. Even if the mattress is only five years old, this is equivalent to 900 litres of personal fluids
2. Every person sheds and re-grows skin cells every 27 days.
3. By the age of 70, the average person will have lost 50kg of skin. (A large portion ends up in our mattresses.)
4. Dust mites are microscopic spiders that live in our houses. The main component of dust is shed skin flakes, which is the mite’s preferred food. Areas around the home that are heavily used, such as beds and upholstered furniture, will have much higher mite populations than the rest of the house.
5. Dust mites don’t bite. Their bodies, secretions and faeces contain particular proteins that can trigger allergic symptoms in susceptible people. Old mattresses may contain several kilo- grams of dust mite excrement and dust mite carcasses.
6. 10% of the Australian population suffers from asthma.
7. Dust mite secretions and excrement are closely related to asthma and eczema.
8. Old mattresses, pillows and quilts also contain high amounts of bacteria and fungi.
9. A by-product of bacteria is called an endotoxin, which can bring on asthma attacks. Old Pillows and mattresses also may contain millions of fungi spores.

I read about this on Wenatex, an Australian company which conducts seminars on sleeping care and sleeping healthy.

Tags: asthma attacks, bacteria, beds, dust mite, dust-mites, furniture, mattress, mattresses, mite populations, perspiration, sleep, upholstered furniture

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 10:34 am and is filed under MATTRESS News.
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