What is Lurking in Your Mattress? Meet the Horrifying Substances!

If you have been sleeping on that one mattress all your life and have never made an attempt to give it a thorough cleanse – hold right there. Just because you wash your pearly white sheets and switch them up often, it is easy to assume that your bed is one of the cleanest things in your home. Alas, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The uncomfortable reality that we have to face today is that the world under your sheets is as yucky as it can ever get. It is so gut-churning that you might just wear protective gear to sleep tonight.

Well, if you are not so convinced by the revelation that your mattress is a complete filth-trap, it is about time for you to meet the horrifying substances that will shake you to your core.

Dead Skin Cells & Dust Mites

As a human, we constantly shed a surprising amount of approximately half a billion skin cells in a span of 24 hours, to make room for newer cells to grow. This means that in one minute, we slough off about 30,000 to 40,000 dead skin cells. Since we spend about an average 8 hours on our daily beauty sleep, the amount of skin cells that are accumulated in our mattress from just one night of sleep is far beyond imagination – you might want to do the math right there.

While the accumulation of these flakes of skin alone will not cause a direct grave impact on your health, they, however, form a prime habitat for dust mites to grow and thrive. Why? That is because organic debris such as dead skin cells, mould, fungi, dead mites, bacteria, and pollen serves as dust mites’ daily nutriment. These scavengers survive by feasting on them and then multiply rapidly.

A possibly not-so-fun fact: Do you know that – on average, our mattress can contain up to 10 million dust mites if we do not implement a proper mattress cleaning approach periodically?

Mites Faeces

Like the human, after ingesting dander, these dust mites defecate. It is found that a single mite can produce up to 20 waste droppings a day. What’s worse, these faeces are so tiny and light-weight that they can become airborne.

Accompanied by these faeces are enzymes, an allergenic protein. And if you don’t already know, chronic exposure to these allergenic proteins can lead to detrimental health impacts such as asthma or allergies.

Bacteria

If you can think of one microbe that mattresses are swarming with, the answer would be bacteria. True enough, bacteria can be found everywhere. However, the number of bacteria that are accrued under those sheets can be alarming.

These bacteria are traced from everywhere – your skin, saliva, intestine, stool and genital, even from crumbs, food spills and sweat. The amount of bacteria in your sanctuary isn’t just appalling on its own. In fact, the comparison between the sleep environments of human with wildlife is going to bring you a rude awakening. According to a study conducted by the University of North Carolina, it was found that a chimpanzee’s nest harbour far lesser bacteria than a human’s bed. This means that you are sleeping in a condition that is far less favourable than a chimpanzee’s.

Fungal Spores

If everything else above isn’t terrifying enough to get you cleaning your mattress right away, here is something else that is lurking under it – fungal spores. Your mattresses are populated with fungal spores, between 4 to 17 different species of them. With the ideal combination of optimal temperature and moisture level, your mattress has involuntarily transformed into a kingdom for fungi growth. When inhaled routinely, it can lead to health implications such as weakened immune systems, asthma, infection, rashes and more.

How Can You Protect Yourself from The Torrent of These Horrifying Substances?

The key line of defence against these substances? We’d say it stems from giving proper thought and attention to your mattress. To make sure that they truly stay guarded and comfy in the years to come, start engaging professional mattress cleaning services in Singapore every quarterly to half-yearly for general maintenance. If you are facing skin, sinus or dust mite allergy, we’d recommend you to employ mattress cleaning services once a month to once every two months.