Is Your Mattress an Heirloom?

For reasons of hygiene, you should change your mattress every few years. But why exactly?

In the past, people used to spend their entire lives sleeping one the same mattress. This was true of entire generations. Is this because today’s materials are not as good as the ones in the past? Or is it due to altered sleeping behaviour? No, the reason why you should change your mattress about every five years has to do with hygiene. In the last few decades, much sleep research has been conducted, and a lot has been found out about the inner life of mattresses.

If you were to test a used mattress in a lab after five years, you would be amazed at what you saw: domestic dust mites and their droppings, bacteria, microlarvae, pathogens and the dreaded mildew/ It’s no surprise really, because a mattress core is dark, moist and warm, and that’s what these pathogens like. There are so many of them after 5 years that they are already hazardous to the health. The cause lies with bed users themselves. Every night, people lose about a litre of sweat. That’s 365 litres per year with a whole host of bacteria, pathogens and dirt. Some of this sweat evaporates, but the majority seeps into the mattress core night after night and offers an ideal breeding ground for mites.

Of course, you can make things difficult for bacteria, for instance by frequently airing your mattress, keeping carpets and rugs out of your bedroom, frequently washing your bedclothes and naturally, changing your mattress every few years. But you can’t keep the creepy-crawlies out entirely. So it’s all the more important not to view mattresses as lifelong companions – after all, we spend a third of our lives in bed.