Depending on how you handle your
bed sheet you could be making your bed sheet a tool for releasing pollutants
into the environment, and transmitting diseases too. So how often do you wash
your bed sheet? Do you wash it once a month? How often do you change your bed
sheet? Does it matter how often you change your bed sheet, for that matter your
bedding as whole?
If you come to closely consider
what you do in bed or what goes on in your bed, then you should grasp the
importance of the hygiene of your bed sheet. You sleep in your bed. You lie on
your bed to read books. You lie on your bed to browse the internet or type a
post as I am doing at this material time. You have sex on your bed. Your kids
join you in bed to play with you. You may be doing some exercises on your bed.
Kids on their own may get on the bed to play; may be a pillow fight.
All the foregoing activities leave in their
trail the following:
Dust
Urine
Semen and Sperm
Sweat
Fecal matter
Saliva
DUST
Dust is a fine particle of solid
matter. Sources of dust are earth or soil or sand. Powdered form of broken
pieces of solid materials are also sources of dust. Humans shed millions of
cells from their bodies every night. These cells attract dust mites which feed
on the cells. The dust mites on feeding on the shed cells drop their excrement
thereby adding to accumulating dust in the bed for that matter the environment.
Dust mites are said to like and flourish
in bedding and mattresses. However they settle on floors until they are
disturbed and become airborne for a while. Dust cause respiratory problems to
people.
URINE
A bed sheet is stained with urine
when kids urinate into bed or when after urinating you come into bed with residual
droplets of the urine. The urine may contain sediments. The sediments may be
stones, cells etc. They all add up to dust accumulation. The cause of urine
sediments may be malfunctioning of the kidney.
SEMEN AND SPERM
The bed sheet may be stained when
semen is spilled during sexual intercourse or nocturnal emission. Sticky
surfaces attracts dust mites facilitating the accumulation of dust. Semen is
the fluid which contains sperm.
SWEAT
The bed sheet absorbs sweat from
the human body. The sweat can cause the bed sheet to smell from body odor. The
sweat can add to the humidity of the bed sheet which in turn makes it easy for
dust to stick to the bed sheet. The mixture of sweat and other fluids can
result in an offensive smell.
FECAL MATTER
I guess fecal matter is the one
thing you would not want to admit that you carry it into your bed. The experts
say it happens. You may carry it from the loo. When you flush the toilet bits
of the stuff is splashed into your face or some other parts of the body. You
may pick it from the toilet seat. If you don’t clean yourself properly after
excretion you may carry on your hand fecal matter. Your wife and kids may
deposit fecal matter on your bed. In so far as you share your bed with others
you may be spreading and sharing germs.
SALIVA
If you share your bed with
infants they would let out saliva on your bed sheet. Even adults sometimes
spill saliva on to bed sheets when sleeping. Saliva may serve as a medium for
the transmission of certain diseases.
WHAT TO DO
Now that you know or are reminded of the
unpleasant and unhealthy things your bed trap, you should want to know what to
do next, if you really care. The answer is bound in the question I was asking
in the beginning of this post: how often do you wash your bed sheet? Surveys on
that question have been made and not many people made the mark. So, again how
many times do you do yours? Is it once in a month? Is it once in every two
months? Is it as and when you think it is dirty? Well the experts say you should
wash your bed sheet at least once every week! Let me tell you a confession. The
confession is that I myself did not make the mark! However, I am learning a
thing or two that are refreshing. The bed sheets must be washed in warm water
to kill bacteria. Of course how dirty your bed sheet gets depends on the
intensity and frequency of activities in your bed.
PARTING SHOT
I have given you a rerun of what goes on in
bed, a bed covered with bed sheet. I have also taken you through the pressure
the bed sheet takes through what goes in bed. More seriously the activities on
the bed leave in their trail dust and other unpleasant things. Dust do cause
respiratory problems. The dust gets into the air and people breathe in the
dusty air. Some eventually become aerosol, a culprit of global warming. The
human cells we shed every night as humans do get into the air, and the dust
mite that feed on them too. We have no choice but to frequently wash and change
our bed sheets. As frequently as at least once every week, and with warm water.
We should be extending our cleaning activities to the bedding as a whole. If
you brighten the corner where you are, and I brighten the corner where I am,
and as a way of life, we should be covering the natural environment as whole in
a sustainable way.
Reference:
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