A good mattress sure isn’t cheap — but what if there was an easy way to get an extra five to 10 years of use out of your mattress? And what if that means of extending the life of your mattresses also help keep your family healthier and your home more sanitary?
It’s called a mattress protector, and it’s more than just a way to keep a mattress in good shape. It can protect against spills and bodily fluids, stains, and more. Here’s what mattress protectors can do for your family’s health.
Protect Your Family’s Beds from Allergens
While you sleep, dead skin sloughs off your body in a process known as desquamation. Those dead skin cells can get trapped between your sheets and your mattress, where they can attract the bacteria and dust mites that love to feed on them, so that in short order, your entire mattress can become filled with dead skin, dust and lint, bacteria, and dust mites. Those living creatures leave feces and other waste products in your bed, as well as their own remains when they inevitably shuffle off their tiny mortal coils.
Over time, that can add up to a lot of debris accumulating inside your family’s beds. The environment inside your bed and mattress is warm, dark, and often slightly damp — the perfect conditions for dust mites, bacteria, and mold to thrive. With no mattress protector, there’s nothing to stop dead skin, dust mites, bacteria, mold, mildew, bodily secretions, and other debris from soaking or being ground into your mattress — and many of them contain potent allergens.
For example, fecal matter from dust mites contains the human allergens Der p 1 and Der p 5. Most people with respiratory allergies will find themselves triggered by these allergens. They can contribute to chronic sinus problems, asthma-like symptoms, and even non-respiratory symptoms, like eczema. And if you haven’t been using a mattress protector, the only way these accumulated allergens out of your bed is to throw it away and get a new mattress. And if you’re worried about the pesticides used to grow conventional cotton or other synthetic chemicals found in conventional mattresses and mattress protectors — and you should be — an organic mattress protector made with sustainably produced materials is just the ticket.
Keep Your Family’s Beds Clean
Of course, dust mites, bacteria, and dead skin aren’t the only things that can make a mattress unsanitary. If you have kids, you’ve probably dealt with bed-wetting, and know that a mattress protector can keep your kids’ mattresses clean and dry, even when they have an accident. It’s convenient to be able to just strip a soiled mattress protector from your kid’s mattress and put him or her back to sleep in a clean, dry bed. And you know that once even a little urine soaks into your kid’s mattress, it’s impossible to really get it clean again — and any body fluids that seep into your mattress just give the bacteria, dust mites, and mold more fuel to feed on. Protect their mattresses with a zippered mattress cover.
But even if you don’t have kids, you should know that bed-wetting isn’t the only source of bodily fluids that can ruin a mattress. Most people perspire in their sleep, for example, and there are other activities or bodily functions that can cause bodily secretions to get on the sheets. Without a mattress protector, those secretions are now in your mattress for the rest of its lifespan.
Mattress protectors can protect your family’s beds from urine, sweat, menstrual blood, and other bodily fluids during sleep. A mattress protector keeps the mattress itself cleaner for longer and discourages dust mites and bacteria from colonizing your bed. Your family will experience fewer respiratory ailments and fewer mystery illnesses in general when they’re able to sleep in clean beds. And you can get more use out of your mattresses and replace them when they start to wear out and are no longer functional, rather than having to replace them every eight years for sanitation reasons.
Mattress protectors can protect your family’s mattresses from spills, stains, and bodily fluids. They also protect your mattress from the dead skin that flakes off your body during the night, as well as other dust and debris that can easily penetrate the mattress and create optimum living conditions for dust mites and bacteria. With the right mattress protectors, you can all sleep easy, knowing your beds are healthy and clean.
