*According to a new survey, Americans who shared a bed with their cats and dogs claim it helps them sleep better at night
Many of the survey’s participants said that sleeping alongside their pets reduced their stress and anxiety levels.
Here’s more from Public News Time:
British pollster OnePoll quizzed 2,000 American pet owners and found seven in ten felt sharing a bed with their favorite animal helped them sleep at night. Previous studies suggest that sharing a bed with pets leads people to feel more comfortable and secure in bed. It could also improve their mental health. The survey also found half of pet owners found it easier to settle down at night when their dog or cat was next to them. And a total of 58 percent of respondents in relationships preferred spending the night with their pet than their partner.
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Pets who sleep with their human’s tend to have a “higher trust level and a tighter bond with the humans that are in their lives. It’s a big display of trust on their part,” said Dr. Dana Varble, chief veterinary officer for the North American Veterinary Community.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, published a paper last year that studied the sleep patterns in children aged 13 to 17. A third of them slept with a pet. As reported by CNN, the authors concluded after the 2-week trial that “Frequent co-sleepers showed similar sleep profiles to those who never slept with pets.”
“All of this suggests that having pets in the bed or bedroom is not necessarily bad,” said Dr. Bhanu Prakash Kolla, a sleep medicine specialist in the Center for Sleep Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
“There can be significant psychological comfort in having your pet close by, which can help both initiate and maintain sleep,” Kolla said.
“However, if patients are reporting that movement or other activities of the pet are disruptive to their sleep we then counsel them to try to look at alternate arrangements for the pet at night and see if that helps with their sleep,” he added.
According to the experts, dogs are more associated with comfort and security, while cats are seen as being as disruptive as sleeping with a human.
“Having a good night’s rest is crucial to our overall health and well-being,” said Brent Pfister, senior vice president of marketing at Sealy. “As shown by this study, co-sleeping with pets can bring a sense of security and can help people – and their pets – settle in easier for bedtime; however, many people sleeping with their pets experience interrupted nighttime sleep – and so may also be sacrificing overall sleep quality and some of the more physical benefits gained from a night of good sleep.”
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