Dust Mite Resistant:
An advantage of memory foam mattresses that is often touted, but failed to prove fully true, according to the research


A memory foam mattress does likely have some resistance to attracting large dust mite populations, but it is not dust mite proof.

 

What are they?
Dust mites, in case you don't know, are microscopic bugs that mainly live on dead skin cells that are shed from people and pets. Your mattress is a place that dust mites find attractive. It's where they can find all the shedded skin cells and scales they can eat. Oh, and they also like to chomp on the natural, fibrous material that an innerspring mattress is usually made of.

A typical mattress may have as many as 100,000 dust mites. The droppings of dust mites and their own shedded skin are what cause many allergies in people, including asthma.

They don't like to eat memory foam
Memory foam mattresses collect and absorb your shedded skin cells, just as innerspring mattresses do. And this means dust mites will be there to have a feast. However, memory foam mattresses have an advantage that most innersprings do not. Unlike the stuff inside an innerspring bed, memory foam does not taste good to the little critters, and they tend to not eat it.

This is why memory foam is often considered dust mite resistant. It's not that dust mites don't live in it, eating away at your dead skin to their hearts content and possibly giving you allergies. It's just that they probably don't eat the memory foam itself.

Does this mean that memory foam beds have fewer dust mites than innerspring mattresses? This is not clear. And even if memory foam mattresses did have fewer dust mites, does this mean their dust mite populations would be too small to give you allergies? Again, it is not clear.

Research results foggy
On top of this, our own research did not really uncover much praise for memory foam mattress from their owners on how the beds eliminated or reduced allergies. About 1% of memory foam bed owners claimed that they benefited from the dust mite resistance of their beds. Is this due to the memory foam or due to the fact that their beds were new and had not yet had the chance to attract as many dust mites as their last bed?

The bottom line
All of the above means that you probably should not buy a memory foam mattress solely or mainly because you think it will not have dust mites. To not have a significant dust mite problem on a memory foam bed, you will need to use a dust mite-resistant covering. The mattress may not do it on its own.

Or you could look into waterbeds or airbeds. Your shedded skin cannot penetrate at least a significant part of these beds -- and neither can dust mites.



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