News

The repulsive reason you need to change your pillowcases will make your skin crawl

You've been warned.
Loading the player...

Doing the washing sucks. If all you needed to do was pop your clothes in the machine, we could probably deal, but the fact you then have to hang them out to dry and put them away – that whole process can take longer than a week.

Clothes will inevitably be washed, you don’t want to be a pariah at work, but what about your sheets? Have you washed them recently?

One woman wasn’t overly concerned by her dirty pillow case and thanks to not washing it, her eyelashes were left crawling with hundreds of mites.

The Chinese woman, known only by Xu, had become accustomed to the itchy, uncomfortable feeling around her eyes over the last two years – opting to self-medicate with over-the-counter eye drops.

But then her eyelids became so swollen and irritated she wasn’t able to open her eyes and was forced to the hospital.

Eventually she confessed she hadn’t changed her pillowcase in nearly six years (!!!) and doctors removed over 100 mites living in her eyelashes.

One single eyelash held as many as 10.

The official diagnosis was blepharitis (inflammation of the eyelid) and conjunctivitis which she was given medication for.

But more practically, and obviously, doctors told her to simply wash her bedding.

Humans are crawling with a lot of nasty thing, including mites, fungi, and bacteria – we don’t need to be encouraging them to proliferate.

Microorganisms aside, sleeping on the oils from your hair and skin for too long can result in breakouts and clogged pores and studies show after just two years of use, one-third of the weight of your pillow consists of dead skin, bugs, dust mites and droppings.

If you need me, I’ll be scrubbing my bedding while rocking back and forth for the next 3 days straight.

Related stories