“See, whether you have a partner or not, you never sleep alone,” he says, then flashes to an image of dust mites.

“There are over 10 million of them on an average mattress,” warns Figura. “If you have a two-year-old pillow, 10 percent of its weight is dust mites and their droppings.”

You’re probably already upset, but it only gets worse from there.

“(Dust mites) produce allergens that can trigger asthma and make you feel full,” Figura notes.

But how does your bed play into this? According to Figura, dust mites feed on the moisture in your sweat while you sleep.

“So when you make your bed, you trap all the moisture, and the mites—have a party, breed and grow,” says Figura.

So instead of jumping out of bed and tidying up right away, Figura says it’s best to wait an hour or two before fluffing your pillows and smoothing the console.

“Leaving it undone for an hour or two allows the moisture to dry out and drastically reduces the number of mites that can survive there, and that’s according to science,” he says.

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The science the Figure refers to could be a 2006 study published in Experimental and applied acarologywho suggested that leaving the bed unmade could help keep humidity low enough to fight mites.

“We know that mites can only survive by absorbing water from the atmosphere using small glands on the outside of their bodies,” the study author. STEFAN preloveddr., said when the results were published, on AARP. “Something as simple as leaving a bed unmade during the day can remove moisture from the sheets and mattress, so the mites will dehydrate and eventually die.”

However, ca The New York Timesreported in 2016the researchers did not make scientific comparisons between made and unmade beds, but used a computer model to predict how the mites would be affected by different temperatures and humidity levels.