How Your Pets Help Combat Sleep Anxiety

Around 33% of the world’s population struggle with chronic insomnia, and sleep anxiety becomes natural after a prolonged period of time spent being unable to get a good night’s rest. Sleep deprivation can actually be more damaging to those with poor mental health. Finding practices and tools that help you sleep better is crucial to working towards achieving more balance and wellbeing in your life.

One of the easiest ways to get better quality sleep, according to many sleep cycles, is sleeping alongside your pets. Sleeping with your pets comes with a whole host of benefits, including feeling an increased sense of companionship, a greater sense of security, and more comfort through the night.

Here’s exactly how pets can make a positive contribution to your sleep cycle, and how you can use this knowledge to your advantage when correcting your own sleep cycle:

Your Pets Encourage Happy Hormones

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, the ‘pet effect’ can go a long way in helping those who struggle with generalized anxiety. Researchers have found consistent animal-human interaction actually results in an increased amount of oxytocin released in the brain. The benefits of oxytocin include lower heart rate, less cortisol, and an elevated mood.

If you have a pet dog, it’s also likely you’re having to take them out more often for walks - this simple increase in exercise for most people can actually result in an increase in wellbeing and balance.

Finding The Best Mattress For You And Your Pet

When it comes to finding the best mattress for sleeping comfortably with your pet, memory foam mattresses are hard to beat. Memory foam mattresses are especially useful in terms of the amount of support and comfort they bring to their user, human, and animal alike.

Memory foam mattresses are useful when it comes to their motion isolation capabilities. This means that no matter how much you or your canine companion might toss or turn, neither one of you is going to feel a disturbance or impact on your own personal sleep cycle.

The best memory foam mattresses will also be engineered for ease of use and clean in mind. This includes memory foam mattresses that are hypoallergenic, stain proof, and include a warranty that protects you from any unexpected issues with your bed in the future. Finding a memory foam mattress that is easier to maintain will make sharing your bed with your pet a lot easier since one of the main deterrents when it comes to doing so tends to be the mess they can make.

Co-sleeping With Your Pets

If you’re considering sharing your bed with your pet to help with your sleep anxiety, make sure to take the necessary precautions that will allow you to get the best night’s sleep you can. To ensure your memory foam mattress won’t trap too much of their fur, you might opt to use a mattress protector that adds an additional layer of protection from any potential damage playful paws or furry coats might cause.

Additionally, while most sleep experts recommend this regardless of when you’re co-sleeping with a pet, the importance of switching out your bed sheets once a week cannot be overstated. Your sheets are a breeding ground of dust mites, allergens, and other external debris, that can be both harmful to you and even your pet. Make sure to stay on top of this to reduce your sleep anxiety and get the most comfortable night’s rest you can in the process.

The Benefits Of Sharing Your Bed

Once you’re convinced you’ve found the best memory foam mattress for the job, there’s little else preventing you from sharing your bed with your pet. If you have struggled with sleep anxiety in the past, the comfort of sharing your space with another living thing cuddled beside you can do a lot to ease your tension.

Sleeping with a pet can also help ease feelings of separation anxiety they experience through the day since this is still quality time between you and your animal. It’s important to work on the bond between you and your pet, especially if you spend the bulk of the day away from work since sleep anxiety can affect animals too. It might be mutually beneficial to share a bed with your pet for just this reason.

In one study conducted by university researchers in New York, scientists found women sleep better next to dogs than they do alone. An increased sense of comfort and security provide a true cure for sleep anxiety. Other studies have compared the sleep cycles of patients who suffer from PTSD, where co-sleeping with pets have also been shown to have a positive impact.

If you do struggle with sleep anxiety and are considering opening up your bed to your pet, it’s well worth considering what kind of pet you have. Since cats are nocturnal creatures, they tend to cause a lot more disturbances through the night, often waking at strange times and demanding their owner’s attention when doing so.

While memory foam mattresses can do a lot to mitigate the disturbance of tossing and turning, if your cat is loudly purring in your face, even the best mattress can only go so far.

Making the choice to share your bed with a pet is pretty personal, and is just one of many solutions to those who struggle with chronic sleep anxiety. If you’re open to trying something different, the science indicates that sleeping with your pets doesn’t just improve your sleep cycles, but also gives you a boost of mental health overall, something that can be really helpful for those struggling with chronic sleep deprivation.

From finding the best memory foam mattress for the job to knowing when it might be time to say no to Fluffy, with a little bit of practice, a good night’s sleep is accomplishable for anybody. Take the time and patience to test out if sharing your bed with your pet works for you - you’ll be waking up better rested before you know it.