Scientists Find New Reason We Should Avoid Sharing a Bed With Our Partners

Should you share a bed with your partner? It's a common question and one that does not have an obvious answer. On the one hand, sharing a bed with your partner offers a sense of security and comfort but on the other, having a bed partner who snores, fidgets or steals the sheets can often lead to a bad night's sleep.

Getting enough sleep is of course essential for our physical and mental wellbeing. It helps us consolidate our memories and aids physical recovery, and not getting enough has been shown to contribute to heart disease, obesity, neurodegenerative disorders and depression. And yet, one in three adults in the U.S. reports not getting enough of it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For some people, this may be in part thanks to a restless bed partner, and according to YouGov survey, two thirds of American adults actually want to share a bed with their partner. But what really happens in our brains when we sleep next to someone else?

In a new study from the University of Michigan, psychology professor Ada Eban-Rothschild and her team studied the effects of co-sleeping on sleep quality in mice. By monitoring their brain activity during sleep, the team were able to track the rodents' sleep intensity and sleep-wake cycles.

Their results, published in the journal Current Biology, revealed that mice that slept together tended to fall asleep and wake up at the same time, and showed synchrony in the intensity of non-rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This state encompasses three sleep stages, including deep sleep, which are essential for physical recovery and memory consolidation. However, while the team observed synchrony in this sleep stage, they also found that the resulting sleep was more fragmented, leading to poorer sleep quality overall.

And yet, despite this increased disruption, the mice would go out of their way to find other mice to sleep with. Indeed, the mice were willing to forgo their preferred sleep location and environment to snuggle up next to their peers.

Another interesting observation was that REM sleep became synchronized among co-sleeping male siblings, but not between females or unfamiliar mice. Exactly why this sex difference emerged is unclear, but the researchers postulate that the extent of synchronization may be dependent on feeling safe.

More research is still needed to understand how these results relate to human sleeping arrangements, but these results clearly show that not everyone responds to co-sleeping in the same way. If the benefits of comfort and security outweigh any potential disruptions, co-sleeping might be for you. But if you find yourself waking up every hour with a foghorn snorer next to your ear, it might be time to give a separate beds a go.

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