A new study has found that adults will tend to sleep better if they have someone in their bed with them. It is always presumed that romantic couples share the same bed at night, but a growing trend is seeing couples “sleep divorce,” which means they each have their own sleeping space at night. This could be because one partner snores, one needs the room cold, or just because they like they have their own room to stretch out. While some would say that everyone should just do what they are comfortable with, that may not be what science is saying.
According to Study Finds, a new study has found that adults sleep better when they are in bed with another adult. This research was done by researchers at the University of Arizona, and it can be read in full here.
They wanted to look at the relationship between bed-sharing, sleep, and mental health. They were able to confirm that adults who shared a bed with a spouse or partner had better sleep when compared to adults who slept alone. It was also linked with lower signs of depression, anxiety, and stress scores.
They also found that they had better social support and their general satisfaction with life and relationships was better. On the other end, they found that sleeping alone was linked with higher depression scores, less social support, and worse satisfaction with life and relationships.
It looks like mom and dad better get back to cuddling up if they want to get more sleep at night, and we all know how important sleep is to parents. It is important to note that the study also looked at sharing a bed with children, interested to see if it would produce the same results as sleeping with an adult, and it did not.
It found that parents who shared the bed with their children had higher levels of stress, and they also reported more incidents of insomnia and less control over the amount of sleep they got every night.
Researchers stated that there are very few studies surrounding this subject, and that was what enticed them to want to uncover more. They said that they were surprised to see just what the impact was, and how many benefits there were when sleeping with another adult.
The study was done by surveys that were completed by over 1,000 participants, and they used medical scoring charts to track the answers.
Sources: Study Finds, Oxford Academic