Research Concludes Sleeping With Your Pup Is Good For You!

Humans need eight hours of sleep every night for optimal health. Good news for all you dog lovers out there – doctors are now saying that having your dog sleep with you is good for you!

The study released by the Mayo Clinic says that you may rest easier with Fido curled near you – just not in the same bed! Forty adults took part in the study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, and all participants slept with a dog in the room or in the bed with them. Sleeping with the dog in the bed meant the participants had a lower sleep efficiency score (the average was about 80%).

The people who had the dogs resting somewhere else in the room had an 83% sleep efficiency score. So, the bottom line is that the people who slept with dogs in the bed had a tendency to wake up more times during the night than those who had the dog sleeping somewhere else in the room. The study also said that sleeping with a human companion does not have the same effect on sleep efficiency.

People who slept with one other person had better sleep efficiency than people who slept alone. As you may imagine, the more pets you have, the more disruptions to your sleep. The study group was small and only involved middle-aged women, so it is unlikely that these results will be true in other populations. The size and breed of the dog were also not studied to see if those factors made a difference in sleep efficiency.