And while experts often emphasize the importance of creating the ideal sleep environment like keeping your room dark, cool, and quiet. There’s one strange thing that might surprise you. You’re actually not alone while you’re snoozing.
That’s right! Each night, dozens of tiny, eight-legged mites crawl across your face while you sleep. As unsettling as that sounds, it’s something that happens to pretty much everyone.
These mites like to live near the outer edges of your hair follicles. That’s because they feed on the oils and dead skin cells that gather there, which they apparently find delicious.
Alejandra Perotti, a professor who studies tiny creatures at the University of Reading in the UK, explained it like this: “While we are sleeping, they come out and are very happy, mating, visiting relatives, walking on our faces. The moment we wake up, they go back inside the pore.”
These mites actually help out by clearing away all the junk that clogs up your pores. And they’re well adapted to survive the conditions on your skin, even during the daytime. That’s because they’ve evolved to resist damage from UV rays, which would normally harm their DNA.
In return for their pore-cleaning services, the mites receive melatonin from your body. This hormone, which is naturally produced in the skin and helps regulate your sleep, also gives the mites the energy they need to go about their business.
Dr. Dan Friederich, a U.S.-based physician who often shares eye care tips and other medical advice online, broke things down in a video that went viral.
According to Dr. Friederich, he can sometimes tell when a person sleeps with their pet in the same bed—just by looking at their eyelashes. That’s because it can lead to a higher presence of mites around the eyes.
One of the most common reasons mites end up in your eyelashes is something you might not expect. The doctor added: “Don’t sleep with your animals if you can help it.”