The mattress doctors
We spend around a third of our lives on them, but how often does your mattress get a spring clean?
The mattress doctors are a little bit like the Ghostbusters – call them in when you have a problem (or want to prevent one) and they will gallantly charge in with complicated looking equipment and masks to make your life a little bit easier. In this case though the beast they are after is the dust mite, or rather its droppings.
Dust mites are attracted to shed skin cells and seeing as we spend around eight hours a day in bed, there can be quite a build up. The mites then pass through the tiny holes in the surface of the mattress and breed within it. It is these mites, and specifically their excrement, that can cause allergies. For those who don’t consider themselves allergic to dust but wake up every morning with a stuffy nose, it might also be worth having the mattress sanitised. The process is recommended for all eczema and asthma sufferers in addition to pregnant women. It has been claimed that 85 per cent of the former group would obtain relief from their symptoms by having their mattress and bedding treated by a mattress doctor. If all this seems a bit far fetched, then consider that in the UK in 2004 the Mattress Doctor had the fastest take-up rates of all franchises.
In Cyprus, mattress doctors come in the form of Andy Ormiston and Loucas Pattihis, who set up their company shortly before Chrsitmas. In the interests of journalism, I invited them into my bedroom to see what happens. My mattress is eight years old and our house in a rural area surrounded by trees (pollen) and dust in the summer.
First off, the bed is stripped and Andy put together something that looked like a vaccum cleaner. I was soon told that this was not something I could try at home – the machine is two to three times as strong as a usual hoover and vibrates the mattress (just putting your hand on the bed you could feel this), to loosen all the particles inside. “This is an extension of the old idea where the lady of the house would take the mattress outside, leave it in the sun and beat it with a stick,” Andy said. The vacuum will then bring everything to the surface and suck it out via a special filter, which removes 99.997 per cent of all particles of three microns, including bacteria and viral particles. At this point my small children couldn’t stand back any longer (the video had come to an end) and started bouncing on the bed – a process, I was told, that was not too dissimilar to the action of the vacuum although I never secured a recommendation that would allow me to freely let them continue.
Onward and upward, the mattress was turned over and the same process repeated. To complete the process on a double mattress takes about 30 minutes, after which a UV light is passed over the bed to kill any bacteria that have been brought to the surface (yellow goggles are donned at this point). A spray is then used over the mattress to kill bacteria and slow down the mites’ reproduction rate. Keen to stress that the process is environmentally friendly, Loucas, at this point, sprayed the spray on to his hand and licked it. It is actually derived from a specific type of orange.
After ten minutes of the initial procedure, Andy emptied what the vacuum had sucked up onto a black cloth – it was quite disgusting. An entire mattress can turn up half to one jam jar of dust. Although vacuuming the mattress and exposing it to the sunlight will help, there is no way they can compete with the fancy equipment of the mattress doctors. If that jam jar won’t convince you of the need for having your own mattress done, the feeling of well being I awoke with the following morning might just do the trick.
The whole procedure costs £40, which includes both sides of the mattress and the pillows. It is also possible to do the quilt. It is recommended that the procedure be repeated every six months. For more information: Tel: 22 878224, email: [email protected], www.matdoc.co.uk
DUST MITES
House dust mites are present in every home and their numbers have increased massively in recent years due to the environment created in our homes through the introduction of double glazing and air conditioning.
Dust mites are not insects but are part of the spider family. Due to their very small size, dust mites are not visible to the naked eye.
Mites feed on the dead skin shed by humans and animals and on other organic material found where they live.
Most dust mites are found in our beds. Up to 2 million in an average mattress, duvet and pillows. They are also found in carpets and other soft furnishings.
Each mite produces 750 times its own body weight in excrement during its three-month life span. They also shed their skin as they grow. This shed skin and excrement becomes airborne every time we move in our beds and we breathe it in. The allergens which it contains can cause or trigger the symptoms of asthma, eczema, hay fever and other allergic conditions
