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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Box-By-The-Riviera™ who wrote (316518)	1/13/2006 9:35:09 AM
From: Pogeu Mahone	Respond to of 436258

Hotel Stays yuck How not to sleep well at night. ********************************************** Does Your Pillow Take Your Breath Away? If you watch TV on a regular basis, you probably know the commercial that alerts you to the accumulation of "body soil" on your bedding. The advertisement--which tries to sell a laundry detergent--shows a man jumping into bed and sinking into filth and mud; a scene no doubt designed to enhance the yuk factor. Rather than typical marketing hype, the ad may be more accurate than we like to think, given the results of a recent pillow study. Researchers at the University of Manchester, UK, found that pillows as little as 1.5 years old can harbor more than a million fungal spores. The study, published in October 2005 in the scientific journal Allergy, studied samples from ten pillows that had been in use for 1.5 to 20 years. They discovered between 4 and 16 different types of fungi per pillow, among them bread and vine moulds as well as spores usually found in showers and on damp walls. Research leader Professor Ashley Woodcock pointed out that "pillows are inhabited by the house dust mite which eats fungi, and one theory is that the fungi are in turn using the house dust mites' feces as a major source of nitrogen and nutrition (along with human skin scales). There could therefore be a 'miniature ecosystem' at work inside our pillows." The most worrisome find of the scientist team was Aspergillus fumigatus, a microscopic fungus that can aggravate asthma and cause allergic sinusitis in people with allergic tendencies. The resulting syndrome named aspergillosis is the leading infectious cause of death in leukemia patients. According to the University of Manchester, "Immuno-compromised patients such as transplantation, AIDS and steroid treatment patients are also frequently affected with life-threatening Aspergillus pneumonia and sinusitis." Invasive aspergillosis is difficult to treat; it affects the lungs and sinuses, but can also spread to other organs such as the brain. Rather surprisingly, the highest numbers of spores were found in synthetic pillows. In light of the fact that we spend a third of our lives in bed, it seems prudent to reduce the risk of respiratory disease by fungus. Washing the pillows won't help, says natural health guru Dr. Joseph Mercola--it takes 121° Celsius water to kill fungal spores (boiling water only reaches 100° C). Bleach is an efficient sporicide, but you would have to use so high concentrations that it is questionable which would be worse: Breathing in spores or breathing in chlorine all night. The best remedy, states Dr. Mercola, is to use high-quality water-, mold- and spore-proof pillow covers like hospitals do, or to buy new pillows once a year.