Here's how often you should wash your pillowcase

How often do you really wash your pillowcase? Once a week? Once every two weeks?

Well it’s probably nowhere near enough, according to one facialist.

After a woman in China found she had over 100 mites living in her eyelashes due to not washing her pillowcase for five years, people began panicking that they had little creepy crawlies living on their bodies.

Although her case is extreme (most of us are probably washing our bedware way more often than this woman), you should still be washing your pillowcase several times a week.

Facialist Andy Millward told the Metro that skin conditions including acne can be caused by dirty pillowcases.

Every night, our pillows soak up “a cocktail of sweat, sebum and dead skin cells.” Nice stuff.

“As we sleep, we lose water through sweating, a lot of which is through our upper body, chest and head, excreting toxins from the body in the process. Our sebaceous glands, mostly concentrated on the face and scalp, continue to produce and secrete sebum while we sleep,” Millward added.

All of this ends up on your pillowcase and this in turn makes pillows the perfect place for fungus and bacteria to breed, leading to infection and irritation of the skin.

Millward recommends that your should wash your pillows every two to four days. If you have oily skin, you should do it more often.

Same goes for those who have long hair which can trap dirt and toxins from the air, putting even more gunk on your pillows.

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