A new study reveals that people who let their pets sleep in their bed or bedrooms at night enjoy a better night's sleep, Daily News reports.
The study was conducted by the Center for Sleep Medicine at the Mayo Clinic located in Arizona.
"I'm not sure that there's a hard and fast rule about pets [in bed]. My community of colleagues do think that it is just always a risk," says Dr. Lois Krahn, a sleep medicine specialist at Mayo Clinic Center for Sleep Medicine in Arizona, and one of the paper's authors, Today reports.
For the study, the researchers surveyed 150 patients, half of which were pet owners.
The study showed that out of the 56% of the total patients who let their pets sleep in their bedrooms or on their beds at night, 41% said that their pets didn't disturb their sleep and even admitted to dreaming easier because their pets provide "security, companionship or relaxation."
Only one in five participants in the sleep study said that their animal companions woke them up in the night.
The findings of this study contradict the standard sleep recommendations that suggest keeping pets out of the bedroom.
A 2013 report by the same Center for Sleep Medicine had estimated that 10% of people said pets disturbed their sleep, up 1% from 2001. However, the same study had also found that those getting disturbed at night had multiple pets, which increased the chances of one animal waking everyone up.
The new survey also suggests that dogs usually adopt a sleep pattern similar to that of their owner, while cats tend to roam during the night, on the other hand, with only a few spending the entire night snoozing in one place.
