

The researchers found that when a dog was on the bed, both owner and dog slept reasonably well, with the dogs getting the slightly better deal: Owners had an average sleep efficiency of 81%, while the dogs averaged 85%. Both monitors were set to monitor movement every minute. The people wore activity monitors that recorded their movements whether they were soundly asleep or not. The dogs wore FitBarks, an activity tracker that attaches to the collar and records the dog’s activity whether it’s active or at rest. The dogs were of various breeds, and all were over six months of age.īoth sets of participants, humans and dogs, wore activity trackers to monitor their sleep activity. None of the subjects had sleeping disorders. The average age of the study participants was 44, and 88% were women. Your 92% is considered very good.įor the study, researchers evaluated the sleep efficiency of 40 healthy adults for five months. In sleep science, anything above 85% is considered a healthy sleep efficiency.

Now divide 385 minutes by 420 minutes to get your sleep efficiency, which is 92%. Subtract how long it took to fall asleep (25 minutes), and the times you woke up (10 minutes total), for a total sleep time of 385 minutes. Your total time in bed equals seven hours (420 minutes). It takes you 25 minutes to fall asleep, and you wake up twice during the night for five minutes each time. It’s calculated by dividing the amount of time spent asleep (in minutes) by the total amount of time spend in bed (also measured in minutes).įor example, let’s say you go to bed at 11 p.m. That’s the percentage of time a person spends actually asleep while in bed. “We found that many people actually find comfort and a sense of security from sleeping with their pets.” According to a survey by the American Pet Products Association, nearly half of all dogs sleep on their owners’ beds.Īnd according to a recent study at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, people who sleep with their dog on the bed sacrifice sleep.īut maybe not enough to matter: “Most people assume having pets in the bedroom is a disruption,” says Lois Krahn, M.D., the corresponding author of the study.
