Could sharing a bedroom with your pets be keeping you from getting a good night’s sleep?

Adobe Stock Photo by Brian N. Chin, Trinity College Sleeping with your dog in the same room could be negatively affecting your sleep quality, according to my team’s recently published research in Scientific Reports. We recruited a nationally representative sample of more than 1,500 American adults who completed questionnaires assessing their sleep habits. Overall, about half of the participants reported co-sleeping with pets – defined in our study as sleeping in the same room with your pet for at least part of the night. Next, our research team compared the sleep habits of people who did and didn’t co-sleep with pets. Our analyses revealed that participants who co-slept with pets had poorer sleep quality and more insomnia symptoms than those who did not. These findings persisted even after accounting for demographic differences between these groups. When considering pet type, we found evidence for a negative effect on sleep when co-sleeping with dogs but no evidence for a negative effect on sleep when co-sleeping with cats. Cats may have less of a negative effect on sleep than dogs when sharing the same room with their owners. Lewis Tse Pui Lung/iStock via Getty Images Plus Surprisingly, 93% of people in our study...