Insights into the wonderful word of respiratory, sleep medicine and wellness.

You wake up in the middle of the night, freezing cold. You could have sworn you fell asleep under a nice warm doona a few hours ago. The truth is, you did, but that doona is now wrapped snugly around the person sleeping next to you, leaving exactly none for you.If you share a bed with someone else, this is probably a familiar scenario. Whether it’s being kept awake by snoring, tossing and turning, or their late-night smartphone habits, sharing a bed can be legitimately disruptive to your sleep health.In this article, we have a list from Sleep.org that provides solutions to 5 of the biggest problems people face when sharing a bed. We hope it helps, and brings the dreaded doona thief to justice.1. Get a bigger bedIf your bed is too small, you’re going to have a tough time sleeping. Different people need different amounts of space, but the basic rule is the bigger the better. Make sure you and your bed partner choose a bed that’s big enough for you both to sleep well. If you need to upgrade, do it.2. Make sure your mattress is comfortableWhen choosing a mattress, make sure you employ the Goldilocks principle; you don’t want it too hard, nor too soft, but ‘just right’. If you and your bed partner have the same definition of what ‘just right’ means, then good for you! Pick a mattress you both like. But if you both have different preferences for the softness of your sleeping surface, then you might want to consider two single mattresses pushed next to each other.3. Purchase a larger blanketIf you or your bed partner pleads guilty to blanket theft, then there are a number of solutions. One is to upsize from your mattress. If you have a double bed, get a queen blanket. Queen bed, king blanket, and etc. Alternatively, you can each use a single doona to avoid the problem altogether. This is especially helpful if you both have different preferences for the thickness of your bed coverings.4. Turn the lights offLight in the bedroom makes it hard to get to sleep. If you just can’t put your book down or don’t want to miss your late night TV show, then don’t keep your bed partner up because of it. If you’re reading by lamplight, then think about reading in the lounge instead or investing in a book light. Definitely make sure to move rooms if you want to watch something. Sound and light as a combination can make it near impossible to sleep. Compromise considerately.5. Set the perfect temperatureWhile people can have different preferences for bedroom temperature, science decrees that it should really be around 17-19 degrees celsius. By all means talk to your bed partner about their preferences, just know that too much hotter or colder than the aforementioned degrees can make it harder to get the sleep you need.Whatever this list may imply, sharing a bed isn’t all bad news, and can be a really great way to strengthen a relationship and its intimacy. Hopefully, these solutions to the potential problems above will help you remove the negativity that might surround your current sleeping situation, and discover the joy that sharing a bed can be.However, if you’ve tried the above, and you or your bed partner still have trouble sleeping, then talk to your GP and get in touch with us to find out how we might be able to help.Sleep Well – Live Well