One fifth of Britons don't change bed sheets even once a month

A survey of more than 2,000 people in the UK found that more than half of them sleep in dirty sheets - and women are more lax when it comes to bedroom hygiene, the Daily Mail reported.

The research found just two in five of Britons change their sheets weekly - in line with the standards of TV's cleaning gurus Kim and Aggie.

A further 36 per cent change bedsheets fortnightly, while 17 per cent admit to changing dirty sheets just once a month or even less frequently.

Meanwhile six per cent of house-proud people stripped the sheets more than once a week, one per cent of people admitted they were changed just once a year, while three per cent had no idea.

But 40 per cent of men managed a weekly change, and a further eight per cent did it even more frequently than that, commissioned for the home retailer Dunelm Mill.

Dr Adam Fox, a paediatric allergist at a leading London teaching hospital, warned that dirty sheets could exacerbate a number of health problems.

"We spend about a third of our lives asleep and this is reflected in the debris that we leave between the sheets. Our bodies shed millions of skin cells each day, many of which rub off in our sleep and are deposited in our beds. In addition to skin cells, our bodies also secrete fluids, sweat and oils during a long nights sleep," Fox said.