For a typical night of sleep, your mattress will accumulate up to 12,000,000 dead skin cells per person sleeping on it. This adds up to a hefty pound of dead cells per year – about as much as a loaf of sandwich bread. After a decade of owning your mattress, it’ll have up to 10 pounds of dead skin. Over the years, these shed skin flakes will make their way to the core of your mattress and become harder to remove.  To complicate matters, all those shed cells are ideal food for dust mites. This is why it’s important to regularly remove dead skin and debris with a carpet beater or vacuum.