What Do Humidifiers Help With?

Low indoor humidity can cause numerous problems such as breathing difficulties, dry skin, or throat irritation. Be that as it may, high humidity is not recommended also as the excess moisture can lead to mold growth which can be as troubling as dry air. This is why you need to create an optimal balance in your home, constantly tracking the humidity levels.

If low humidity is causing you problems, the quickest and easiest solution to implement is to add a humidifier to your room. From helping you moisturize your skin to prolonging the lifespan of your furniture, these can do wonders for your home. Let’s see how.

What Do Humidifiers Help With?

Skin Issues

According to a study, low humidity in a home, especially in air-conditioned environments, can cause rough, dry skin, or even aggravate eczema symptoms. Another significant study published in the Journal of The European Academy of Dermatology and Venerology found that overly dry air and low temperatures can weaken your skin barrier function which makes your skin more susceptible to allergens or irritants.

As the humidity is generally lower in cold weather due to chilly air losing its ability to hold onto moisture, the dry air entering your home during winter may be the main culprit behind your skin issues. Indoor heating systems can aggravate these problems as they cause the air to expand and further reduce humidity.

Using a humidifier to add moisture to your indoor air can help your skin retain its moisture levels and keep it lubricated. This suggests that the problems with dry air may be significantly reduced in homes with humidifiers.

Help You Breathe Easier

Common flu symptoms such as coughing, sneezing, chills, stuffy nose, and a sore throat, can sometimes make breathing a challenge. By adding enough moisture to the air, humidifiers assist with moisturizing lung passages which immediately makes the breathing process easier.

Keep Your Hair and Scalp Healthy

When there is a lack of moisture in the air, your scalp may become overly dry and start to produce excess oil to overcompensate, ultimately worsening dandruff. Since moisture is also necessary for increasing elasticity and removing brittleness from your hair a lack thereof can cause slight damage. By adding moisture to your house, a humidifier can reduce excessive dandruff production as well as remove bristles from your hair.

Humidifiers May Stop the Spread of Flu and Other Viruses

Airborne viral particles can disperse and travel easily where there is low air humidity as there isn’t enough moisture to allow gravity to pull them down. This is why raising the humidity levels in your home can reduce the chances for germs to transmit from one person to another, automatically lowering the possibility for you to catch any viruses. To achieve this, always set the humidity within an optimal range which is somewhere between 40% and 50%.

Lower Stress Levels

In a recent study, which offers a new perspective for improving the wellbeing of office workers, researchers found that prolonged exposure to dry indoor air may raise their stress levels.

For the purpose of this study, researchers investigated the connection between relative humidity and stress levels in four individual buildings with ranging levels of humidity. The final results indicated a greater stress response in workers that operated in buildings with dryer air after measuring their heart rates.

Humidifiers Keep You Away From Illnesses

Did you know that there are small hairs inside your nose that serve the purpose of safeguards for your nasal and respiratory passageways? Their purpose is to filter out dust, germs, and other particles that penetrate your nose through breathing which saves you from numerous illnesses.

A dry nose has trouble filtering these microscopic, pesky particles because it prevents the small hairs, called cilia, from doing their job effectively. This is a humidifier steps in. By providing the right amount of moisture, it can keep your nasal passageways as moist as necessary – allowing proper functioning of these nasal tiny hairs.

Helps With Snoring

The chances for sleepers that breathe through their mouths to snore are big because it’s challenging to prevent dryness from settling in. Increasing the amount of moisture in the air can help you lubricate the tissue at the back of your throat, reducing the snoring.

Helping With Coughing

Since it irritates the throat, dry air is one of the greatest causes of coughs. Once having caused this vexing feeling, it forces you to cough even more to reverse it which feels like rubbing salt into the wound.

Adding humidity to your indoor air can prevent coughing or when the problem is already ongoing, it can make a cough more productive by getting moisture into the airways.

Benefits for the Home

Seeing your flowers perk up might be yet another benefit of using a dehumidifier. This is mostly because the air in most houses is dry but plants enjoy humidity levels between 45% and 70%. Even though most plants will grow without the necessary humidity, they certainly won’t look as vibrant.

Humidifiers can also be helpful with preventing damage to wood furniture that is caused due to dry air. In the long run, this can dry out your wooden furniture and cause it to crack prematurely. This can also affect the legs and arms on chairs, contributing to loosening joints.

Saves You Money on Heating Bills

It is common knowledge that dry air feels colder than humidified air. This is probably because sweat evaporates more slowly where there is more moisture in the air, allowing you to stay warmer for a longer period of time. So, when the air is warmer in your home, you can lower your thermostat – thus saving not only energy but money too.

Help With Allergy Flare-Ups

Everyone has a different experience with allergies as they can be caused due to numerous factors such as bee venom, pollen, dust, or pet dander.

According to a study from the Clinical Research Center, home humidity levels can trigger certain allergies when they are not at the optimal level. This is mostly because when the humidity is too high, it encourages mold growth or the accumulation of those pesky microscopic creatures – dust mites – that aggravate allergy flare-ups.

On the other hand, low humidity allows dust particles to easily disperse and travel through your indoor air, which, eventually, can lead to irritating allergies. This is why it is of the highest importance to get the humidity levels correct.

In Summary

Hopefully, this article helped you learn whether implementing a humidifier is a good option for your home or not. To summarize, we warmly recommend using one as their benefits are multifold.

Along with moisturizing your skin with expensive facial moisturizers or keeping your hair in top-notch condition with the newest shampoo – adding a humidifier can help you achieve better results. While doing that, it will work wonders to prevent influenza while lowering your stress levels, or simply helps you or your partner with nightly snoring.