Are you having a hard time handling your sinus problems? Do you often snore at night? Do you want to improve the air that you breathe in your home or office?
Having a cool mist humidifier at home is a great way to improve air quality. However, there’s more to the benefits of cool mist humidifiers than making the air less dry. Did you know that a lot of hospitals use humidifiers to lower infection rates within their buildings?
We’ll give you an explanation for that and more. Keep reading to learn the other health benefits that humidifiers bring you. We listed down ten awesome health benefits of humidifiers below.
1. Having a Humidifier Helps Relieve Your Sinuses
Do you often feel congestion in your nasal passages? Do you often experience sinusitis and sinus pains? Do you have to deal with a sore throat that often comes with these other congestion issues?
Congestion happens when your mucus becomes too thick and sticky. Instead of doing what it needs to do, it’s blocking out the air that needs to go through your nose. This is what makes breathing through your nose difficult when you have sinusitis.
One way to ease that congestion and avoid sinusitis is to get a humidifier.
Notice how the air feels sharp and dry in the winter. This type of dry air can make your sinuses feel uncomfortable and tight. It’s also what causes your sinuses to dry up and become uncomfortable.
Placing a humidifier in the place where you live and/or work can help you in many ways. You’ll find that the humidifier helps you feel more pleasant sinus-wise, especially during winter. It loosens the thick mucus in your nasal area and clears the congestion.
2. They Decrease Asthma Triggers
Asthma is a common respiratory condition in many people across the world. In the US, 19.2 million adults and 5.5 million children have asthma according to the CDC. One of the many benefits of humidifiers is that they can do a lot to help reduce symptoms in asthmatic people.
People with respiratory problems like asthma need to breathe humidified air. This will help reduce the asthma attacks that they experience.
How does humidified air reduce the symptoms in asthmatic patients, you ask?
The reason behind asthma attacks is that the airways of the patient are dry. It keeps phlegm from flowing, which causes the airways to swell and inflame. This makes it difficult for the asthma patient to wheeze, cough, and/or have trouble breathing.
When you use a humidifier, it adds more moisture to the air that the patient is breathing in. It lubricates their airways and allows the phlegm to flow as it needs to. Warm-mist humidifiers and steam vaporizers are ideal, but cool mist humidifiers are also efficient.
3. Using a Humidifier Helps Keep Your Skin Healthy
Are you the type of person with dry skin? Skin conditions like eczema develop because of the dryness in the air. These conditions get often worse when the climate is dry.
Being in dry, hot environments can take out the moisture from your skin. It can also happen even when you live in a humid place. If the inside of your home has dry air because of indoor heating systems, the moisture of your skin still goes away.
As a result, your skin may become itchy and flakey. In some cases, your skin may crack and start bleeding. You’ll often see this occur in dry hands and/or chapped lips.
In other cases, you may start getting a breakout. This is because your skin produces oil when the air is dry. The excess oil can cause blemishes and breakouts.
The solution is to add humidity in the air. Get a humidifier to keep your skin well-nourished. Another direct way to fix dryness in the skin is to use a moisturizing lotion.
4. Cool Mist Humidifiers Help You Stay Healthy During Flu Season
This is another one of the top cool mist humidifier benefits. Viruses can survive outside of the body for several hours. Let’s take the flu virus as an example.
When a person infected with the flu sneezes, the virus gets spread in the air. If the air in your home is dry, it serves as a great place for viruses and germs to survive. If you want to kill flu viruses and germs in your home, invest in a humidifier. To purchase a cool mist humidifier, you can find deals and discounts on Pure Enrichment Coupons.
Note that humidity levels in the home need to be between 40%-50% to curb the spread of germs.
Humidifiers also help stay you disease-free by moistening the tiny hairs (cilia) inside your nose. They protect your nasal and respiratory passages from bacteria, dust, and foreign particles.
Your cilia are your first line of defense against diseases and allergic reactions. However, they can’t be efficient in their job if they are dry. Keeping a humidifier around will prevent your cilia from drying up.
5. Protects Your Voice in the Morning
You may notice that you often wake up with a low and raspy voice in the morning. This is what happens when your throat goes to rest when you sleep. Don’t worry because this is a normal occurrence.
What isn’t normal is when you wake up with a dry and/or hoarse throat. Hoarseness in the throat when waking up is often the result of dry air. While you sleep, the tissues in your throat collect fluid, causing your voice to be deeper and eyes to be puffy.
If you breathe through your mouth, your vocal cords dry up. Without lubrication, the vocal cords can’t move the way they do, causing them to change pitch. One way to keep this from happening often is to leave a humidifier on while you sleep.
Humidifiers also help those who snore to sleep better. Snoring is a symptom of nasal problems like congestion. As we mentioned, you can keep your sinuses decongested by using cool air humidifiers.
6. Lessen the Effects of Respiratory and Lung Diseases
Like asthma, you can help reduce the effects of other respiratory diseases. That may include ailments like influenza, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and lung cancer. You may even have several other diseases that worsen when you’re breathing in dry air.
It works in the same way that dryness in the respiratory system affects asthmatic people. The dryness prevents the necessary fluids in the body from doing their job. In other cases, phlegm gets stuck in the lungs or other areas, which causes breathing issues.
People with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD may need a COPD humidifier. This is part of the humidification therapy to help people with COPD reduce the dryness that affects bronchial tissues. However, a doctor needs to give you a recommendation or prescription to use a humidifier for COPD.
While humidifiers help ease respiratory diseases, you must still take care of yourself. Remember to drink plenty of water to reduce congestion. Keep your head elevated when you sleep and avoid unhealthy foods.
7. Cool Air Humidifiers Prevent Nosebleeds
Your body has effective ways of letting you know that something is going on inside you. At the same time, it’s also already trying to fix the issue to the best of its abilities. For example, nosebleeds are often minor symptoms of minor problems.
There are two common causes of nosebleeds. One is when you pick your nose. However, this is also an effect of the other common cause.
The number one cause of nosebleeds is dry air. Dryness in the air can cause crusting inside your nose. In turn, crusting makes your nose feel itchy or become irritated. Thus, you’ll feel compelled to pick or scratch the insides of the nose.
Other possible causes of nosebleeds are colds and allergies. These can also cause the skin inside your nose to crack. Plus, you often need to blow your nose when you have one or the other.
If you want to prevent nosebleeds, a great solution for it is to get a humidifier. The moisture in the air created by the humidifier will help keep the inside of your nose moist and protected. Getting a humidifier during winter where the air is often dry will help you prevent a lot of nosebleeds.
8. Prevent Headaches With a Humidifier
Having a headache is a common health concern, with over 39 million Americans claiming to have suffered from one recently. Your headaches aren’t always the symptoms of too much caffeine, lack of sleep, or stress. Sometimes, it only takes a change in the weather to trigger a migraine or headache.
Researchers found that there is a connection between the changes in barometric pressure and increases in medication sales.
If you remember, barometric pressure is the weight of the atmosphere surrounding us. In a way, it also affects the humidity in the air. It can produce high or low humidity, and this changes oxygen levels.
Some people can detect this change of oxygen in the air when we inhale. It’s often via headaches or migraines. If you’re not taking in the right amount of oxygen, the brain can’t function well.
Your blood vessels will begin to expand or contract to compensate for this lack of oxygen. These contractions/expansions compress the nerve fibers in your head. That’s what causes the headaches.
One of the best ways to deal with headaches caused by weather changes is to stay indoors. If you have a cool mist humidifier, you can control the humidity levels inside your home. Being able to regulate the humidity in the air will help you avoid headaches and migraines. Using essential oils that help relieve headaches may also work great in this scenario.
9. Reduce Your Recovery Time
Other than keep you safe from infections, humid air can do a lot more. One of the best benefits of a cool mist humidifier is that it can quicken your recovery speed. Note that this only applies to those who are ill with nasal infections, colds, and flu.
Remember, when you have nasal infections and/or sinus problems, dry air is an issue. When you humidify the air you breathe, you help smoothen your sinus and nasal passages. The humidity in the air also helps soothe your throat and bronchial passages.
Once these parts in your system take in humidified air, it becomes easier and faster for them to recover. You’ll be coughing and sneezing less in no time. You’ll start feeling better and improving from such problems and illnesses sooner.
Keep this in mind the next time you catch the flu or a cold.
10. Humidifiers Prevent Allergies
Around 32 million Americans are at risk of life-threatening allergic reactions. If you’re one of these people, you want to make sure that the air in your home isn’t carrying allergens. Humidifiers with anti-microbial filters can reduce allergy symptoms by filtering the air.
Keep in mind that humidifiers can cause problems as much as they can help. If you don’t keep your humidifier clean, it may instead give you air filled with allergens like dust and pollen. Talk with your healthcare provider before you buy a humidifier so you know the risks.
The best way to keep humidifiers effective is with regular cleaning and maintenance. You must always clean and change the filter in your humidifier. Otherwise, you’re putting yourself at risk of breathing in mold spores.
When you add water to the humidifier, use distilled or demineralized water. This will help prevent bacteria from growing in the device and the air. If you use other kinds of water, the humidifier can create white dust in the air, which may be an allergen trigger.
You also want to keep the humidity range in your home at 40% to 50%. Use a hygrometer to measure the humidity in a room. With the right humidity levels in the house, you keep allergens like dust mites away.
Get a Cool Mist Humidifier Now
Humidifiers are essential for comfortable and healthy living. The loss of moisture in the air can affect you in various ways. It can cause anything from minor irritations to serious allergic reactions.
Humidifiers have a lot of benefits like providing restful sleep and easier breathing. If you want to experience any of these health benefits, the next step is to invest in a cool mist humidifier now.
That wraps it up for our guide on the top ten benefits of humidifiers. If you want to see more content on humidifiers or your health, feel free to check out our other health guides. We provide all the latest health and fitness tips right here!
The Editorial Team at Healthcare Business Today is made up of skilled healthcare writers and experts, led by our managing editor, Daniel Casciato, who has over 25 years of experience in healthcare writing. Since 1998, we have produced compelling and informative content for numerous publications, establishing ourselves as a trusted resource for health and wellness information. We offer readers access to fresh health, medicine, science, and technology developments and the latest in patient news, emphasizing how these developments affect our lives.
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