Is A Humidifier Good for Allergy? Find Out Here

Buying a humidifier for your home comes with many benefits. You can look forward to better days and perhaps even fewer visits to the doctor.

But do humidifiers help with allergies? It is specifically known to help with dust, pet dander, pollen, and other allergens. When these allergens soak up moisture in the air, they become heavy and drop to the ground before you can inhale them. By making the air more humid, this appliance also makes it easier on your skin, preventing too much itching or breakouts. 

Nothing is as uncomfortable as being an allergy victim. You just need the smallest trigger and bang! The wheezing, itching, breathlessness, and watery eyes can be too much.

These are just some of the disadvantages of indoor allergens that you really do not want to experience.

What do humidifiers help with?

Because of the dry air in your house, many sinister indoor allergens lurk all around. Thus, you need something that will prevent these allergens from floating in the air.

What is better than using a humidifier to increase the indoor humidity? That way, pollen, dust particles, dust mites, fur, pet dander, and mold spores cannot float in the air. They fall to the ground.

PLEASE NOTE CAREFULLY – A humidifier may not really help with dust mites because they thrive in humid environments. However, it is great for pollen.

If you check on places like Amazon.com, you will see that they have many humidifiers for allergies. These appliances are specifically designed to help with allergies.

Do they really help? We have said they do. How do they help? This is what we are going to explore in this topic.

What to do if you have allergic symptoms

Do not take allergic attacks lightly. The first thing that you need to know is the symptoms of allergies. They can be either mild or severe.

Mild allergic symptoms include wheezing, running nose, sneezing, coughing, itchy throat, cracked or dry skin, and rashes.

These are not too serious, but they will cause you a lot of discomfort. A humidifier helps with allergy symptoms such as the ones mentioned here.

Severe allergic reactions include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, breathlessness, headaches, dropping blood pressure, and unconsciousness.

As you can see, these are quite life-threatening situations.

DO NOT SELF-MEDICATE. Visit an allergy expert and let them run diagnostic tests on you. If you do not get treatment for your allergy, it could lead to a chronic illness such as asthma in the future.

Do humidifiers help with allergies in the winter?

Cold air in winter is associated with low humidity indoors. You would think that because it is cold and damp outside, it would be the same inside.

However, the difference is that indoors, you will be running your heating system to keep the rooms warm, comfortable, and habitable.

Unfortunately, thanks to the heating system and the warm air, the heater sucks all the moisture from the air. Thus, you experience dry air in the house.

Other symptoms associated with dry indoor air in winter include swollen nasal membranes, dry throat, itchy skin, cracked lips, and dry skin. You can see that these are some of the symptoms associated with many of the allergies.

When the air is too dry, it will suck all the moisture from your nasal membranes and can cause sinus issues. Thus, we can say that if you are allergic, the dry air compounds the problem of allergies.

It stops excess mucus production

When the air is dry, the body responds accordingly by producing more mucus to keep your air passages moist.

This mucus will, in turn, not be dispelled, causing a blockage in the airways.

Thus, if you notice that your baby’s nose is always running, think about the humidity. Don’t automatically assume that the baby has a cold. In this instance, you may want to get the best humidifier to use in a baby’s room.

Too much mucus is not good because it can lead to the development of asthma, which is a chronic problem. Instead of letting your body overproduce mucus, you just need a humidifier to raise the humidity a bit.

The good thing is that there is no harm, even if you want to run the humidifier through the night. There are many humidifiers for sleeping. So, if you fear that using a humidifier can disrupt your sleep, it will not.

Is a humidifier good for pollen allergies?

Do humidifiers help with allergies caused by pollen? The truth is that pollen allergies is the main reason why we buy humidifiers.

A humidifier is good for almost all types of allergies. However, it is very good for the spring flower bloom, where you start feeling that ceaseless itch in your nostrils.

Pollen will not float in the air

But, as many people would ask, just how do humidifiers help with allergies? Well, the simplest explanation for this is that pollen is light in weight and travels easily through the air.

Thus, a humidifier injects moisture into the air, in which case the pollen becomes heavy and falls to the ground.

When there is no pollen floating in the air, it means that you cannot inhale it. However, you have to keep the humidifier running throughout the pollen period so that the humidity in your home stays at 55 percent.

However, please note that during the flower bloom, the pollen is always in excess in the air and as a result. Even if your home is allergy-free, the outdoors is not. The office is also not free of allergies.

The good thing is that you can buy one of the small portable humidifiers. You can place one on your desktop. It will humidify the air around your sitting and working space.

Pollen allergies are very common in the spring, and they can really be a pain for us. Runny noses, itching, and watery eyes do not make a very good image.

Humidifiers are very helpful as they dampen the pollen and make it heavy enough that it falls to the ground so you do not inhale it easily.

How a humidifier helps with skin allergies

While the argument out there is that a humidifier may not help with skin allergies, well, one question arises in our mind. Why then do we have humidifiers for dry skin?

We may not have a humidifier that is specifically made for dry skin. However, as it increases the humidity in your indoor air, the humidifier also leaves you feeling much fresher, rejuvenated, and healthy.

It prevents rashes

One of the ways allergies affect the skin is through the rashes. These can be red, nasty, and painful.

By keeping the indoor air humid to the required degree, you help the skin a lot, as it will not develop those rashes.

Dry skin is most likely to break out at any opportune moment.

It prevents itching

Another way in which the skin is affected by allergies is itchiness. Now, when the air is too dry, it will suck all the moisture from your skin.

You do not want that to happen if you suffer from skin allergies. It can lead to a serious breakout.

In any case, you can imagine having the urge to scratch your skin all over, and then your nails come across dry and chapped skin.

They would even cause bleeding. Thus, whether it is summer or winter, if you suffer from skin allergies, always keep your house humidified.

Let us say that you do not need to buy a humidifier for your skin, or for sleeping. Any humidifier should be able to serve all those and more purposes.

Just make sure the humidifier capacity is rated for the size of the room that you intend to use it in.

Warm mist humidifier for allergies

There are different types of humidifiers. Ultrasonic cool mist humidifiers are the most popular because of their efficiency and safety. However, that is not all, because we also have warm mist ultrasonic humidifiers.

Many people avoid warm mist humidifiers because if toppled over, they can spill hot water on children and pets. They pose a serious scalding risk.

However, if you take extra precautions and place the humidifier at quite a distance from the baby’s cot, they will stay safe. Besides, you do not want to leave the baby unsupervised for so long.

The warm mist humidifiers have certain benefits, though. One of them is that as the water boils, it kills the viruses, germs, and fungi that would otherwise have been dispersed in the mist.

Thus, you get to clean in some clean and fresh air, virus- and germ-free.

To some extent, the warm mist humidifier is a better bet than a cool mist one because bacteria in the air can also trigger allergic attacks. The warm mist injected into the room makes the room feel warmer.

Thus, we can certainly say that running a humidifier helps keep the house warm, thus lowering your heating bill in the long run, albeit by a small percentage.

Do cool mist humidifiers help with allergies?

Many people prefer cool mist humidifiers to warm ones. The reason for that is safety, and we agree that safety is paramount!

With a nicely sized cool mist humidifier, you can just turn it on and forget it for the whole week.

Once it depletes all the water in the tank, the humidifier will turn itself off automatically. That is the beauty of having a modern humidifier with automated features.

When the cool mist humidifier releases the fine mist, it integrates with the air in the room. The “moisturized” air feels very good on your skin, on your throat, and on your nostrils.

You can only experience the difference between dry air and humidified air to understand the difference.

The only downside to the cool mist humidifier is that you have to clean it often. It does not kill viruses, mold spores, or bacteria.

Most of them are so tiny that they cannot be stopped in the filter. In this case, you will need to clean it more often than you would have to with the warm mist humidifier.

An ultrasonic cool mist humidifier would be your best bet for pollen allergies. It is so effective that you will never have pollen floating in the air. It is also good for enhancing the condition of your skin.

A cool mist humidifier can help keep the airways open and well moisturized. This way, the mucus slips through without causing a blockage.

This is one way of reducing the symptoms of allergies. These include wheezing, breathlessness, coughing, sneezing, runny nose, itching, watery eyes, and so on.

Conclusion

Do humidifiers help with allergies? You have seen that they do. Run yours if you live in a place with dry air. It also helps in winter when the air becomes drier as a result of running the heating system.

Allergies cause a lot of discomfort, as you can see here. That is why you should do everything to alleviate this discomfort.

With whole-house humidifiers and portable humidifiers, you can even buy a small one for your office desk or your car. Anything to beat the nasty pollen at its dirty game!