Symptoms of Sleeping in Dry Air: How Dry Air Wrecks Your Rest and What You Can Do About It
There are many symptoms of sleeping in a dry room. You would be amazed at how many people experience disturbing symptoms daily because they sleep in bedrooms with low humidity.
Humidity is a very sensitive issue. When there is high humidity, you can experience ill effects on your body.
If there is low indoor humidity, you can experience many symptoms of dry air. Therefore, you must maintain your indoor humidity at the recommended level of 30 to 50%.
The best bedroom humidity is 30 to 50 percent. However, that is not even a problem. Knowing whether you have been sleeping in dry air is the problem.
Most people will have disturbed sleep, and they will attribute it to other things. They will hardly know that the dry air in the bedroom is to blame.
If you see the following symptoms, you need a dry air humidifier:
- Upper respiratory membranes lose their moisture
- Overproduction of mucus
- It can cause dehydration
- Dry skin
- Colds, and related illnesses
- Asthma and other respiratory illnesses aggravation
When dry air depletes their moisture, these membranes become irritated and inflamed, leading to a cascade of unwanted guests:
- Dry Skin: Your skin, deprived of its natural barrier, feels itchy, flaky, and prone to cracks. Beauty sleep turns into beauty nightmare.
- Sore Throat: Dry, inflamed throat tissues feel like sandpaper, making every swallow a scratchy ordeal. Singing in the shower? Forget it!
- Congestion: Mucus, designed to trap dust and bacteria, dries up and thickens, making your nose feel like a stuffy tunnel. Goodbye, deep breaths!
- Respiratory Problems: Dry air can aggravate existing respiratory conditions like asthma or allergies, leading to coughing, wheezing, and difficulty breathing. Not the lullaby anyone wants.
Side effects of sleeping in a dry room
Many things can go wrong with your health when you sleep in a dry room. In another article, we looked at the dry air in-house symptoms, and we saw there were quite a number.
In this article, we are more concerned with symptoms that you experience as a result of sleeping in a bedroom with dry air.
During the night, the temperature drops. Cold air does not retain moisture very well. In that regard, if you live in a place with dry air, it will be drier during the night than during the day.
So what happens when you sleep in a dry room?
Keep reading!
1. The upper respiratory membranes lose their moisture
The respiratory system is lined by mucus, which traps viruses, bacteria, dust, and other air pollutants. If the mucus dries up, these air pollutants will pass straight to your lungs.
During the cold winter months, the air runs dry at home. Temperature affects humidity too. During the winter, most of the water vapor condenses, meaning there is less moisture in the air.
Also, because of the cold, you switch on the heat. Heating dries the air even further! When the mucus in your upper respiratory parts dries up, the membranes can become inflamed.
If this happens, you will experience blockage and pain. You won’t be able to enjoy a full night’s sleep.
Something you ought to remember all the time is that if something is wet, it loses moisture to the dry air.
Since the air is cold and dry at night, your wet membranes will lose their moisture to the dry air.
2. There can also be an overproduction of mucus
Well, this might seem like a contradiction to the claim that respiratory membranes are losing their moisture.
Think about it some more …
When you sleep for days on end in a dry room, the body takes this as a signal that it needs to produce more mucus. Therefore, it produces too much mucus to compensate for the dry air.
According to an article in Health Line, dry, cold winter air can cause the overproduction of mucus.
This forces you to keep clearing your throat. It can also give you a runny nose, which can be quite uncomfortable.
3. Sleeping in a dry room can cause dehydration
During respiration, the body uses up its own fluids, so you end up dehydrated. This is why you are advised to drink more water and other helpful fluids during the cold season.
It is also important to avoid drinking coffee and alcohol excessively because such drinks cause dehydration.
As we have said in other posts in this blog, dry air sucks moisture from all around it. It will also suck moisture from your body. The winter humidity level is so low. You must counter this by rehydrating more often.
4. Makes you vulnerable to many illnesses
When you are exposed to dry air for too long, the first thing that happens is that the mucus in the airways dries up.
The work of this mucus is to trap bacteria, viruses, dust, and other foreign particles before they can go on to irritate the delicate tissue of the airways and cause inflammation.
Since dry mucus is not sticky, these foreign agents pass through! It is easier to catch colds, the flu, bronchitis, and even asthma when you sleep in a room with dry air.
If you have asthma, dry air can trigger an attack, especially when the mucus dries up and it cannot capture the air pollutants.
5. Dry air parches your skin
Exposure to cold air is going to give you dry and flaky skin. This happens because the dry indoor air sucks all the moisture from your skin.
Dry skin can cause many issues. First, it breaks easily, and bacteria can find an entry into your body. Dry skin is also susceptible to swelling, bleeding, and other ailments.
The same way that plants dry when they lack water is the same way your skin loses water to the drier surrounding air.
If you realize that your skin feels itchier, rash, and drier than usual, please use a hygrometer and check the level of your bedroom humidity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Many people sleep in a dry bedroom without knowing it. When you fall asleep, it is like you lock out everything else and sink into oblivion for a few hours.
However, your body still needs the right amount of moisture in the air to continue carrying out its functions correctly.
Here are some questions you might have in mind regarding sleeping in a room with low humidity:
Is it bad to sleep in a dry room?
It is bad for your health to sleep in a dry room. The mucus lining your airways dries up, leaving you susceptible to nosebleeds and illnesses like flu, colds, bronchitis and asthma. Sleeping in a dry room is going to dehydrate you and give you dry skin, frizzy hair, and chapped lips.
What happens if your room is too dry?
Your indoor plants start to dry out, or they start needing more water. You also feel thirstier, get drier and itchy skin, experience nose bleeds, dry skin, and frequent flu and colds.
You can also experience static shock from everything you touch. Other ill effects of staying in a dry room include peeling paint and damage to leather items.
What symptoms does dry air cause?
There are many, but the most obvious ones include dry and flaky skin. You could also experience more acne breakouts, flu, colds, bronchitis, and frequent asthma attacks for people with asthma.
Since the mucus in their airways dries out, all the contaminants in the air (viruses, bacteria, dust, and others) get into your system, and they cause different and unpleasant reactions. Eczema flare-ups occur when the skin is too dry.
Can dry air make you short of breath?
When humidity is too low, your airways might become inflamed, and you might not inhale properly. It makes you wheeze, and you can get serious chest coughs. If you lose sleep and wake up wheezing at night, it is because the air is too dry.
Wrapping it up
Sleeping in a dry room has so many serious effects. Most homes get dry indoor air during the winter.
To avoid this, invest in a humidifier so that it can pump out mist and raise the humidity level within the required limits of 30 to 50%.
You might not know that you have dry air in the bedroom. However, if you experience dry skin, chapped lips, or sleep disturbances, it might be a result of sleeping in dry air.
Dry in-house air can also cause a sore throat. If you notice that you have been having too many flu attacks in the winter, check the humidity level in your home.
Maintaining the right humidity level can help you reduce visits to the hospital. Some allergens also thrive in low humidity.
To eliminate the guesswork in your bedroom humidity, just buy a modern mister, like a Pure Enrichment humidifier.
Ensure it has a humidistat so that it turns on when the humidity level falls below the set level. It will also switch off automatically when it attains the desired humidity level.
Also check my other articles on:
Air Purifier or Dehumidifier for Musty Smell?
Why Does Dehumidifier Blow Hot Air?
Why Does Dehumidifier Blow Cold Air?
Can mold cause sinus infection
