Why Having a Humidifier is Good: 10 Healthy Benefits
Why would you want a humidifier?
Apart from controlling the humidity of your indoor air, humidifiers help you sleep better, enjoy better health, protect you from stuffy nose, chapped lips, and cracked skin.
Humidifiers play a crucial role in improving the indoor air quality and making your home more comfortable.
The major role of a humidifier is to add moisture/humidity in the air. Moist air is considered healthier and more comfortable to inhale than dry air.
Why you need a humidifier today: Top benefits
Running a humidifier in your home or work place offers many health benefits. It also protects your items from damage caused by dry air.
This appliance comes in handy in ensuring the general well being of your entire family.
Here is a list of the top ten benefits of using a humidifier:
1. Humidifier benefits on skin
Your skin is a tender and vulnerable organ. When exposed to dry air, it can suffer a variety of uncomfortable symptoms.
Dry air draws moisture from the skin making it dry, uncomfortably tight, itchy and flaky.
When the air around you becomes too dry, your skin becomes irritated and your lips will also begin to chap and crack.
Exposing your delicate skin to dry air for too long can lead to serious skin damage. Applying body lotion and lip balm may help your skin and lips regain some of the moisture lost.
But these products will not be able to hydrate your skin properly.
Using a humidifier is one of the effective ways of ensuring that your skin remains hydrated all the time. A humidifier adds moisture into the air, naturally re-hydrating your skin.
This in turn helps to alleviate the unpleasant conditions that are associated with dry skin. A humidifier can also provide relief to people who suffer from eczema and other skin conditions.
2. Humidifier benefits on hair
Among the many benefits of using a humidifier is that it can help in keeping your hair and scalp looking strong and healthy.
Dry air does not only cause discomfort to your scalp, but it can also have damaging effects on your hair.
Dry air has the same effects on your hair and scalp just as on the skin. It draws moisture from the hair making it weak and brittle.
Weak hair breaks easily, which can lead to hair loss. In addition, if your scalp becomes too dry, it becomes irritated, itchy and it starts to break causing dandruff.
The hair is made up of a structural protein known as collagen. Collagen requires some moisture in order to remain strong and vibrant.
Dry air has adverse effects on your hair and you therefore should avoid exposing it to such at all time.
When the air in your home or office becomes excessively dry, running a humidifier is the best way to restore the lost moisture.
The hair will get the necessary moisture that it requires in order to remain strong and dazzling.
3. Get help with allergies
Dry air can aggravate the allergy symptoms for people with compromised immunity. Blocked nasal passages, itchy eyes and skin are some of the symptoms that can worsen with exposure to dry air.
Running a humidifier alongside a good air purifier can really help in improving your homes air quality. Moisturized air can help to clear blocked nasal passages providing great relief to allergic people.
When your nasal passages are clear, your body is able to easily get rid of the air allergens that it might be exposed to.
Moisturized air has fewer dry air irritants. With less irritants and allergens in the air, allergic symptoms become more bearable.
While buying a humidifier to help with allergies, you should note that it cannot help with all types of indoor allergens.
The reason for this is that some of them thrive in moist environments. Dust mites are notoriously hard to get rid off because they thrive in moisture.
For some allergens such as pollen, a humidifier really helps. They get heavy and fall to the floor, thus, making it hard for you to inhale them, and provoke an attack.
4. Humidifier benefits on sleep
There are many symptoms of sleeping in a dry room, but a humidifier can improve your sleep quality.
Moisturized air is more comfortable to inhale and it tends to feel warmer, which can make you sleep better.
Dry air can increase snoring, causing discomfort and disturbance during your sleep.
Snoring occurs when your nose and other air passages are congested. When this happens, air movement through your airway is restricted. This obstructs your normal breathing, forcing you to breathe through the mouth.
The dryness in your airways prompts the body to produce more mucus to help lubricate the breathing system.
This mucus creates even more constriction making you produce audible sounds that we refer to as snoring.
Maintaining the right humidity level in your bedroom by the help of a humidifier can ultimately get rid of snoring.
Moisturized air can relieve the dryness in your respiratory airways making breathing easier.
Reduced snoring can greatly improve your sleep and that of the other family members since there will be less disturbance.
5. A humidifier helps with sinuses
Dry air is notorious for aggravating sinusitis symptoms. It makes the mucus to become excessively thick and dry, clogging up your nasal passages.
This causes a lot of discomfort and difficulty in breathing. In addition, it can cause other symptoms such as bloody noses and headache.
Alleviating the symptoms of sinusitis is another great benefit of using a humidifier. Moist air helps to unclog, and clear your nasal passages by allowing mucus to flow. This reduces the risk of your airways becoming stuffed up.
Having the right moisture level in your home with a humidifier can sooth sinuses symptoms. A humidifier helps you to maintain an optimal humidity level.
This in turn eases the pain caused by sinusitis by clearing excess mucus from your passages, thus allowing you to breathe comfortably.
6. It can help with asthma
A humidifier can bring great relief to people who suffer from asthma. In most cases, asthma is accompanied by other symptoms such as dry and clogged airways.
People who suffer from asthma are prone to allergy attacks.
Running a humidifier can help improve the overall quality of your air, which is very helpful to asthma patients.
Inhaling the moist air can help to clear stuffed nasal passages making breathing more comfortable.
When a humidifier is correctly used, it can help reduce allergens and other irritants. However, it is advisable for asthma patients to consult their doctor before they use a humidifier. Too much moisture can worsen asthma problems.
We could go on and on about the top benefits of using a humidifier. You need one if you live in a place that experiences dry air, or a place that gets dry winters.
Humidifier Benefits In Baby’s Room
If you have a baby, you must buy a humidifier for them. Get a cool mist humidifier for a toddler because there’s no risk of scalding.
If you live in an area that has dry air, a humidifier certainly will make things much better.
Dry air can be very unfriendly to toddlers and young children. It can trigger some very serious health issues. A baby’s skin is very sensitive, tender and fragile.
It’s more susceptible to moisture loss if exposed to dry air. Dry air makes your baby’s skin irritated which causes great discomfort.
Dry air can also make your baby’s airways to become congested, making it hard for them to breathe easily.
Stuffed nose and blocked airways affects your baby’s sleep and comfort making them easily irritable.
Running a humidifier in the baby’s room can greatly help maintain the proper moisture level.
It helps to keep their sensitive skin moisturized hence avoiding discomfort, skin damage and chapped lips.
In addition, it helps to clear their nasal passages helping them to breathe easily and sleep better.
If your baby is suffering from a chronic skin condition or eczema, adding moisture into the air can provide some relief.
Are humidifiers good for furniture?
Furniture is an expensive investment in every home. Therefore, their quality should be protected against deterioration to avoid unnecessary renovation expenses.
One of the ways that you can use to protect the quality of your furniture is by avoiding their exposure to dry air.
When exposed to dry air, wooden or leather furniture can crack, shrink or split compromising their quality. Wooden furniture, floors and fittings react negatively to low humidity.
Using a humidifier to restore the lost moisture in your home can help to protect the integrity of your wooden furniture and fittings.
Maintaining the right levels of humidity in your home is thus very important. It does not only ensure the health well being of your family members; but also that of your belongings.
When the humidifier pulls all of the moisture from your wood furniture, they can start to creak at the joints.
The reason for this is that with the humidity gone, the furniture starts to contract. The joints cannot stay intact any more.
Benefits of humidifier on indoor plants
One of the other benefits of using a humidifier is that it can help keep your indoor plants more vibrant and fresh. Most of the indoor plants do well in adequately moisturized environments.
Dry air on the other hand can cause stunted growth of your indoor plants or lead to loss of leaves. It can shrivel them up or cause their leaf tips to dry up, making them less attractive.
If you love indoor plants, maintaining an optimal moisture level indoors is very important.
Bringing a humidifier on board to help you achieve this will make your indoor plants happier, healthier and good looking.
The secret is to know where to place a humidifier for plants so that they don’t become waterlogged.
Benefits of humidifier on paint and paintings
Your home’s interior décor is crucial when it comes to adding the aesthetic value of your house. Most of the interior décor items such as paintings come at a high price tag.
Protecting them against deterioration or anything else that can compromise its quality is important.
One of the things that you can do to protect your interior décor is to maintain optimum indoor humidity levels.
Extremely dry air can cause peeling or cracking of your home’s paint, painting and wallpapers.
Adding some moisture into the air when it becomes too dry can help your home’s paint and décor to last longer.
A humidifier can help you restore the lost moisture, hence maintaining the high quality of your paint and paintings.
Final Thoughts: Why would you want a humidifier?
A humidifier can help with your health in several ways and prevent many trips to the doctor.
Most of the common health problems we face at home come from poor indoor air quality. Once you fix that, you will get rid of colds, sore throats and dry skin.
Just remember to get a humidifier with a humidistat such as the Honeywell Topfill Tower Humidifier that you can buy on Amazon.com.
This humidifier will only run when necessary, therefore maintaining your humidity level at 30 to 50 percent all the time.
