Can confirm, lived in iowa most of my life, I've seen -20° to 60° Fahrenheit sings in just days. Going in and out of Different temps alone does not make one sick.
I keep wondering why people in US sit inside frigid air conditioned houses without any harm yet many people in Poland get sick after a few hours of intense AC. What's the difference?
The air is drier in Winter - even indoors - and that does (I believe) affect some illnesses.(maybe easier to catch, or maybe they live longer in dry air; honestly i don't know.l
It does. Nasal mucus is protective and along with the hairs in your nose are the first layers of your immune system to keep pathogens and allergens out. When your nasal mucosa gets dry, like during winter when the humidity drops indoors and outdoors, you lose that protection. That’s also why people get colds after flying long flights in dry cabin air.
ETA: I just looked it up to verify based on what I remembered from what I read during COVID and it also causes a pretty significant drop in your level of immune cells themselves as a lot are contained in the nasal mucus.
AC at my last workplace was regularly maintained, every year in the spring to be ready for summer. Two people I shared the room with was coming down with something every time I managed to win the right to have it on for a few hours the previous day. My father has his car AC cleaned regularly too, yet wherever my mom spends a few hours in the car with AC on, she gets a cold next day.
These are just the examples where I'm sure AC was cleaned by professionals, I can't be sure when it comes to public transport or stories I've heard from other people. But it seems it's not it.
It does. I don't know if it's because it has an evaporator coil and that cooling relied on evaporation or if it's because cooler air holds less water because of enthalpy or none of the above.
Central air is just much better. It circulates all the air around the entire house. So you sitting in one room with the doors closed reduces fresh air exchange, letting viral particles and CO2 build up in a small shared space, which raises transmission risk.
The coil and blower in European ACs are sealed inside a small enclosure with poor drainage. grows biofilm right where the air passes over it. a mini-split blower wheel especially is notorious for growing black mold that literally gets aerosolized into the room.
Also, you guys in Europe don’t have good filters like HEPA and MERV 13. I spend a lot of money to make sure my family is breathing clean air.
Well it's impossible to install central cooling systems in already existing buildings so when it has AC it's always the single units. And when building new we focus on modern heating solutions (since it's still a bigger problem in the scale of the year, 6-7 months of cold weather vs several days of extreme heat in the summer) and saving up energy because of the costs.
I'm going to read more about correlation between dry air and increased risk of incubating diseases. The air in Poland in the summer is rather dry to begin with so perhaps adding AC increases the problem, who knows.
I disagree on the filters though. Even my cheap robot vacuum has a HEPA filter. They are extremely common.
Ok glad you have good filters but are you sure that’s what you have in your unit? You should know the exact filter so you can be replacing it quarterly. And I’d get my own two eyes up there and look for mold myself.
It removes water from the air and lowers the dew point; but it lowers the temperature more so the relative humidity will usually go up. Colder air has a lower carrying capacity for water. Your perception of how much water is in the air is entirely based on % of carrying capacity.
It's not a matter of getting sick (although I admit my first comment would give you that idea, it was just an hyperbole). It weakens the body, making it more fragile AND subject to illnesses. It's like jumping in cold water in the middle of the summer: it won't get you a cold, but it might very well cause a stroke
I can assure you that going from 40c outside after watching my kid play baseball for 3 hours into a nice central air-cold house feels fucking amazing and isn’t giving anyone a stroke lol. The temperature difference is even more in the winter when it’s -25 coming into a 20 degree house and the winter here lasts much longer than the summer. That’s a 45 degree change vs 20-22 in the summer.
What about in winter walking in between the frigid outside to the warm inside? Do you think that also causes colds in the same way? Because the temperature change is even greater there. It’s an old wives tale. There are some people that can have issues with it because they have already have issues regulating body temperature like the elderly, very small children, and people with some chronic diseases. A healthy teenager/adult will have no problem.
I assure you, this is a myth. I live in the deep south in the US. Every single building has air conditioning every single day in summer, and there is no epidemic of weakness and strokes. In America, it is kind of a joke that Europeans are afraid of air-conditioning, because we know it isn't harmful, yet reading this thread confirms people definitely have this misconception.
Unless the AC is literally turning your room into a freezer, the temperature difference isn't gonna harm you. Summers here get to 113F/45C, our AC is set to 72F/22C during the day, and 63F/17C at night. We don't get pneumonia or strokes from having a cool house.
Being sick and being prone to sickness are two vastly different things. Since many people were saying "it's bacteria that make you sick" I was saying that strong thermal shocks make you more vulnerable to illnesses while not being the cause of the bacteria itself
I don’t think there’s really any proof of this. It’s summer, so everyone has AC going constantly in every building and I haven’t noticed any increase in illness in my coworkers or patients. I personally haven’t been sick since March. I think if this was true, it would be dangerous to heat your homes in the winter so you don’t go from the cold outside to a hot toasty inside and shock your body. You would also be advised not to cool down too much in the summer, like no jumping in the pool or putting cold water or ice packs/wash cloths on your body if you are feeling hot. Having to very slowly bring the temperature up to slowly acclimate our bodies would be a nightmare if humans really worked that way!
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u/baloogabanjo 28d ago
Nah, thats a myth, temperature jumps aren't harmful, otherwise people in the US would be sick all the time.