Air conditioning: health manual for summer
Summer brings us vacations, free time, travel and especially heat, a lot of heat. Temperatures soar at this time of year and one of the measures to be able to live without sweating is the air conditioner. A companion of all families that becomes essential during the summer period and that is sometimes abused without knowing that it can have harmful effects on our health, if not used in the right way.
This does not mean that we have to do without air conditioning during the summer, but it has to be used in a correct way so that our fight against heat does not end up costing us health. And is that this machine can go from being an ally in the face of high temperatures, to cause us from a cold to a pharyngitis.
Abrupt change of temperature with air conditioning
One of the worst uses of air conditioning is to put it at very low temperatures when you get home after having endured a lot of heat in the street. This is because it is mistakenly thought that it will be better to create a cooler environment in our home will help to get rid of the suffocation that we drag from outside, however this is not true.
Making the air conditioner expel so cold after arriving from such a hot environment will only cause our body to support a too sudden change in temperature. This causes the body to face an imbalance and to try to find the temperature balance inside for what it will have to work generating a great effort.
The fact that the skin and muscles are facing this temperature change causes sudden contractions that can cause torticollis and joint pains. To this it is necessary to add that in the fight against the heat people usually dispense with their clothes and face this cold air with few clothes.
So, in these cases, people have an organism working to balance the body temperature with the corresponding lowering of defenses and face a cold air jet with little clothing. So the chances of getting cold increase a lot, this also joins the aforementioned muscular problems related to the contractions derived from the cold air jet.
Cleaning the air conditioning filters
Another issue that is forgotten before using the air conditioner is clean machine filters regularly. This means that the jets that are expelled can contain numerous bacteria and microorganisms that ultimately end up breathing and entering our body which can end up causing even gastrointestinal diseases.
In the same way, a bad maintenance of the filters of the conditioned air can end up causing an obstruction that avoids that a correct exchange of cold or heat takes place. This ends by considerably lowering the operation of the machine which increases the power consumption. That is, not taking care of the filters affects both our health and our pocket.
Tips for using air conditioning
In order to prevent the discomfort derived from the misuse of air conditioning some organisms such as the College of Physiotherapists of the Community of Madrid Have prepared a list with several tips for using these machines correctly. In this way we can be cool without having to fear for our health:
1. Perform good air conditioning maintenance and maintain a constant temperature by programming the machines between 23 and 24 degrees. Outside this strip, the air conditioning is not comfortable and is an unnecessary expense.
2. Prevent the cold air jet from directly impacting our skin and areas not covered by clothing such as the face, neck, chest, abdominal area or lumbar area. If it is not possible to adjust the direction of the air diffuser, it is recommended to modify the layout of the room where the machine is located
3. Inside the car it is recommended to open the windows when getting on the vehicle and when the march starts, turn on the air conditioning progressively.
4. At the time of sleep you should also avoid that the jet of air impacts directly on our body. It is advisable to program the air conditioning of the room one hour before going to bed.
5. If, when driving, the person feels tired, it is best to stop to rest and stretch the muscles and even give a nod in the rest areas that choose to wake up with the cold air jet of the air conditioning at full power with the diffuser aimed at our face.
Damián Montero
