It is one of those hot summer days when it is hot enough to fry eggs on the street, and you end up looking as if you have been sweating in the sauna. Your makeup runs, your hair looks seriously heat challenged and the fatigue that you are experiencing along with that sticky feeling makes you want to run home at the earliest. Undoubtedly, the vagaries of summer have to be dealt with, but there is no reason why you have to wilt with the heat; so once in the cozy comforts of your room you switch on your air-conditioner and relax. It’s all the more tempting to keep the temperature well below 200 C or even 180 C.

But are you aware of the risks and dangers of being in the cooling comfort of an air conditioner in hot summer? Before that let me relate my own experiences of sleeping in an air conditioned room. Much to my chagrin, my husband has this annoying habit of keeping the a/c temperature well below 180 C at night, especially in summer months. He always wakes up sniffing and coughing with a cold that lasts until midday. I must admit though that he has a sinus problem and does get colds at frequent intervals but whenever the air conditioner is at such ridiculously low temperatures, he most certainly catches a cold.

Just a few weeks ago, I was suffering from dry cough and as you all know it’s at its worst during nighttime. And most of the time, that incessant coughing, didn’t allow me to sleep a wink and I would wake up in the morning feeling awful. Even after two weeks the horrid cough showed no signs of subsiding. On the contrary, it had worsened. I never have the habit of gulping down any OTC cough syrup; I always rely on home-remedies be it for cough, cold or any minor ailment that bugs me and it always works wonderfully for me. But this time, no remedy had any effect on me. Now since chronic cough is usually a symptom of far more dreaded diseases, all sorts of fearful thoughts started hitting my mind. Nevertheless, I started pondering over what had aggravated this cough. After much thinking, I decided not to switch on the a/c for a few nights and see if this could help. So for a few nights, I totally avoided the a/c and managed with a ceiling fan. Only on extremely hot and humid days did I put it on and that too not below 250 C and for not more than 3 hours. Needless to say, my cough was gone within a week. BTW, here’s an interesting article on how to sleep comfortably on a hot night without using the air conditioner.

I did some research and also talked to my doc and found a thing or two about how air conditioners can trigger respiratory illnesses. Apparently, as aircon rooms have low moisture levels, they tend to dry
out the mucous membranes and irritate the throat. Here’s what the doc had to say. It’s highly recommended that you should not keep the temperature below 230 Celsius neither should you inhale the cool breeze that comes from the A/C as it can even cause chest infection or bronchitis. Moreover, switching from hot, humid outdoors in summers to the extreme cold temperatures of an air-conditioned room indoors, all of a sudden, causes extreme temperature changes which is detrimental not only to your health but also to your skin. I also found out from this source that too much air conditioning can cause cold and flu-like symptoms, sinus problems, bloody nose, body aches, sore joints, arthritis and other problems affected by prolonged cold air exposure. The body may also develop intolerance to warmer temperatures and heat and no longer be able to adjust properly to temperature changes, especially dramatic and rapid fluctuations. Air conditioning is also suspected to be play a major role in soaring obesity rates in America.

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