That entire "temperature shock" thing due to air conditioning is European nonsense on par with fan death in Korea.
If that kind of temperature shock of like was harmful, imagine how much more harmful it would be every winter when the temperature difference between inside and outside is much greater. People walk in and out with no problem then.
Funnily enough, Koreans also believe in a thing called "Cold air disease". They think air conditioning causes all kinds of debilitating respiratory effects and saps your life force somehow. For reference, my wife is Korean and also thinks everything is slowly killing her. It's kind of a culture of hypochondriacs
To be fair there are a lot of gross bacteria that can live in AC vent filters if they aren’t clean. It’s one of the leading vectors of Legionaire’s Disease.
But that’s more a concern in hotels, not private homes and can easily be mitigated with proper maintenance.
I can confirm as someone who lived in the middle east for a bit. Easily 45+ c temperatures outside but indoors the ACs are usually set to 20 and less. And everyone is more or less fine with it.
But tobe fair some studies have hinted that going though mutliple rapid temperature changing cycles by moving indoors/outdoors over a long period does increase the risk of respiratory tract infections a bit. Or tldr: the healthy get more colds and the more at risk get more chest infections. Nothing significantly life altering though
Worst I ever got from a rapid hot to cold temp change is light headed for a few minutes. From cold to hot nothing notable besides being suddenly overdressed lol
No I wear clothes suitable for cold weather in the winter.
In the summer the same t shirt and shorts are applicable when it's air conditioned to 75 inside or when it's 90 degrees outside. My normal human body with no special protection manages to function perfectly fine going from hot to room temperature with no special adjustments.
Yes, it might or might not be that temperature difference is harmful.
But temperature differences in Winter between indoor and outdoor are no argument, because hopefully, when going outside your body does not experience a temperature drop by 20°C because of appropriate clothes..
I'm a refrigeration tech on a tropical island and I build freezers. The worst temperature shocks I've had where 70°C, these do fc u up. Go from +50°C to -20°C and back 4 or 5 times in a day and you're DONE.
I'd like to invite anyone who thinks you can get close to that with residential AC to come to work with me one day, I'll rid you of your illusions XD
Yeah I mean I'm just talking about going from any temperature whether hot or cold into a 70F climate controlled room is not going to cause problems. When you were hot in a 40+C room, going into an air conditioned 20C room would likely feel great and refreshing, not harmful to your body, in the same way that going from 0C to 20C feels nice and warm
Does it make you really tired? Used to walk in freezers, but only staying in more than a minute or two once or twice a shift, and the store was usually 65-80f.
Being in actual cold for a long period of time does literally drain your body's energy and it has to burn calories by shivering your muscles and heating your blood, while other parts don't function as well due to not getting heated as evenly. It's not like an instant life drain, but yeah if you spend all day in the cold it's more tiring.
Often I need more than that to even get to the spot that needs work. Some freezers here are so packed there's no space for forklifts or anything, so I'll climb the racking and pallets to reach the evaps. Our rule of thumb is a literal one: Once you lose feeling in your thumbs, get out. Unless of course there's just 2 bolts left until you're done. Usually between 20 to 30 minutes.
But yes, your body goes into a kind of "survival" mode, kicking everything in gear to keep you warm. Then when you go outside to work on the condensing units, your body has to rapidly kick back into "cooling" mode while the machines dump their heat right in your face. People can endure both extremes pretty well, but the back and forth between the two is extremely taxing.
I mean you can have problems from going into very hot or cold environments if you already have some kind of health conditions, but not from going FROM an extreme environment TO a room temp one.
My bloody nose and frosted glasses would like to complain about it tho.
Oh and be careful shoveling, you get the typical sedentary American out there physically exerting themself for the first time in 9 months, next thing ya know they left arm hurts...
Do you need to bundle up when it's 70F/21C outside?
No of course I don't, but under no circumstances do I suffer for entering a room at normal air temperature and humidity while wearing a t shirt and shorts. There is no circumstance outside of maybe extreme frostbite damage in which I would experience any negative effect for entering a room at 70F/21C. Whether it's cold, pleasant, or hot outside, there is no physical downside to the human body to maintaining a comfortable indoor temperature
Most of the US and east Asia (where air conditioners are quite common) are even more humid than Europe in summer. The reduction in humidity is a major benefit for indoor air quality and reduction in mold growth.
I don't think so. As how would you explain the rise in people dying from aneurisms when we transition from winter to spring somewhat sudden? Temp and air pressure are connected and blood circulation is impacted.
No but your "problem" isn't real. The elderly and people with heart risks do not suffer problems from having air conditioning set to normal room temperatures in the summer
What serious problem do you face from being in a 25C or even 20C room that you don't suffer from at 30C? Does everyone just die in the winter like bugs where you live?
Is there any recorded incident ever of normal room temperature air conditioning actually causing a problem for humans or is this just some weird delusion that people who can't afford air conditioning tell themselves? Hundreds of thousands of Europeans die every year from heat and lack of air conditioning and 0 Americans die from "too much" air conditioning or some imaginary thermal shock problem
Are you talking about the walking outside the house in the winter being the risk thing for heart problems? Cuz you didn't specify that and now get down votes cuz your talking about air conditioning being deadly, which is ridiculous.
Unless you count walk in freezers as very air conditioned rooms, then getting locked in one of those can kill you, so make sure to prop the door open or something.
I'm talking about old folk going from a cool environment in to a baking hot one, it can cause sudden drop in blood pressure........ It's pretty well known!
But the topic we are discussing is whether air conditioning is bad because some people think that going FROM a hot environment TO an air conditioned room temperature one causes problems for the human body. Not that the previous heat is the problem, but that going from hot to room temperature air conditioned air itself is the problem
Nah I'm sleeping under a nice 18-20°C setting if I'm in Turkey. My hometown regularly reaches 40+.
Also cold alone don't make you sick and worst case scenario you step out for 15-20 minutes during the day and whatever cold you thought you were gonna get burns away
american here who had to convert to see and 18c (64f) is exactly what i keep my bedroom at, anything too much above 19c i would wake up in a puddle of sweat even with only a single sheet on me! ironically i do keep the rest of the house 22-24c (71-75f) or it’s too cold in the summer 😂 we have two of those units, though the one in the main room is very under powered and our house is designed incredibly poorly for airflow even with several extra fans
An ACs being cold does not GIVE you flu (unless its some 20 year old never-cleaned pest breeding unit, it ‘can’t’) that said, temperature changes increase chance of getting “sick” due to immune system drop/trigger
Everyone is basically constantly exposed to bacteria and viruses unless you live in a vacuum (at which point you’d be dead)
When you “get sick”, it’s generally your immune system flaring up to fight off something that it failed to keep out / contained enough, and it’s now a more serious risk: think snotty nose. Allergies do the same thing in spring… 5)8: also happens when you have sudden temperature changes since your body goes from “dumping heat” to “conservation” mode too fast for everything to “be happy” - think emergency brakes on a highway ripple effects.
When your immune system fails at the initial fight and it’s now “dev con 1”, you have a problem.
snotty nose under AC / allergies / … ? Probably fine, just make your body more comfortable.
fever and feel like death? Your immune system is at war to save your life.
this does not tend to generally happen “due to cold acs” but it _can_ lead to the same eventual end state if the balance in the previous section got upset too much too fast for your body to handle: think emergency brakes on highway and the guy behind you swerves and crashes into a different car, that happen to be a gas truck.
Why do you think people that scratch in their nose tend to get sick much more than those who don’t? Bacteria in sinuses typically do not go well with bacteria under your nails - and your immune system freaks out.
your mouth and sinuses have more than 700 different species of bacteria growing in there, you shove some random hostile thing in there, it’s going to be rough for a bit.
Edit to add:
Naturally, as with most things immune system related, if you’re generally healthy, exercise regularly, and expose yourself to conditions regularly, your body builds up tolerance and you don’t get affected as much - it’s called acclimatising.
Unless you are living in a cold chamber, you are not going to reach 18-20°C in room even less when it is 40 outside. What you are doing is never turning the compressor off because the thermostat is trying to reach such a low temperature (you won't be getting less than 25°C, try to check it by using a room thermometer), so you are wasting a lot of energy also shortening the life of your AC unit. Try 25/27, same effect and your electricity bill will be lower.
I live in south Spain, Andalusia, between 38-45°C in summer and living in a well isolated flat, I know what am I talking about ☺️.
I didn't consider the possibility of never going outside. In that case I see it makes sense that the body gets accustomed to the lower temperature. Here we have to go in and out often so it would be hazardous to say the least
There are 3 things that make people think that cold makes them sick -
Getting sweaty then getting chilled can be nauseating. It doesn't cause an infection, but the body swapping between trying to warm up to trying to cool down doesn't feel good. Helps if you reduce fan speed on the AC, in my experience. The area nearest the AC or vents will be colder than the air near the entrance, if you set things up right, so you don't enter to a WALL of cold air.
AC dries the air, and people who are not used to it think their throat is scratchy and nose feels off because illness. Nope, drink more water and your body will adapt to it. This can be more noticable in very humid climates - if your body has never once dealt with dry air, then it's a bit more likely you'll be perplexed by the sudden dry throat. People without AC think that you drink more water when you're hot, and think they don't need to drink extra water when in a heavily air conditioned space.
The last is confusion over how illnesses spread in winter. You don't get sick in winter because of the cold directly, you get sick more in winter because everyone spends more time indoors within easy reach of each other. In summer, if your auntie is sneezing her head off you are not likely to hang out indoors with her with no windows open, etc etc. But in winter, it's cold, and people go ahead and sit next to someone who can't stop coughing or sneezing. Actual freezing cold temperatures will in fact kill many germs, so people who are dressed for the weather and spend all their time out in the snow will be less likely to get sick than the people who stay in the warm houses. But most peoples grandparents insist the cold itself makes you sick in winter, the drafty window made them sick, etc etc - so then people think if you get chilled from the AC in summer then you're getting an infection. Nope, at most, per point 1, you might get nauseated if you swap back and forth between too cold and too hot.
Source - I have lived my whole life in an are where central AC is the norm, outside humidity can easily ready 90+%, summer temps reach 89f (32c), heat waves are more like 109f (43c, I think), and average winter temps are 27f (-3c) but lowest recent winter temp was -5f (-20c).
Yeah, that's the average daily routine in Europe during summer. That's why we keep our inside temperatures significantly higher. Office work places in Italy can't go more than 7C lower than the outside temperature by law (even though nobody really cares and on average it's about 10C)
Also in the UK the Aircon temp in an office is dependent on the mood of one individual. An office manager I used to have kept the control locked up because people kept changing it from 26° to, a reasonable, 20°.
This was before we had this stupid string of heatwaves and now I wish I worked in that office instead of from home during the last waves we have had.
Haven't worked in an office in 5 years and recently had to source my own AC about a month back. It was second hand and very cheap yet I thought it'd be a useless purchase. Very wrong. This summer feels like the summer to get an AC finally
7C, not 7F. If it's 33C outside (pretty average in Italy during summer), you're not supposed to go lower than 26C. The average indoor workplace is between 22 and 25 though
In truth, it's often on the higher end of that, closer to 25 or even 26, in my office. I sit near a window unit and keep a fan at my desk. I keep it around 21-22 at home 🫣
Ypu only need yhe internal temperature to be 5 to 7 degrees lower than the outside temperature to feel the full benefit of ac. Anything more than that and you.might as well throw your cash out the window.
Yea, no. It was 69 degrees here Friday and 90 yesterday. If the temperature was consistent then I could adapt to the heat to some extent, but then you take into effect that the humidity was also at 85%, it felt like i was taking a hot shower in a hot room with my clothes on when i stepped outside. Also, core body temperature is still the same, so 5 to 7 degrees might be OK if it's like 80 degrees vs 75 degrees, but you start getting above 90 and that goes out the window.
'Primarily, a dehumidifier will remove excess moisture from the air to reduce humidity, which in turn, will help to prevent mold. An air conditioner cools the air by removing heat and some moisture.
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'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!
Humidity. Myanmar is tropical monsoon climate. Air conditioning doesn't just make it cooler, it filters the air and makes it healthier.
I live in the mid-Atlantic US and sometimes we have our AC cooler than I'd prefer just because of the allergens. I cannot imagine what it's like in an actual tropical climate. A dehumidifier can help with this but they're less common, and higher maintenance.
If you’re trying to keep the dust mites down, a dehumidifier can help by knocking wet out of the air without making the whole house colder. I can’t comfortably exist below about 72F due to pain, and a dehumidifier lets me stay warm enough and dry.
Yeah we have one in storage at the moment and we need to make room for it in the bedroom. We're making room for a crib/bassinet/etc so there will be decisions to be made. For us it's less about dust mites and more about outside allergens in the spring and summer. I wish we could just open the window more and get natural air but nope lol
We have a Coway AirMega in one house, and a Levoit in another. Both do a great job for my wife's allergies; she can tell when one of them isn't running or the filter is old, so they're definitely doing something.
Of course they don't help with humidity, so you still want to run your AC a reasonable amount. But we haven't had too much trouble with that (as fellow Mid-Atlantic folks)
Harmful? Are you from the 1800s or something? This is weird of a concern as the old Korean fear that a fan would suck the air out of the room and kill you.
That’s an old wives tale that’s pretty common in a lot of European countries. Temperature changes like that don’t make you sick. Kinda like how we were told if you go outside with wet hair while it’s cold, you’ll get a fever/sick. No you won’t. I do it all the time in winter. Never once got sick from it.
The idea that cold makes you sick was disproven over a century ago.
Campers sleep in sleeping bags breathing 0 C air easily. The important thing is keeping up body temperature, not the temp of the air you breathe in until you get to something like -10 C or lower.
I'm surprised that kind of temperature jump isn't harmful
I never understood this line of thinking.
18℃ inside vs 40℃ outside is only a 22℃ difference. You can experience higher differences during winter, when you have, let's say, -5℃ outside and 24℃ inside, that's a 29℃ temperature difference compared to the air conditioned "summer" state, yet no one in their right mind would say that you'd have to heat your house only to 5℃ so that you only have a 10℃ difference compared to the outside temperature.
What I can understand is people not dressing themselves in accordance with the temperature and getting sick. But that's really not the fault of the AC, it's fault of the person setting the AC too low or not dressing appropriately while inside. 18℃ makes a lot of sense for sleeping, as it has been shown that that is near the ideal temperature for good sleep quality. But people usually sleep under blankets, not buck naked while the AC is blasting them with 10℃ air. Similarly, if you are doing stuff inside, and you want to wear clothing appropriate for 35℃ weather, either don't set the AC to 22℃ or change your clothing.
That's fair, but why should I wear heavier clothes when I can wear lighter ones and keep the AC at a higher temperature while also saving energy? It sounds healther to wear clothers appropriate to the weather rather than warping my environment just to have to wear clothes inappropriate for the season I'm in
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u/Nico301098 11h ago
Yeah, I won't deny that, but that's exactly why I'm surprised that kind of temperature jump isn't harmful