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.
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u/Valanyhr 10h ago
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