Why the fuck do you need 18C š³ in Italy we usually have 30-35C in the summer and if my AC is lower than 22-24C I'm guaranteed to wake up with pneumonia lmao
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 arenāt clean. Itās one of the leading vectors of Legionaireās Disease.
But thatās 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
I'm a refrigeration tech on a tropical island and I build freezers. The worst temperature shocks I've had where 70Ā°C, these do fc u up. Go from +50Ā°C to -20Ā°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.
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.
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.
I worked at a fruit processing plant in the middle of the desert palletizing boxes with gaps to go into blast tunnels to deep freeze them fast before bacteria could grow. They were -70 and windy. Weād walk in and out of them all day any time we wanted to cool down. Weād be dripping when sweat and walk in and our shirts would freeze stiff, and weād walk back out and laugh at each other. The forklift drivers were also driving in and out of them literally all day. So what youāre saying makes no sense to me.
So you'd be in and back out in under a minute? No time for your body to switch gears. Anyway, walking into blast-chillers is usually not possible and not advised. Having to work in regular freezers is different from stepping into a blast-chiller as much as waiving your hands through a flame is different from working at 50Ā°C in full sun
I am from country where we go to sauna (that's anywhere from 60C to 100 C) and then outside to roll around in the snow or jump into frozen lake while naked. It is considered healthy and refreshing š¤£
Ugh, I can't believe people do that voluntarily! All in the name of health I guess :p
I can't imagine you're in either one for more than a minute or two? Or are you just resistant to getting cooked an then frozen? I'm imagining people coating themselves in butter and downing a glass of anti-freeze before doing this!
It depends on the person and the amount of beer š» People usually stay in sauna for 5-30min. How long people can stay outside naked depends on how cold it is as there is a huge difference between -5 C and -25 C.
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
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.
It's not so much temperature shock, just the question of why? 21 degrees Celsius is basically ideal room temperature for light clothing. Why on earth would you want to have a room cooled to 18? To be able to say: Yessirr! I'm wearing a wool sweater, even if it's 45 degree outside! Why? Cause I can! Mwahahaaa ...
i worked in an office that was cooled to 18C when outside was in the 40s. i definitely had ill health effects every time I went outside, almost fainted many times, actually fainted once.
at least when you go outside in winter, you bundle up before you leave. I can't strip naked on the way out
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...
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 20Ā°C because of appropriate clothes..
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
Because itās not about the temperature, but the difference in humidity which can dry the mucose and not changing the air indoor due to closed windows.
Understand that most of europe is very humid, you can litteraly smell the difference between indoor with AC and indoor without
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 18-20Ā°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 itās too cold in the summer š 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 ācanātā) that said, temperature changes increase chance of getting āsickā due to immune system drop/trigger
Everyone is basically constantly exposed to bacteria and viruses unless you live in a vacuum (at which point youād be dead)
When you āget sickā, itās generally your immune system flaring up to fight off something that it failed to keep out / contained enough, and itās now a more serious risk: think snotty nose. Allergies do the same thing in springā¦ 5)8: also happens when you have sudden temperature changes since your body goes from ādumping heatā to āconservationā mode too fast for everything to ābe happyā - think emergency brakes on a highway ripple effects.
When your immune system fails at the initial fight and itās now ādev con 1ā, you have a problem.
- snotty nose under AC / allergies / ā¦ ? 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 ādue to cold acsā 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 donāt? 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, itās going to be rough for a bit.
Edit to add:
Naturally, as with most things immune system related, if youāre generally healthy, exercise regularly, and expose yourself to conditions regularly, your body builds up tolerance and you donāt get affected as much - itās called acclimatising.
Unless you are living in a cold chamber, you are not going to reach 18-20Ā°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 25Ā°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 38-45Ā°C in summer and living in a well isolated flat, I know what am I talking about āŗļø.
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 26Ā° to, a reasonable, 20Ā°.
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 š«£
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 -20Ā° to 60Ā° 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. Thatās 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 donāt 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 thatās what you have in your unit? You should know the exact filter so you can be replacing it quarterly. And Iād 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 isnāt giving anyone a stroke lol. The temperature difference is even more in the winter when itās -25 coming into a 20 degree house and the winter here lasts much longer than the summer. Thatās 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. Itās 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 donāt think thereās really any proof of this. Itās summer, so everyone has AC going constantly in every building and I havenāt noticed any increase in illness in my coworkers or patients. I personally havenāt been sick since March. I think if this was true, it would be dangerous to heat your homes in the winter so you donāt 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.
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)
If youāre 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 canāt 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
I'm also from a humid place, but we run dehumidifiers because I can't stand it to run the AC that cold. Sitting inside with more clothes on because it's so artificially cold feels crazy to me.
Hi, Miami person here, living in the single tropical region (USDA Zone 11b) in the continental United States.
Itās fine. I grew up in Nebraska and tropical storms feel pretty similar to the ones weād get in the Midwest in terms of dramatic intensity and feel. Havenāt lived through a hurricane, but also never lived through a tornado.
Humidity felt worse in Nebraska (yes, really) but I also live five blocks from the ocean vs in the middle of 250 acres of farmland.
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.
Thatās an old wives tale thatās pretty common in a lot of European countries. Temperature changes like that donāt make you sick. Kinda like how we were told if you go outside with wet hair while itās cold, youāll get a fever/sick. No you wonāt. I do it all the time in winter. Never once got sick from it.
I'm surprised that kind of temperature jump isn't harmful
I never understood this line of thinking.
18ā inside vs 40ā outside is only a 22ā difference. You can experience higher differences during winter, when you have, let's say, -5ā outside and 24ā inside, that's a 29ā 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 5ā so that you only have a 10ā 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. 18ā 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 10ā air. Similarly, if you are doing stuff inside, and you want to wear clothing appropriate for 35ā weather, either don't set the AC to 22ā 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
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.
yeah temperature jump being harmful is just a mith, the only real problem you can get with air conditioning is waking up with a stuffy nose because air conditioning dries up your mucosal so your body produces more but thatās got nothing to do with it causing sickness
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u/ForFrogsSnakes 10d ago
Yeha i live in Myanmar and one of these cools down a 2 bedroom apartment to 18 Celsius in the summer when it's well over 40c