Air Conditioning and Cold Draughts
This week I want to talk about draughts, flow of air and the ghastliness of ‘air conditioning’.
In Summer it’s hot! The body has the most wonderful mechanism of allowing the pores to open. This function happens on the skin and acts as a thermostat so that when it’s hot the pores open and a cooling system comes into operation which allows us to perspire. Dogs and other furry animals do not have this facility, if they become extremely hot they stick their tongues out and pant, this is their way of cooling down. However, we as humans have a slightly more refined means of keeping cool as we are blessed with skin, this acts as a cooling method but should not be abused!

The skin is very fragile and very vulnerable to any change of temperature, we can see if we go into extreme heat of the sun we turn red and burn, in the same way when we’re cold we get goose pimples! So our skin is reacting all the time but also protecting us. As we become hot the pores open, as we become cold the pores close. This natural thermostat is happening to shield us from all temperatures.

If one is hot from exercising, to start blowing cold air onto the body simply causes the nearby tissue as in muscles to seize up.  Somewhere along the way we seem to have come up with the notion that to cool down we have to blow cold air on ourselves.

No!! Wrong thinking!!

The body has it’s cooling mechanism which is already in operation by making us perspire – so why blow cold air on ourselves as well?!

The organ related to the skin is the Lung, this is why when we’re cold we shiver and sneeze! Sneezing is the body’s way of getting rid of the cold. If we leave ourselves vulnerable to cold air continually blowing at us, as in ‘air-conditioning’, the body then is defenceless and the cold just penetrates even further. As I said earlier the Lung is seen as being the most fragile of all the body’s organs, when cold penetrates deeper the next development is cough. The cold air disrupts the normal downward flow that is attributed to the Lung’s function and the adverse happens as the air flow travels upward, so causing cough and at worse Bronchial problems.

If cold penetrates further it will cause an internal fight as the body’s mechanism will try to battle with the cold, if it loses this struggle the cold will descend to a deeper level and a sore throat will ensue as the cold turns into a feverish heat. The sore throats means the cold has won the battle and the common cold begins with all that goes with it i.e. ghastly coughs, runny noses, shuddering, achey feelings, temperature and worse. All of this could be prevented if cold air hadn’t been blowing at you in the first place. It is not good for the body. The Lung needs protecting and having cold air blowing at the body does not protect the body or the Lung.

The post Kim’s Kwik Klinic – Week 39 – Air Conditioning & Cold Draughts appeared first on Kim Mendez.