Fresh Air Keeps off Colds

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 776, 4 June 1954, Page 15

Fresh Air Keeps off Colds

THIS is the text of a talk on health broadcast recently from the ZB, YA and YZ stations of the NZBS by DR. H. B. TURBOTT, Deputy-Director-General of Health.

VENTILATION in winter time is of prime importance in staving off colds. Further, moving .air reduces the headaches, the tiredness, the feeling of being below par that affect so many people in the winter months. What happens on winter nights? Isn’t it mostly reading or listening to the radio by the fireside? Aren’t the doors and windows shut to keep the room warmer? There’s no movement of air. There’s a lovely fug after a while. The linings-the mucous membranes- of nose, mouth and throat become congested and swollen. You get sleepy. You re-adjust yourself, shake yourself out of the sleepiness only to get sleepy again. Often you get past the sleepy stage. Then you finally tiredly drag yourself away from the fug and off to bed. Those congested, swollen mucous membranes stay that way while you’re lying down. You keep the bedroom windows shut to keep out the cold, perhaps open the fanlight a little, if you have one. You sleep poorly and wake heavy and unrefreshed. And it all stems from lack of movement in the air. What happens on cold days? A great many folk work in one way or another in heated rooms, more and more as time goes on in centrally-heated rooms. The rooms get very stuffy, because somebody objects to an open window and everybody gives in, allowing windows to stay shut. As the day wears on there’s a little stab of headache, a slight flushing of the face. It’s not easy to concentrate. The headache pills are brought out of the handbag and used freely, Well, it’s all due to the deadness of the heated air, and you end the day tired and headachy. It’s cured by opening windows. The carbon dioxide in the air matters little. Air movement, air dryness or mioistness, air temperaturethese are the things that work on skin and mucous membranes, giving us comfort or the reverse at home or work, and making us susceptible or resistant to colds. Our bodies are always giving off warmth, moisture, and used up air. Put nz Ae

a lot-of bodies together in a room with central heating, turn on the electric radiator or gas fire as well (and it’s often done).

and you've a lot of warmth building up in the room, and gadgets as well as bodies, using up the oxygen. If smoking is permitted a nice blue haze develops. There’s a blanket of still warm air round the body. The skin is struggling to keep our body temperature even by letting out more warmth into the fug, but is up against it as the rooms warm up. If the room temperature goes over 65 degrees F. and approaches 70 degrees F., as it does, the skin can’t regulate body heat so well-as it can at temperatures of, say, 63 to 65 degrees F. And if the air is moist as well as hot, the heat exchange function of the skin is hindered further. As the day goes on, the symtoms develop-the tiredness, the feeling of discomfort, the flushing, the stab of headache. This warm, still, moist fug is ideal for helping cold or flu bugs. The mucous membranes are swollen and congested and receptive when a cold or flu germ carrier coughs or sneezes into the air. They travel a good many feet, exploded out on droplets, and everything’s ready and suitable for their reception. Another victim develops a cold. When the fug gets too bad, out you go for a breath of fresh air, where the air is moving and gives you therefore that sense of freshness. Now this is all you have to do back in that room, to overcome its tiring, headachy nature and its increased danger of colds. You have to get some movement into that air-some ventilation. In our set-up, this means opening a window. For winter fitness and cold prevention, ventilate day and night. Keep your room temperature at 63 to 65 degrees F., not higher. Have a cross current of air in your bedroom and in your workroom throughout the cold weather. You'll feel better and, I guess, have less colds and sore throats, and use less headache pills. we ~~. Fe