Dry heating air in winter: What can you do about it?

Dry lips, red eyes, dry cough – do you know that too? It could be that your heating is to blame. With a few tricks you will feel better.

The most important thing about heating air

Air too dry: This is how you can tell

😷 If you constantly feel a cough in your throat, it could be due to dry heating air.

👃 If the air is too dry, your mucous membranes will also dry out. You can feel this particularly quickly in your nose.

👄 Sometimes your lips feel dry – and your facial skin feels tight.

👁 The eyes also suffer when the humidity in the room is too low: they are irritated, burn and itch or water.

🤯 Headaches can also be a sign that the air is too dry.

🌡 You can find out how dry the air really is with a special measuring device: the hygrometer.

Dry heating air can make you sick. Because when our nasal mucosa dries out, it cannot fight off pathogens as well.

The reason: cilia in the nose work less well in warm, dry air. Viruses and bacteria can get past them into our body.

In addition, flu viruses survive longer in dry air than in rooms with high humidity.

The optimal humidity in the living room and bedroom is between 40 and 60 percent.

Who actually takes care of the heating?

This is what you can do to combat dry heating air

Good air at home? Dr. Wolfgang Raff from the Federal Environment Agency has tips for you
💬 If you want to ventilate, you should open the window completely and preferably another one opposite. It ventilates most efficiently with a draft; in winter, just five minutes at a time is enough. You should do the whole thing several times a day.

💬 In winter, the air exchanges faster because the temperature difference between outside and inside is larger. The cold air from outside flows down into the room, the warm air rises and escapes out the window.

💬 The problem in winter is that the cold air flowing in contains less humidity than the warm air in the room. The cold air is then heated up by the heater and so we get the typical dry heating air that dries out our mucous membranes and makes our body more susceptible to inflammation.

💬 Nevertheless, ventilation is very important. We breathe out carbon dioxide, our furniture, carpets and walls emit harmful and irritating substances. Even in big cities, the air outside is better than the air in our apartment. There are only a few extreme exceptions if you live directly on very busy, multi-lane roads.

💬 The problem with dry heating air often resolves itself. When we cook, shower and move around the house a lot, the humidity increases. If you want to be sure, you can buy a measuring device and check how dry the air is.