Eczema and Your Skin | Eczema Types, Symptoms, Causes Learn with Ask Point
Eczema and Your Skin | Eczema Types, Symptoms, Causes
Eczema: Eczema is a dermatological disease, in which skin becomes inflamed and itchy. In winters, eczema commonly becomes scaly and more aggravated due to the dry air and cold environment. (1)Humidifier: Humidity is defined as the moisture in the air. A humidifier is a machine, which is used to produce natural humidity (moisture) in the air to prevent various diseases like Eczema, dryness of skin, and used in respiratory diseases as well. (2)
1. Is using a humidifier good for your skin?
Skin is the largest organ in our body. Using heaters indoors in winter and the cold environment outdoors can cause dryness to the skin, which is not good for the skin. So try to keep your skin hydrated by emollients and maintain humidity in the air by using a humidifier. Humidifiers are the best way to control the moisture in the air and also in other ways control hydration of our skin too. (3)
Humidifiers produce moisture in the air indoors especially in cold seasons that can help to cure or recover the cracked and dry skin. (4)
2. Why does eczema sometimes get worse in the winter?
Weather and temperature are the essential factors in maintaining the skin in a normal state. In hydrating skin and drying the skin, these factors affect greatly. There is humidity or moisture present in the air naturally. But when the humidity gets lower and moisture becomes less in winters by the high cold winds, the skin of even normal persons can lead to dry or mild scaly and the condition of a person having eczema becomes more severe. And when the summers arrive, spontaneously this dry and scaly skin turns back to normal due to heat and humidity back in the environment. (5)
Dehydrated skin is at high risk of flare-ups in individuals having Eczema because the skin leads to dry due to a decreased level of humidity in the environment. Winter is very tough on Eczema to develop flare-up. Humidifiers can cure and recover the dry skin and can give relief in eczema. (6)
3. How Do Humidifiers Help Eczema
The biggest reason for developing flare-ups in eczema is the dryness of the skin that occurred by the lack of humidity in the environment. Humidifiers can be curative in eczema breakout and commonly recommended by the dermatologists. (7)
Humidifiers play the most important part in the respiratory and skin diseases, especially in xerosis and eczema. If the level of humidity becomes less than 10% it may lose the moisture of the upper layer of skin (stratum corneum), to restore these conditions it must be treated with increasing the level of humidity in the air to 70%. But it does not mean that the patient will only survive at 70% humidity level to get relief. Even 45%-60% of humidified air levels can prevent from dropping below 10%. In many cases, eczema becomes worse in winters, because of the evaporation process by the excessive heating system or cold winds. The heaters or thermostats must be at bother able low temperatures to make a comfortable and safe life. (8)
4. Types of Humidifiers That Can Prevent Eczemas (warm mist, cool mist, ultrasonic, impeller, evaporative)
There are two main types of a humidifier,
1. Warm mist (warm moisture)
2. Cool mist (cool moisture)
Warm mist: Warm mist humidifiers produce warm moisture steam with the boiling water. Then the humidifier makes the steam into a spray form and brings the steam in the air as water vapor.
Cool mist: This type is the best option in humidifiers for the person who is having eczema because warm mist can aggravate the condition of the skin in eczema. Cool mist humidifier includes these types with different methods of producing humidity; evaporative humidifier, ultrasonic humidifier, and the impeller humidifier.
Evaporative Humidifiers: Evaporative humidifier is the type of humidifier with cool moisture. It has filters and fans that blow the water and evaporates it and humidifies the air of the room.
Ultrasonic Humidifiers: In this humidifier, it vibrates the water and makes a fine spray cool mist. Ultrasonic humidifiers are the best hygienic and quietest humidifiers. Its panels are made up of stainless steel which is very comfortable in washing it. Some ultrasonic humidifiers have features of warm mist to use in curative measures in bacterial growth. (7)
Impeller humidifiers: Impeller humidifier is like the ultrasonic humidifier, it is a cool-mist humidifier. It has a rotating disc, from which the water is thrown away to the diffuser and then it converts the water into micro drops then spray into the air and humidifies. Like ultrasonic humidifiers, impellers also have warm mist features too for bacterial purposes. (9)
5. What features should you look for in a humidifier: (Room size, water tank capacity, noise level, etc.)
The ideal humidifier size with room capacity:
• For a single room, the tabletop and portable humidifiers are preferable.
• For a whole house, there are large humidifiers that approach multiple rooms of the house or apartment or even a small house totally.
• Whole-house or in-duct humidifier deals like the central air conditioner or heating system.
• In the whole-house humidifier, a console-style is the supersized humidifier in a table-top single room humidifier. It has a large tank of 8 gallons and refilling features. (10)
Water-tank Capacity: The capacity of the humidifier water tank depends on the sizes of the humidifiers, it can vary in different measures like from 0.5-6 gallons can carry at once. Humidifier output will be maximum according to the water capacity, like if your humidifier is outputting 5 gallons in a day then your humidifier has its holding capacity at 2.5 gallons. So you just need to refill it every 12 hours. (11)
Noise level: Not all humidifiers make noise, just the humidifiers with fans can make noise. Usually, the evaporative type of humidifier can make a loud noise because of its fans. .(12)
But averagely the sound level of the humidifiers is investigated as 500 Hz to 1.6 kHz. (13)
6. What kind of water should be used to a humidifier
Kind of water depends on the humidifier which is chosen by you. The best option is distilled water, but if you choose this, it can be very expensive to buy it regularly. For this you can use tap water as well as hard water that can also work good in humidifiers. Actually hard water is not an issue in evaporative humidifiers and steam ones. In ultrasonic humidifiers, it may be a little trickier for it. Soften water is the best choice in evaporative humidifiers and in impeller it is good too. But in ultrasonic humidifiers, it is not recommended, it may be harmful to it. As a result, the evaporative and impeller can be used in a variety of water types, but for ultrasonic you need to be careful. (9)
7. Where should the humidifier be placed?
When the humidifiers are placed in the single room it will work best. There is an availability of humidifiers in different sizes suit in your single room. There are various sizes in Air-O-Swiss humidifiers, Air-O-Swiss 7135-Air-O-Swiss 7146 in travel humidifiers. Furthermore, the Stadler form home humidifier and Pure guardian available in various sizes along with 2 ½ gallons of water capacity. All of these humidifiers can be placed in the living room, bedroom, and anywhere facing problems with humidity.
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