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Researchers Explain Why Flu Comes In the Winter
First time accepted submitter ggrocca writes "Using human mucus as a testbed for how well influenza virus thrives in different humidity conditions, researchers at Virginia Tech found that the virus survived best if humidity is below 50%, a typical indoor situation during the winter in temperate climates due to artificial heating. The virus begins to find itself at home again only when humidity reaches almost 100%. Unsurprisingly, the latter finding explains flu spikes during rainy season in tropical climates. Full paper on PLOS ONE."
Why it seems to always be an epidemic in the winter is a new discovery, I mean unless you knew it was about the humidity and did not share with the rest of the world.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Just because central heating drives down the relative humidity to 50% indoors doesn't mean it's not also near 100% outdoors, where colder temperatures give much higher relative humidity for the same humidity ratio.
In Phoenix, relative humidity is below 50% on average from April thru September. In Albuquerque, it's March through June. Does flu hold out year round in those areas?
The virus is around year round. However, in the winter you stay inside and get less sunlight...thus less vitamin D.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
It does add up if you read the article. The virus survives in humidity levels below 50% and above 98% since 98% simulates the human body. It doesn't fair as well at humidity levels between 60-80%.
I always figured schools were a big part of it. Pack 25-35 kids in a classroom. Reshuffle the kids 6 to 8 times per day. It's an ideal environment for spreading any contagious disease.
So are airplanes.
It's been a widely supported theory for some time but perhaps, never proven until now.
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What is really interesting is how many of these old hand-me-down tidbits from Grandma wind up being rooted in accuracy, even if the underlying logic is flawed. The existence of recorded information has been a boon to modern medical practices, but prior to the very last few generations, how much accurate medical knowledge one had access to was directly proportionate to the quality of the info passed down through the matriarchal network.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Try looking at a psychometric chart sometime. Heating does not change the amount of moisture in the air. Air can hold more moisture at higher temperatures, which is why air feels "dryer" when it is heated coming out of your furnace.
Or you could stick a bucket under your condensate drain off your AC/furnace and see how much water collects in the winter.
The virus is like a noodle - kept dry, it lasts a long time. Thoroughly wet, it does it's thing. Slightly moist, it goes bad.
In winter, people make little to no vitamin D: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D_and_influenza
Even in places near the equator, if people stay indoors to avoid rain, they will have lower vitamin D levels, unless they supplement.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/shop/super_immunity_book.aspx
Things to be aware of that he would mention:
* vitamin D deficiency
* iodine deficiency
* B-complex deficiency
* omega-3s deficiency
* eat a lot of vegetables, fruits, and beans, and some nuts, seeds, and whole grains
* avoid refined sugars and grains
* avoid food additives (artificial colors, artificial flavors, most preservatives)
Many vegans and vegetarians eat a refined starch-heavy diet with too little vegetables and so are sicker than meat-eaters who also eat a lot of veggies.
In the case of influenza, a lot of it is probably due to vitamin D deficiency in the winter, whether from the Earth's tilt relative to the sun or from cloudy weather and stay indoors in rainy season near the Equator. People probably generally eat less vegetables in winter, too.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
There is a major flaw in the study. First it states that the flu virus thrives in humidity conditions below 50% which explains why in the winter we have these outbreaks. However, with modern heating and cooling systems, indoor humidity levels are almost always below 50%. At 55% is where mold begins to grow, so unless your home or office is damp enough to grow mold, chances are that year round you are at 50% or less humidity, not just during the winter.
The other flaw is that the researchers point out that the humidity needs to be low as in a room with "...really heated air..." so that the mucos droplets evaporates leaving the virus to float freely. That is not going to be your typical living space, because if it is hot enough to be evaporating mucus droplets in the air then it is either really hot (85 deg F or greater) or really dry, less than 25% humidity, which would mean that most people would be having nosebleeds and other problems.
So, while the research may be accurate on the zones that the virus does best in, it does not actually translate into the environments we live in and explain the outbreaks we see.
This is really, really interesting.
I haven't had the flu. Not ever. I've got two dehumidifiers running full time to keep my house at 60% humidity. I pull several gallons of water out of the air every day. With them off (if I forget to empty the tanks before I leave for work) it'll creep up to 90% humidity.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Relative humidity. The ability of air to absorb water goes up with its temperature. So, for a fixed amount of moisture in a quantity of air, when you heat it, its capacity to absorb more goes up.
Have gnu, will travel.
Well put. Of course,which experiences are causation and which are correlation are still in the eye of the observing matriarch. I hope mine is logical.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Those damn viruses should be thanking us, but all we get is infections.
But that is how they thank us! "Hello, thank you for giving me a great environment in which to thrive, as a gift, I offer you some D/RNA.