I finally broke down and bought a new humidifier today. It’s nothing spectacular. Actually, it was the cheapest one at Wal-Mart. Now it’s running, humidifying.

What happened was that I had been having a scratchy throat. At first I thought it was a cold. But it got better and worse on various days. That was when I realized the heat had been on in the house and that the air was probably dry. The other thing I noticed was that I was having some difficulty breathing from time to time. Dry air can exacerbate asthma, among other things. It can also make the inside of your nose dry (ouch!) and your skin itchy. Your hair can get brittle (oh, yes!) and your scalp can get dry and itchy.

The other thing with the heat being on is that, at the start of the heating season, it seems to kick up a lot of dust. Maybe a better way to describe it is burning off dust. That’s what was really bothering my asthma a couple of weeks ago. The dry air itself isn’t good for people with asthma either. If you find that your asthma seems to act up a bit at this time of year, you might consider getting a humidifier to see if it helps to have moisture in the air.

So now I have a humidifier and it’s whirring away, putting moisture into the air. I’d say it was worth the $20.

Unfortunately, my throat is scratchier than ever. Now I think I really do have a cold, thanks to a couple of sniffling nieces and nephews who were visiting for Thanksgiving.

It figures.

–Mary