Living in an urban environment means that air pollution is slowly affecting your health. However, you are impacted by air quality even if you do not live in a city, as smoke from climate change-induced wildfires can reach across entire countries. Without immediate and dramatic actions from the world community, air quality will continue to deteriorate over the course of your lifetime.
The Connection Between Air Quality And Health
Breathing is not critical just because it provides us with oxygen; in integrative and functional medicine, breathwork is key to keeping all bodily systems and organs operating normally. When breathing becomes dysfunctional, your homeostasis — your state of balance — is disrupted.
Your mental clarity, quality of sleep, digestion, immune system, and stress levels are all affected by the amount of oxygen in your body. Yoga practitioners, especially those who practice pranayama, that is, “breath control,” know that slow, deep breathing can regulate their sympathetic nervous system, which controls blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing.
The Impact On Your Health
What happens if you are breathing polluted air? In many modern cities around the world, residents now have to contend with air pollutants such as lead, ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide.
Some people will be more sensitive to polluted air than others. There are those who can continue to live in heavily-polluted cities without experiencing health problems, but those who are sensitive to air pollution often need to make significant lifestyle changes. These could be as drastic as moving from the city to the suburbs or even to more remote places. Some may even have to give up their city jobs — if those jobs regularly expose them to polluted air.
Respiratory Diseases
Your lungs are the most exposed organ to be exposed to polluted air, as you breathe in and out about 20,000 times each day. Air pollution can trigger all kinds of respiratory diseases, including asthma, allergic rhinitis, bronchitis, and more.
Stress Levels
Stress hormones and local inflammation can occur as a result of air pollution. There is also a greater risk for heart-related conditions such as arrhythmias, myocardial infarction, stroke, and similar conditions. Chronic inflammation makes cholesterol stick more easily to arterial walls, hardens arteries, and could possibly lead to atherosclerosis.
Mental Impairment
Young school-aged people and the elderly have been found to suffer from impaired attention in areas with high levels of air pollution. For students, this could lead to impaired school performance while for older people, it may lead to conditions like dementia.
Air pollution is also being seen as a cause of many other conditions. Eye irritation can often be traced to air pollutants, and there are also continuing studies on the extent to which air pollution affects hair loss and fertility rates.
Better Air Quality Is Needed Now
Without a doubt, polluted air is harmful to your health. While most of us will have to live with these conditions, there are ways to mitigate the health effects of poor air quality. Whatever you can do on your own — or as a community, city, state, or country — will go a long way in improving your life span.
