“Wellness” can be defined as optimizing both physical and mental health with nutrition, exercise, and sleep acting as crucial cornerstones. But there’s one missing wellness cornerstone that can help you perform at your peak: Healthier Indoor Air.

Aromatherapy and Essential Oils

Fortunately, an emphasis on Healthy Air is beginning to pick up. If you look in the right places (particularly on Instagram) you’ll see numerous people touting various essential oils as a way to diffuse Healthy Air into your home. It’s called aromatherapy, and it’s said to help treat both mental and physical conditions.

For example, breathing in:

• Peppermint oils allegedly help physical health by boosting energy and aiding digestion
• Lavender oils allegedly help mental health by acting as a stress reliever
• Tea tree oils allegedly help physical health by fighting infections and boosting immunity
• Chamomile oils allegedly help mental health by improving your mood and promoting relaxation

The problem is, essential oils aren’t regulated and can sometimes cause side effects like rashes or allergic reactions. It’s great that there’s an emphasis being placed on Indoor Air Quality. Unfortunately, there’s no proven record of any essential oils having actual health benefits.

However, there is a simpler solution that doesn’t fill your home with clouds of diffused mystery vapors: improving your overall Indoor Air Quality with whole-house solutions like humidifiers, dehumidifiers, ventilation, and air purifiers.

Healthier Indoor Air, Healthy Home

How does improving your overall Indoor Air Quality improve wellness? Let’s start with some basic facts. For one, indoor air can be up to five times more polluted than outdoor air, which is concerning considering we spend, on average, 90% of our time indoors.

Improving your Indoor Air Quality ties to wellness because it helps optimize both your physical and mental health.

Physically, Healthier Indoor Air helps you breathe easier. It reduces allergies and can help prevent respiratory conditions such as bronchitis or sinusitis, among others.

Mentally, Healthy Air helps you improve sleep and reduce stress, simply because you’re literally able to breathe.

How Can I Breathe Healthier Indoor Air in My Home?

Proper Humidity: 

Whether you live in a dry or humid climate, maintaining humidity is essential to wellness. Your humidity should be set between 40-60% year-round, which can reduce illness, eliminate pests, alleviate allergies, improve sleep, and lower stress levels.

Air Purification: 

Particles in air pollution can be smaller than 1/30th the diameter of a human hair. When you inhale them, they are small enough to get past the body’s natural defenses. Clearing the air not only helps you feel better physically, it allows you to get deeper sleep, which can reduce stress. You may choose between a whole-home air purification system or a room air purifier. Both have their benefits, depending on the type of home you live in.

Fresh Air Ventilation: 

Think of everyone in your family blowing up a balloon and releasing its contents into your home over 20,000 times a day, every day. Since today’s homes are built so tightly, all the contents from those balloons could be wafting through your home each day with nowhere to go. Ventilation is key. It helps your house breathe, which in turn…helps you breathe.

Clean air is Healthy Air, pure and simple.

It’s a crucial component to overall wellness, just like nutrition, exercise, and sleep. We can’t survive if we can’t breathe.