(NaturalHealth365)  Outdoor air quality can affect our health, but it is less known that indoor air quality poses even more of a risk.  The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission warns that indoor air can contain more pollution than outdoor air, especially in highly polluted cities.

Home and office buildings gather pollutants from heating and cooling systems, ventilation systems, household and personal care products, and building materials.  The resulting air quality can significantly affect our health, causing problems ranging from fatigue, eye irritation, and headaches to heart disease, respiratory conditions, and cancer.

Is your indoor air quality making you sick?

A study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine found that indoor air pollution, especially tiny particles, is linked to heart problems in people with COPD.  Using air purifiers at home improved heart health for these individuals, highlighting the importance of clean indoor air for people with lung conditions.

Fortunately, there is another natural way to counteract the effects of air pollution in your home or office.  Obviously, you’ll want to remove as many threats as possible, but you can also add a salt lamp – a type of ionizer air purifier that will add a soothing ambiance to your indoor space while cleaning the air at the same time.

There’s a rich history behind the use of salt therapy indoors.

Throughout the ages, many people have visited natural and man-made salt caves and areas with salty air to improve their health by being exposed to natural mineral salts or sea salt.  The idea of using salt in the air to gain health benefits – which is called halotherapy or salt therapy – has now extended to versions you can use indoors, including salt lamps.

A beautiful way to reverse disease symptoms

Salt lamps are natural salt crystals that contain a man-made opening in the center.  Depending on the type, you use a light bulb or tea light candle within the center of the lamp to create a soft glow and to gain the benefits of the salt lamp.

All you need to do is plug in and turn on the salt lamp or light the candle to enjoy its ambiance and its health benefits.

How can salt lamps improve my health?

In the book Pharmacology and Nutritional Intervention in the Treatment of Disease, Vincent S. Gallicchio explains that breathing in salt can improve the health of people with many health conditions or diseases, including chronic respiratory diseases like asthma.

Salt lamps increase the amount of negative ions in the air, which reduces the volume of dust, mold spores, pollen, bacteria, and viruses by attaching themselves to positively charged toxic particles.  Once the air is saturated with negative ions, those unwanted pollutants become too heavy to stay airborne and are removed from our indoor breathing space.

Think about it: when we go forest walking or spend time at the beach, we consume far more negative ions than when we spend time in more populated urban areas.  Salt lamps can add up to 300 percent more negative ions to our indoor living space, and that’s a good thing.

Negative ions also seem to fight bacteria, so they could further cleanse indoor air in this way.  A study in the International Journal of Food Microbiology found that negative air ions can reduce the count of P. fluorescens bacteria.

Simply put, salt lamps represent one of the many natural ways to create health and harmony within the home.  Combined with having live plants; a good (indoor) air purification system plus, as often as possible, allowing outside air to circulate throughout your home can help to maintain a healthy environment.

Sources for this article include:

NIH.gov
Sciencedirect.com
CPSC.gov
Cdn.intechopen.com