What are negative and positive ions?
Ions or charged particles are present in the air around you. Typically, negative ions are found in nature and have air-purifying qualities. They create positive vibes, uplifts your mood, and prevent health problems.
Ions or charged particles are present in the air around you. They can be negative or positive and can affect your health in various ways. Research has shown that negative ions create positive vibes, clean the air, and prevent health problems.
Ions are charged atoms or molecules. They are invisible to humans. Atoms are made up of protons and electrons. If an atom has more electrons, it is a negative ion. If the atom has more protons than electrons, it is a positive ion.
An atom has unequal amounts of electrons and protons. This uneven distribution attracts atoms to each other.
Positive ions like hydrogen have fewer electrons. Negative ions like oxygen have extra negatively charged electrons. Typically, negative ions are found in nature and have air-purifying qualities.
Negative ions are made when sunlight, radiation, air, or water break down oxygen.
There are also devices on the market that help filter out odors, pollutants, and other contaminants. These devices remove particles from the air and generate more negative ions to boost the air quality of indoor environments.
What are the health effects of air pollution?
Air pollution is a modern health concern. Many studies have linked air pollution to heart problems and lung diseases.
Air pollution happens when there are too few negative ions in the environment. It has the following long-term severe health concerns:
- Heart disease
- Lung cancer
- Asthma
- Pneumonia
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
- Emphysema
- Heart attacks
- Stroke
Several studies have attempted to understand how air pollution affects the body. Air pollution damages cells and creates an overall inflammatory response in your body. This stimulates the release of blood cells from your bone marrow.
When these cells accumulate in your body, they can cause inflammation in your lungs and blockages in your blood vessels.
Research has shown that certain groups of people are more vulnerable to air pollution than others. These groups are:
- People with diabetes
People with diabetes are twice as likely to be hospitalized for air pollution-related sickness compared to people who do not have diabetes.
- Older adults
If you are 75 or older, you are more at risk of heart problems, which is one of the main symptoms of air pollution.
- Children
Studies have shown that children inhale more deeply and bring in pollutants more intensely into their lungs. They have a higher metabolism, breathe a lot, and spend a lot of time outdoors. All these factors make them vulnerable to air pollution.
What are the benefits of negative ions?
Negative ions create positive vibes and uplift your mood. They show the following mental and physical health benefits:
In an animal study, researchers found that animals that lacked large amounts of negative ions in their air died earlier than those that didn't.
- Reduced stress
One study found that negative ions helped prevent known stress responses in rats.
- Physiological responses
Environments full of negative ions help regulate physiological responses such as body temperature, heart rate, respiration, and circadian rhythm or sleep cycle.
Some other health benefits of negative ions are that they:
- Neutralize free radicals
- Aid in cell metabolism
- Boost immune function
- Purify the blood
- Calm the nervous system down, aiding in deep sleep and digestion
- Maintain pH balance
- Reduce inflammation
- Relieve symptoms of diabetes
- Improve blood circulation
- Improve organ function
- Promote weight loss
- Help with anti-aging
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How to increase negative ions in your life
The places with the most positive ions are cities, suburbs, or homes near roads. The best way to reduce your exposure to positive ions is to move away from urban areas. Negative ions are present in more remote settings with abundant plants and trees.
Typically, staying indoors doesn’t improve air quality. So, you must go out to places like gardens or parks to breathe in negative ions.
Another way you can increase negative ions in your life is to look into air filtration products. There are many different types of products you can buy. These include air purifiers with:
- Electrostatic air filters
- Ultraviolet or UV radiation
- High-Efficiency Particulate Air or HEPA filtration technology
These products were often bulky or difficult to obtain in the past. Now there are many affordable and easily installable filtration systems. Many of these products are specifically aimed at generating negative ions. They work by creating negative ions that bind to the pollution in the air and purify it.
These machines cleanse the following pollutants: