Health Wanted: Caffeine

The Episode

You say you can’t sleep? Baby I don’t know. Is it that “me espresso?” Or is it something else? This week on Health Wanted, we’re talking about America’s favorite psychoactive substance: caffeine!

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The Listener Questions

How can I protect my health if fires are making my air quality index dangerous?

Wildfires are bad enough, but now with widespread fires that burn structures we have the added problem of even worse air pollution. 

There are a lot of different kinds of air pollution out there, but wildfire smoke is particularly bad because it’s made up of super fine particles of whatever is burning, be it vegetation or building material. This means that a lot of highly toxic chemicals are being released and dispersed, as there are potentially things like lead, asbestos, lithium batteries and other harmful items being destroyed.

In addition to being irritating to your airways and causing inflammation, wildfire smoke also contains particles so small they can bypass the filter of your lungs and get directly into the bloodstream. That then allows the bloodstream to deliver toxic substances to organs like your heart, lungs, and brain. These small particles have been tied to an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, lung cancer, and cognitive decline.

So, you want to protect your airways.

If you need to travel outdoors during an active fire, an N95 respirator is the best option to protect you from inhaling harmful debris, but they won’t protect from potential gases or vapors. For that you need an NIOSH approved elastomeric respirator. Unlike with respiratory virus protection, this is a time when it’s ok to wear masks with exhalation valves, which can make breathing easier because it allows air flow in one direction (out), which also removes moisture.

To protect the air inside your home, you should locate and close your HVAC system’s fresh air intake that draws air in from outside and change the system settings to recirculate air only. Be sure to close all windows and exhaust vents (like what’s found in the bathroom) and keep extra filters on hand so they can be changed regularly.

You can also create a clean air room in your house for some extra relief. To do this, put a portable air cleaner in a designated space (ideally a room without windows) and keep it closed off from other rooms. Be sure to remove shoes or outside clothes before entering.

The environmental protection agency also has a helpful graphic about how to build your own air cleaner using MERV 13 filters, a box fan, and tape or bungee chords. 

When the outside air quality is bad, you should try to avoid making your inside air quality worse. That means skipping things like vacuuming, frying food, and cooking on gas, propane, or wood-burning stoves.

Unfortunately, you can’t rely on air quality index readings as much during a fire, because they don’t detect all the harmful particles that are released when structures burn. Instead, use a combination of AQI, fine particulate, and fire maps (you can find a pretty good one at fire.airnow.gov) and check wind maps to see if smoke from local fires is moving towards or away from you.

Do cold plunges actually have health benefits?

There have been a lot of claims about the things that ice baths can do for you. Borne out of the fairly logical idea that icing an injury is good for recovery, so icing you whole body is good for your whole body, the cold plunge or ice bath has morphed into a cure-all with claims that range from muscle recovery to performance enhancement to fat loss to improved cognition.

So, whether or not cold plunges are beneficial depends on what you’re hoping to get out of them. When it comes to post-exertion recovery, we’re finding that cold dips are not universally beneficial. As it turns out, the inflammation that people experience after working out might actually be an important part of adapting to controlled stress, and blunting it may blunt your body’s ability to maximize muscular gains. The restriction in blood flow could also restrict the amino acids that your muscles need for repair and growth.

Cold plunges might be appropriate for athletes doing multi-day competitions who need relief from muscle soreness quickly if they have back to back events.

Another big claim of cold plunges is that they help improve your metabolism and burn fat, because the brown fat burns calories to keep you warm. But research has found that the amount of calories burned is pretty small.

They might have some benefit for alertness (hard to remain sleepy when you’ve just shocked your system), and they’re always a fun bonding experience in the form of a polar bear plunge or a dare.

But they aren’t without risk for people with underlying heart conditions, and repeated exposure to extremely cold water could have long term side effects like nerve damage, so if you want to take the plunge, approach with a little bit of caution.

Catch all the listener questions and Laurel’s answers on the full episode of Health Wanted by:

• Streaming at wabe.org or the WABE app
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