How Air Conditioning Is Quietly Breaking Your Body and the Planet

0:02Darin Olien:Welcome to Super Life with me, Darin Olien, a podcast where we explore, discover, and share solutions that promote a healthier life and a better world. Together, we'll ignite possibilities, inspire change, and build sovereignty, creating a roadmap towards a super life for you and for all. Get ready to start living your super life.

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2:02Darin Olien:Just type in Darren, D-A-R-I-N, and magically, you get 15 % off. I'm super stoked for Therisage. I love their company. I love what they're doing, and you will too. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. This is Darren O 'Lean. So this fatal convenience is about indoor air quality, essentially, and indoor temperatures and how that relates to yourself, your life, and ultimately the environment. And that is air conditioning. I know that we all use it. I use it, of course. It gets so intense right now. And temperatures seem to rise in certain areas. And we rely on this stuff. So there's a bunch of stuff to keep in mind with this.

2:48And largely, it proliferates into many different topics, energy efficiencies, use of it, if you're creating your own power in any sort of way, or if you're plugging into the grid. And also, what kind of air is being thrown around and blown around in your own house? So this is a big thing. And listen, from an environmental standpoint, when it gets really hot, they find that, you know, certainly there's a study in New York City that nearly 50 % of the power is used in air conditioning when the heat rises. So it's a major, major energy suck for the globe, especially when you're on top of each other in apartments and buildings and kind of disconnected a lot from nature.

3:36But a little bit of history on, in 1902, engineer Willis Carrier invented the first electrical air conditioning unit while solving a humidity problem. So we know that when you run cold liquid through steel or copper pipes, that becomes a desiccant. So humidity touches that and it pulls humidity out of the air. We used to do it in Minnesota in our basements because it was so humid. And so that was the reason for because Willis, the engineer, he ran a magazine and he saw that the papers were getting wrinkly. And so the invention came by way of the necessity of getting the humidity out of the air in his publishing company in Brooklyn.

4:24And then it goes on. In 1904, St. Louis World's Fair organizers used mechanical refrigeration to cool the Missouri State Building for the fair, the World's Fair, creating comfort cooling, as they called it. In 1929, Frigidaire introduced a split system room cooler, small enough to use inside your house, basically like the size of a radio cabinet. In 1947, Henry Glasson developed even more compact and even less inexpensive as they were starting to industrialize mechanisms of production. And then it goes on. And then in 1960s, even central air came on track, making it more affordable. In the 1990s, chlorofluorocarbons were being used and they realized how detrimental this is and annihilated the ozone layer.

5:28And then hydrofluorocarbons they introduced, but then they realized that was also a serious environmental problem causing greenhouse gases and affecting the ozone layers. So just a little bit of understanding the same amount of energy that we use in the US just for air conditioning is the use of the entire continent of Africa. The entire continent of Africa's energy use is the same as the US's use of just air conditioning. What? That is crazy, right? So we're controlling our environment so much. It's pretty gnarly. So then they realized that there's some scientific studies that they're showing, and we have those in the show notes, that through controlling the conditions that you're living in so much all the time in your car, in your house, and it's actually lowering your natural human tolerance for heat so you get less desensitized, your body doesn't sweat as much, It's regulating temperature, internal temperature clock gets thrown off.

6:41So it's a whole host of things that go on. So now we've got nearly 100 million people have air conditioning in their homes, representing 87 % of all households, according to the Energy Information Administration. And here's just a little bit. a small unit cooling a single room on average consumes more power than running four refrigerators. So as you can tell, that's a lot of power. So why is the air conditioning convenient? Well, you can basically create whatever climate, whatever temperature, whatever environment you want. And we now realize that that has a detriment effect and a little thermal discomfort actually goes a long way.

7:35And obviously we have extreme examples of hot saunas and cold plunges and all of that stuff. But in reality, being a little cool is fantastic for you. It keeps your metabolism going, keeps it interactive with the environment, as well as being a little hot. So Maybe a takeaway here is don't be so fast to get that ideal temperature. Wait a little longer before you turn it on and turn it off a little cooler. For me, when I'm running around here in hotel rooms right now, I turn it off during the day. It's not on at all. In order for me to sleep if I'm in a hot area, I do turn it on at night. But I also ask the hotel to change the filter systems.

8:22So obviously, we now realize that there's an incredible article called Warmer Temperatures Lead to More Air Conditioning. More air conditioning leads to warmer temperatures because it's absolutely releasing CO2 in the environment. So there's just over 1 billion single room air conditioning units in the world right now. and about one for every seven people on earth. That's a lot. So when you start adding up people in the billions, you've got a lot. And so that is an incredibly intense energy suck. And the International Energy Agency projects that as the rest of the world reaches similar levels, Air conditioning will use about 13 % of all electricity worldwide and produce 2 billion tons of CO2 a year, about the same amount as India, the world's third largest producer today.

9:27Darin Olien:By 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Over 500 toothpaste tubes have been thrown away since I've started this ad. You don't think of these small little things, but they add up a lot over time, and we can do something about it. That ends up to be over a billion plastic toothpaste tubes a year alone that ultimately end up in our environment and in our waterways and ultimately ends up in the ocean. Do you want to add to this or do you want to do something different? Plus, maybe that exposure to that plastic, getting the plasticizers and the endocrine disruptors and then putting that toothpaste in your mouth also is not a good idea.

10:16Darin Olien:There's some great solutions. You can DIY stuff. I've got many of these in my fatal conveniences. But the easy ones that I use every day and I'm about to travel a lot more and the traveling makes them really easy, I go to bite. I bite down on a little tablet, which is not interacting with any plastics because it's in a glass bottle. And it's refillable and reusable and sustainable. And there's no unwanted toxic fluorides, flow agents, and solvents in my mouth. So my favorite is this Bite Toothpaste. 100 % home, compostable pouches, subscription models. You don't even have to think about it again.

11:02Darin Olien:You're helping you by putting clean products in your mouth, and you're helping the environment because Bite Toothpaste is one of the best companies I've seen looking at all aspects of their supply chain and their refillable, reusable, sustainable, regenerative practices. So Bite is offering you, all my listeners, 20 % off your first order. Go to trybite.com, T-R-Y-B-I-T-E forward slash Darren20 or just use the promo code Darren20, D-A-R-I-N, and you can get 20 % off your first order with a great new toothpaste without using the tube. And so there's this other weird phenomenon that's going on. A lot of work done by Dr.

11:48Mark Mandel called the sick building syndrome. And there's many factors that come to be involved in this. But the one major one, and he's an epidemiologist at the California Department of Public Health. And the study, again, is in the show notes. He says that air conditionings directly worsen asthma problems and allergies are two health issues that stem from contaminated AC units, right? So how many of you turning on your AC, you don't think about it. These AC units could be contaminated and also rebreathing circulating bad air and not changing the filters or the filters not being correct. And this is directly connected to nasal congestion, breathing problems, headaches, fatigues, irritable skin, all of this stuff.

12:39And it could be as simply as changing the filter system on your air conditioning unit, as well as, hey, let's just get a more efficient air conditioner and one that's rated safely. There's a lot of respiratory effects. I'm not going to go into all of these. We've got a ton of in the show notes. One study in 2014 compared 920 adult women and found that those who worked in offices with central air conditioning had higher rates of absence due to sickness and more visits to ear, nose, and throat doctors. What's going on is it's drying out the air. So the original invention of cooling the air is also dehumidifying the environment and stressing out the mucosal linings of the ear, nose and throat.

13:33And so that dries it out and that's very stressful for the body and that's one of your first lines of defense against bacteria, virus, fungus, etc. So that can lead to lethargy, dehydration, headaches, open yourself up to infectious diseases. These are all gnarly problems that we don't want to, you know, literally too much air conditioning is undermining your health. That's all you need to take away and in a big way. So we need to have a lifestyle shift here. There was a case study in Switzerland in the mid-1980s and Geneva has even a warmer climate than the U.S. in general. And the local government even banned the installation of air conditioning units only under special permission because it was undermining so much health.

14:24Now, I don't believe that the government should tell you where you can put an air conditioning unit in your house. But again, we need to be aware of this so we don't undermine our own health care. You know, the better use of fans, the better use of building materials, and the use of conduction of airflow, letting the air out the top and opening up windows. And you can get a lot of airflow, cool roofs. You can even plant on the upper part of your apartments and buildings, et cetera. That will help the airflow. and just more energy efficient windows and proper shades can be massive, especially in the summer.

15:07So the one thing you can absolutely do is minimize the use, invest into more efficient air conditioning. The International Energy Agency, the problem is today the consumers are not buying the most efficient AC units. investing in more efficient AC could cut our future demand in half. Literally that, if you want to be an environmental activist, just buy a better, more efficient AC unit can cut our demands or cooling demands by 45%. So super important. And one thing you can do around your house and things like that around your land, planting trees will cool, naturally cool these areas, retrofitting old buildings and making proper insulation better, no longer building this straight up concrete and glass cages.

16:00There's concrete use. You can use all kinds of geopolymers, basalt fibers, even crushed glass within concrete mixtures. That alone can cut that emission down by the different use of concrete by our energy demands and CO2 by over 50 % as well. Paul Hawken talked about this in Drawdown as well. So there's a lot we can do, but minimize the use and try to look at this as fun and stress your body out just a little bit. If it's hot outside, don't turn your AC on so much so quickly. And when it's cold outside, sleep in the cold. It's really good for you. Your mitochondria, I love that. Your metabolism loves that.

16:49And just cuddle up with your lover. That's great. Live in a yurt like me. And I do that all day, every day. But anyway, so thank you for tuning in. That's the fatal convenience for today. I love you tons. If you have and are aware of more and more fatal conveniences, look around with awareness. Look around at the things that you think are convenient for you or question things like stains on wood, paint in your bedroom, the type of lighting you use so that you can have the best life ever. I love you tons. I'm giving you a big Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi, hello, and we'll catch you next time, okay?

17:32I love you.