Maybe you do if you're going to be spending a lot of time in heated indoor places this winter.

The fact is that heating dries out the atmosphere leaving you prone to a host of complaints including sinus problems, cracked lips, dry eyes and headaches. It makes snoring worse too by drying out the tissues in the mouth and throat.

Dry air is especially bad for children by making them more susceptible to colds and other infections.

Other problems resulting from a dry environment include the warping and cracking of wood items such as furniture and floors and the wilting of house plants.

Fortunately there's are a simple solution to this problem in the form of a device called an air humidifier which releases moisture into the air and enhances the quality of your environment.

These appliances are inexpensive and cheap to run and come as console models which you can place on the floor or a table top. More elaborate household types are also available which humidify your home from a central unit.

So how do they work?

Actually air humidifiers are quite simple devices and come in different types. The main two types are the cool and warm air humidifiers.

Both work well to humidify the air by infusing it with moisture.

The cool air humidifier simply uses a wick or filter to draw water up from a  reservoir and then uses a fan to blow it out into the room.

Cool air humidifiers infuse your rooms with a cool freshness but some people find them clammy. They're best suited to warmer climates.

Cool humidifiers are cheap to run but can be noisy owing to the fan.

The warm air humidifier uses a heating element to boil up water and releases it as steam.

Some users find the results muggy and they cost a little more to run than the cool types because of the power costs of the heating element.

So getting an air humidifier can go a long way to improving the environment in your home. They're cheap to run and require little in the way of maintenance. You just need to keep them filled with water, replace filters every now and again and wash them every few days.

If you suffer from the miseries of dry air, looking into air humidifiers is one of the best things you can do.

All you need to know about air humidifiers.