Sea air == tired?

March 29, 2012 2:40 PM

Sea air: why does it make you tired? Or does it?

Relaxation, more exercise, destressing... or another reason?

Why is there the claim that "sea air" or "fresh air" makes people tired?

posted by devnull to Health & Fitness (32 answers total)

When you're out at sea on a boat, or on vacation at a beach, it can be easy to get dehydrated -- you're in the sun, in the wind, and possibly swimming in salt water. Also, you might be more physically active than usual.
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:46 PM on March 29, 2012 [6 favorites]

I hear this all the time. You go to the cottage, you feel ready to sleep an hour or two before your usual bedtime and someone says "it's the fresh air". What? Does it mean that polluted air is a stimulant?

People do seem to believe that fresh air will make you tired. I chalk the tiredness in those situations to people just being more physically active than they're used to.
posted by beau jackson at 2:48 PM on March 29, 2012

I’ve always heard of it as "invigorating". I’ve never heard fresh air makes you tired, quite the opposite. I know people like to lay in bed on vacation, because they’re on vacation.

Is there a cultural thing going on here? Interesting.
posted by bongo_x at 2:57 PM on March 29, 2012 [4 favorites]

I often feel tired more quickly when I'm 'experiencing fresh air,' but I think it's more likely due to the fact that when I'm camping and/or at the cabin (i.e., getting fresh air) I am probably either being incredibly lazy or incredibly active.

When I am very lazy and do essentially nothing all day, I tend to feel tired sooner. Similarly, when I am incredibly active, I naturally use up my reserves of energy more quickly. These two things are likely what people are attributing to the fresh air.

Also: I'm outdoors more in the summer and summers around hear can be really hot. Extreme heat tends to make people feel lethargic.
posted by asnider at 3:02 PM on March 29, 2012

You go to the cottage, you feel ready to sleep an hour or two before your usual bedtime and someone says "it's the fresh air".

Is this a regional thing? Everyone I've ever camped/vacationed with would say, "It's all that sun we got today!"
posted by muddgirl at 3:04 PM on March 29, 2012 [4 favorites]

I think it's that people tend to be more relaxed in those circumstances. Whether it's the 'sea air', 'fresh air' or 'all that sun', If your body is relaxed, it feels like you are more tired because we are so used to being stressed all the time that we can't tell the difference.
posted by dg at 3:23 PM on March 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

I saw a Finnish study not long ago that reported babies sleeping in the open (and colder) air sleep better than babies sleeping indoors. I'll see if I can find a link.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:28 PM on March 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Again, no anecdotes from this quarter supporting that.

I do live in the country, and I do sleep like a well-fed pig, but I'm not sure they're correlated.
posted by wilful at 3:42 PM on March 29, 2012

I've never heard this and I live by the sea. If anything, I feel better taking in fresh air. I was on a walk earlier today and it was fantastic.

But I've never heard people saying that fresh/sea are as a thing for why people are tired. I've heard dg's "too much sun" before though (I've only lived in CA/AZ/TX though maybe East Coast sea air is different (I've only visited South Carolina beaches where the summer heat and humidity was taxing on me more than the air).
posted by birdherder at 3:46 PM on March 29, 2012

This sort of makes sense if you're on a boat in the ocean because you're constantly stabilizing your body, which will tire you out quicker than standing on ground. And boats are surrounded by sea air, which you may correlate with your tiredness (but it isn't actually the cause).
posted by iamkimiam at 3:59 PM on March 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

I have never heard this either but my theory is similar to dg's, which is that when you get out somewhere where there's not as much crap that you have to deal with, your body and mind relax and you feel tired because you can feel tired whereas normally you have to keep pushing yourself forward in order to get through the damn day.

Could just be me, though.
posted by Scientist at 4:16 PM on March 29, 2012

I have heard the saying, and said it, since I was a kid, but have always assumed that the joke was that it wasn't the air itself, it was that you were actually out in it instead of behind a desk or in front of a TV.
posted by Lyn Never at 4:19 PM on March 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

My father claims that sea air always tires him out. He is very adamant that this is true. From my perspective, either 1) he is correct, 2) he only goes to the ocean when he is on vacation and consequently feels the exhaustion that his built up in his regular life when he is at the ocean and blames it on the sea air, 3) he gets dehydrated or exhausted by sun or walking in the sand.

I have been going to the same ocean places as my father my entire life and it definitely doesn't make me tired. However, I do sometimes take naps and act lazy on vacation, which I don't have time for in my regular life.
posted by Cygnet at 4:25 PM on March 29, 2012

I live on the San Francisco Bay and I've noticed it. I think it's the wind. When I'm recuperating from an illness, being out in cold wind tires me out a lot faster than NOT being in cold wind.
posted by small_ruminant at 4:38 PM on March 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Well, my wacky theoretical speculation is that you get in the negative ion environment and you run around all "wooooo woOOOOooo im ona negative ion high!" and then you're removed from it and you crash, like a sugar rush brings a crash. That said, I do not discount all the other factors that have been mentioned.
posted by Rube R. Nekker at 4:56 PM on March 29, 2012

I think it's the sun. I go to the beach in Oregon every year. Most days it's really foggy, and although I walk a good 8 miles on the beach in the strong wind, I'm not extra tired. But on the days when the sun comes out, I'm staggering around by early evening.
posted by HotToddy at 5:15 PM on March 29, 2012

You're out in the sun, so you're more active than normal.
posted by KokuRyu at 5:21 PM on March 29, 2012

If I get too much sun I get very tired. The air itself, not so much. Exertion... oh yeah.
posted by Jacen at 5:39 PM on March 29, 2012

In my experience this is true. My guess is that it's relaxing and calming.
posted by J. Wilson at 6:00 PM on March 29, 2012

I live on the beach - well, about 100 yards from the water line. Close enough that I can tell the tides by the smell.

I have a pretty normal sleep schedule compared to when I lived in the city. Maybe I have just adapted to whatever odd phenomenon is causing the sleepiness... or maybe it's got more to do with what's brought you to the beach in the first place. Few people say "Gosh I'm so relaxed and un-stressed-out - let's go to the beach!"

I think it's more likely all the other activities. Every summer our little tourist town is flooded with visitors who stagger around, looking like grim death by the end of the day, clearly at the edge of exhaustion from all the strolling and shopping. I feel kinda bad for them, but it's also kinda funny, in that cynical way that only other tourist town residents can really appreciate.

Fresh sea air is awesome, though. I'm sad there isn't enough of it for everyone.
posted by ErikaB at 6:07 PM on March 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

I also think it's one of those semi-meaningless and empty conversational phrases people employ, like "It's not the heat, it's the humidity" or "April showers bring May flowers" or "but it's a dry heat."
posted by ErikaB at 6:09 PM on March 29, 2012

I stopped saying this, as an adult, only after my husband questioned what scientific basis I had for thinking fresh air would make a person tired. Until that time, I'd just assumed this was a thing; it was something I'd heard growing up. In fact it still feels right to me, but now I'd agree with dg and Scientist that it's the relaxation that make you sleepy, not the fresh air.
posted by torticat at 6:12 PM on March 29, 2012

I also think it's one of those semi-meaningless and empty conversational phrases people employ, like "It's not the heat, it's the humidity" or "April showers bring May flowers" or "but it's a dry heat."

Sounds like someone has possibly not spent summers in Atlanta and Phoenix.
posted by bongo_x at 6:38 PM on March 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Perhaps its not really the "fresh sea air", but rather simply that you're starting your vacation: you've just packed and driven/flown somewhere, you might have gotten up earlier than normal to start the trip, you might have spent the last several days putting in extra time at work to get a little ahead --- you're off your normal schedule and possibly already a little tired out.
posted by easily confused at 6:54 PM on March 29, 2012

It’s the novelty. It takes much more energy to be in an unfamiliar place than in your normal stomping ground. When you are at home you can do a lot of things on autopilot without expending much energy. In novel surroundings you have to pay attention and attention is expensive.
posted by TeknoKid at 8:10 PM on March 29, 2012

I live a three minute walk from the sea, so sea air is pretty much the only air I breathe. It's when it's really cold and windy, or hot and sunny, that I get tired from being on the beach. I think it's the exposure to outdoor extremes rather than the quality of the air that tires you out.
posted by keep it under cover at 11:34 PM on March 29, 2012

I've heard both remarks as Beau Jackson and Mudgirl: it's one of those toss-away phrases, "it's the fresh air", "it's all the sun we had today". I always just took that as a round-about way of saying "all our fun [extra] activity outdoors today has tuckered you out!" I never thought those phrases were meant literally. HOWEVER, a bad sunburn can truly make you sleepy—I've had that unfortunate experience.
posted by Eicats at 6:44 AM on March 30, 2012

I find fresh air and the ocean to be invigorating! Invigoration is not what I am in my cubicle. Invigoration is tiring. It's not the air that makes you tired, it's your response to being outside in the elements.
posted by amanda at 7:09 AM on March 30, 2012

he only goes to the ocean when he is on vacation and consequently feels the exhaustion that his built up in his regular life when he is at the ocean and blames it on the sea air

I'd guess that this is a big part of it. If you were spending all day outside, because you were in a work camp in the oil patch, you'd probably still feel very tired at the end of the day but it's doubtful that you'd be blaming it on the fresh air.
posted by asnider at 8:36 AM on March 30, 2012

I don't think it's (only) a vacation, change-of-scenery issue. I have lived on the ocean and experienced (or felt like I was experiencing) this phenomenon.
posted by J. Wilson at 12:27 PM on March 30, 2012

It could be that sea air is salty in some way, or drier because the salt water sucks moisture out of it, or something similar that means you get dehydrated by breathing it? (I have no idea if that is an impossible physical theory.)

But even if this were true for sea air, it wouldn't be true for lake air.
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:08 PM on March 30, 2012

I grew up on the Outer Banks (barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina), and have never heard that--I always heard locals and tourists alike talking about invigorating ocean breezes and how much hungrier being on the water made them.

However, I have personally noticed that when I'm spending a lot of time outdoors, and especially when I'm not constrained by my worklife schedule, such as when I'm on a beach vacation or camping in the woods, my sleep patterns revert to something closer to what I imagine normal sleep patterns would have been for people before artificial lighting and electricity-driven entertainment was prevalent: I get sleepy earlier in the evening, and wake up earlier in the morning.

It also could just be a vacation/activity thing, or the slightly dehydrated feeling many people report when they're spending a lot of time on the water (especially in the sun).
posted by rhiannonstone at 5:54 PM on March 30, 2012