Does the Season Change Affect Your Health and Fitness?

The answer is YES! When you see leaves turns to red and gold and starts falling, you know it’s time to start incorporating your fall-winter fitness plan. Changing of seasons impacts their mood and I am sure it goes for everyone. It affects our health and ability to sleep and in totality, our general behavior in some very stormy ways.

These behavioral changes are often called energy crisis or Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). It is a type of depression that usually starts in the fall, when days begin to get shorter and colder, and continues through the winter months. The side effects of lethargy, moodiness and sadness often start to subside when spring returns with more sunshine and warmer temperatures. Sufferers shouldn’t necessarily try to tough out a case of “winter blues” when there are so many ways to treat it.

From the flu, cravings for sweets and starchy foods, weight gain, heavy feelings in the arms or legs, depression and a conspicuous drop in energy to fatigue, oversleep, concentration difficulties, hopelessness and constant agitation and anxiety, these changes typically begins as the days become shorter and peaks in mid-winter. There’s a clear link between the quantity of sunlight available to us during this time of the year and our biological performance. To prevent this, try to be active even indoors. Make sure you don’t forget to exercise and there are a lot of ways how you can be active indoors.

Here are some of the ways the season’s about to change your whole well being:

1. Chattier. – Just as the nights of fall get longer, so do your phone calls. Researchers find cell phone users increases in uncomfortable weather, like cold and wet. Calls lasted longer and contact lists shrunk. During bad weather, you make the most calls to close friends and family instead of your wider network.

2. Feeling of Intimacy with partners. Talk about falling in love. Turns out that autumn is the season of sex, even if the reason’s a little strange. Research shows that once the leaves start to change, our bodies know we’re about to get depressed, so our brains give us an extra boost of dopamine—a “happiness hormone”—that causes romantic thoughts, butterflies in our stomachs, and lots of time between the sheets snuggling.

3. Heart Pounding. Lower temps cause blood vessels to constrict in an effort to conserve heat, which makes blood pressure rise slightly. This could be a big deal if you have hypertension; researchers found that heart attack incidence increases up to 53% in the winter

4. When the weather gets cold, the last thing on your mind might be grabbing the water bottle. We’re actually more likely to get dehydrated in cold months, since we sub water for diuretics like coffee and tea. Lack of water can lead to dry, cracked lips and general lethargy, so make sure to carry your water habit into fall and winter.

5. Memory boost. Your brain is actually sharper when it’s nasty out than during those heat months.