Some Seasons Tend to Naturally Speak to us More than Others
Still, no matter whether you would prefer to be putting on a pair of sun glasses or stretching on your warm coat, have you ever given consideration to how the seasons might influence the way our brains are working?
Other research indicates that various seasons of the year might have more effects on us than we might want to believe.
Favourite Season for a Reason?
The seasonal preference is dependent on an individual. Since there are people who fear the end of daylight-saving time, others are looking forward to the dark and cold seasons. A 2021 survey by YouGov found that 7 percent of individuals identified themselves as a winter person, and 33 percent said their favourite season was summer.
Meteorological seasons may be defined in various ways, one of which is light and temperature change, which is cyclic. However, that is not the sole reason why, there are also cultural forces that come into play.
To individuals in the northern hemisphere, national holidays such as Christmas are associated with winter whereas once a year celebration such as Bonfire Night is coupled with autumn.
Seasons may also be determined by the changes that occur around us or how they transform the routine in our life. You can use an example, when you can think about having a big clear-out in the spring or a long school vacation in the summer.
Consequently, a number of researchers are of the opinion that the seasonal changes and the linkages which we associate with certain time of the year might also influence the things which people think, feel and do.
How a Change in Season Affects the Body
The change of seasons can be a real earthquake for our body:
As a matter of fact, we are yet to understand fully the reasons why our organisms enter crisis mode when the season changes. According to some studies, climatic fluctuations of temperature, humidity and pressure might have an effect on certain chemicals (neurotransmitters) found in the biological sphere. Moreover, as the two seasons of the year, summer and winter, are approaching, our body is preparing to receive the net change (hot or cold).
Last but not least, always do not underestimate the time change during the daylight saving and the influence which it assigns to the deceiving of the body into having more hours of light. Seasonal change causes the body a sequence of symptoms that consists of fatigue, weakness, anxiety, insomnia, irritability, drowsiness, gastric disturbances and general malaise.
All these are the red flags of a not functioning physical and mental condition. These sudden changes to the daily life take your intestines by surprise and leave them unprepared. Such an experience is characterized as intestinal dysbiosis (disproportion of the normal intestinal bacteria flora) according to different scientific circles.
Let’s take a Look at the Common Bodily Symptoms During a Change of Season
Being Anxious and Irritable
They both are associated with the action of serotonin, a neurotransmitter which controls mood. It is believed that neurotransmitters are poorly concentrated in case of dysbiosis.
Insomnia
It is brought about by a low synthesis of melatonin whose precursor is serotonin. These two are both directly influenced by season change.
Gastric Discomforts
They are widespread, and most likely, the result of the adaptation to new climatic conditions under the pressure. They are often triggered by changes of seasons that may activate the vital nerve and hormonal circuits, thus stimulating excess secretion of acid in the stomach aggravated by a dysbiotic intestine, thus inadequate immune functions and burst of all the symptoms mentioned above.
Simple Ways to Handle Seasonal Changes
No actual quick fix can help keep the change of seasons to not affect your immune system in some way or another. Self-aware people are ready to this seasonal change by undertaking precautionary measures to slow down or avoid the occurrence of most symptoms. This involves incorporation of a probiotic supplement into their daily lives, at least three weeks before the change of season.
Besides daily intake of a probiotic, there are some personal activities that an individual can embrace to further slowdown or even avoid any effects on the body as a result of a change in a season.
They include:
Proper nutrition: Reading and integrating the right nutritional diet into your life.
Being active: Overcoming fatigue and stress with the help of physical activity.
Quality sleep: It is desirable to get at least 8 hours sleep or more per night.
How Seasonal Changes Affect Humans and Animals
It is almost spring, which means warmer winds, flowers and trees in blossom and more time in the day.
It is not a new discovery that animals may exhibit a very strong seasonal cycle in their behaviour, that is connected with other external conditions, such as the duration of daylight, or the temperature of the atmosphere. The level of hormones tends to vary according to the seasons and activities such as nest building, denning, food hoarding tends to hit highs and lows throughout the year.
The question of how the changing of the seasons affects the human mind and body has also attracted the attention of psychologists and there have been some seasonal rhythms that have been observed in the functioning of some human physiological functions. To take a few instances, seasonal rhythms have been found in blood pressure, level of cholesterol, calories intake, even seasonal change in birth rate (Bronson, 2004). However, there is a long-standing controversy regarding whether humans express, or at least whether all humans express, seasonal variations in more complex behaviors which are consistent across seasons.
Bound by the Light
Seasonal rhythms work over a relatively long time; other rhythms go up and down relatively fast over a period of just 24 hours. These rhythms are referred to as circadian in Latin which means around a day. It is a circadian rhythm to be active during the time of day and sleep during the time of night.
Slower, infradian rhythms that vary over a longer period than one day such as menstruation are also present. Or faster ultradian rhythms with a periodic fluctuation of several times during a 24-hour cycle, such as the rhythm between slow-wave (non-dreaming) sleep and dreaming sleep (REM sleep), which recur every 90 minutes at night.
The quantity of sunlight available is connected to the annual and circadian rhythms which, in turn, are regulated by a part of the hypothalamus known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus or SCN. The SCN cells have a direct connection to the retina through the optic nerve regarding the quantity of light in the surrounding world. The SCN in its turn is the master timekeeper or pacemaker of circadian and seasonal rhythms in our bodies and our minds.
When the daylight disappears behind the dark clouds, the SCN sends the pineal gland a signal to secrete a hormone known as melatonin, which subsequently initiates the process of turning the brain to sleep. When the light comes back at the break of day, the melatonin secretion is stopped and the process of being awake starts.
The intensity of light has been found to influence our sleep-wake patterns throughout a day and a year. Seidler, Weihrich, Bes, de Zeeuw and Kunz (2023) discovered that seasonal changes in light exposure influenced the total sleep time as well as the average 90-minute period between non-dreaming and dreaming sleep. In their work, the maximum of total sleep time occurred in the winter seasons and decreased in the spring, whereas the season influenced dreaming sleep and slow wave sleep.
The two highs in dreaming sleep were in the spring and fall with substantial declines in deep winter and early fall. Slow-wave or non-dreaming sleep was more consistent throughout the year but did exhibit major peaks in the period between December and May and a decline in the early fall.
Seasonal Thinking?
Meyer, Muto, Jaspar, Kusse, Lambot, Chellappa, et al., (2016) discovered that the cognitive ability, assessed on a sustained attention test, showed a tendency toward a peak at the solstice of summer and a low at the solstice of winter. The same study concluded that a working memory task also had a seasonal performance with a peak in the autumn equinox and a low in the spring equinox.
The authors conjecture that the differences in the time of these peaks and valleys in the functioning (phase differences) may need to relate somehow to the complexity of the external cues to which the behaviors are coupled. Paying attention may be more closely associated with extremely simple elements of the surroundings, such as alterations in the quantity of sunlight throughout the year. Other mental processes such as that of working memory functionality may be either associated or controlled by more intricate social stimuli in our world such as how we relate with other individuals and even cultural stimuli such as when we are likely to go on vacation.
The inconsistency in the actions that were accomplished in these studies is high and this can be seen as a possible cause of some inconsistency among labs regarding the influences of seasons to our behaviors. According to Bronson (2004) this contradiction in discovering any significant results could be explained by differences among individual human beings in their vulnerability to the signs of the seasons. Our world has changed in various ways, including the access of artificial lighting in all seasons of the year and at all times of the day, and this could have created certain people who are not sensitive to the supply of light compared to other individuals.
Do Our Preferences Change with the Seasons?
According to further researches, our preference to various colours depends on various seasons of the year. A 2016 study involved the assessment of the colour preference of participants in the north-eastern on autumn, winter, spring and summer days by the psychologists.
Findings showed seasonal changes in colour preference with the most radical changes being experienced in the autumn. Unlike in the remaining months of the year, the participants preferred dark, warm colours, e.g., dark red and orange, in autumn.
According to the researchers, the results can be explained by the theory of ecological valence theory, the fact that the preference of people towards a colour can be viewed as a result of the strength of association of this colour with various objects or experience. Their theorising was that the fact that warm and dark colours were preferred in this instance must have been affected by the colour of the leaves in the fall.
It might be that time of the year is a bigger impact on us than we think, so although you are anticipating the arrival of pumpkin spice season or you are missing the winter wonderland, time of the year may actually have a greater impact on us than we realize.
