AdminSecret

News >> Browse Articles >> Health & Nutrition

Can a Change in the Weather Alter Your Health?

And summer itself can be a pain as the bright, crisp frozen landscape turns to mud and mosquito-ridden swamp.

Different climates trigger different attitudes to the weather.

Icelanders often claim to prefer their cold, dark, endless winters to their summers. People in the far north use the polar winter as an excuse for carousing and partying, to hunker down and cosy up, emerging into the endless daylight of the boreal summer blinking and not quite sure what to do with all that light.

Humans are extraordinarily adaptable creatures – this is surely the key to our success. We, tropical, hairless African apes, have made our home on every continent, from pole to pole and even in space.

But it is possible that hardwired in most of our brains lies a hankering for the clear blue skies, occasional refreshing downpours and warm breezes of the cradle of humankind – the typical climate of the African savanna.

If weather can make us ill and sad, it can also make us happy and well, jubilant even. The blast of sunshine and warmth that accompanies the opening of the aircraft door after flying from the gloom of a British winter to tropical climes is almost guaranteed to lift the spirits.

As is, for me, a sudden drop in windspeed. I’ll probably never know why because irritability, unlike a headache, is a hard thing to measure.