Seasonal Illness

Each season has its own charms, and has something for everyone to enjoy. Long summer days full of sunshine, autumn's beautiful golden leaves' carpet, winter's rainy or snowy days accompanied by hot cocoa and of course the whole spring's carnival of flowers, colours and love. But each season has it's downsides too, some not as easy to resolve as the temperature being too high or low, but more serious and even harmful to people's physical or mental health.

Both winter and fall are well-known for being the flu season. Given the colder weather, the risk of catching a cold, or worst, letting that same cold turn into something more noxious like pneumonia or influenza, grows considerably bigger. Every year goverments around the world encourage people to prevent these diseases, with winter and vaccination campaigns.

Not only the cold seasons make us sneeze; spring allergies are well known (and feared) by its victims, all well-acquainted to the season's runny noses, watering eyes, coughing and, sometimes, permanent dark circles under their eyes. Sadly less adressed by health authorities that winter's illness, there are a numbers of corticoids and pills available to the public, the problem is that most of them produce lethargy in the consumers, making them feel sleepy and slow, which can be as annoying as constant sneezing.

Now that we covered the physical aspect of seasonal illness, it's moment to explore how the different seasons affect our mood and overall mental health. Sometimes winter and fall make us a little moody; when we have less hours of light we tend to get depressed. Nordic countries constantly struggle against this, given the roughly 4 hours of sun that they get during winter and fall.

But then, why is there such a huge rate of suicides during spring? Well, even though the days are longer and we have more light, one of the factors that could affect this cipher is, once again, winter. Some people endure depression for all autumn and winter, but get to the end of their rope when spring finally arrives.

Another factor that could play a important role is Seasonal Affective Disorder. Even though we are all affected by the change of seasons in one way or another, those who suffer of this especific type of depression are affected by them in a much dramatic way, getting dangerous mood swings and depression symptoms

HOLIDAYS

Everybody loves holidays; they are the perfect reward for a whole year's of hard work. Personally, the mere thought of summer, beaches and sleeping until noon gives me hope in the middle of the academic days.

My best holiday experience was a couple of years ago, when some friends and I went backpacking to the south of Chile. We took a bus in Santiago to Concepción, and from there just depended on other's kindness. And boy were they kind! We were expecting to go from Concepción to Valdivia, mostly because according to our calculations, we would had run out of money by then, but unexpectantly the people we met on the road ended up offering us food, bedding and movilization for free. Thanks to them we were lucky enough to get to know new places that were pretty inaccessible to most tourists. Towards the end of the journey,  half the group got the flu, but it was completely worth it and it didn't ruin our vacation in anyway. Contrary to our original expectations, we traveled as far a Puerto Montt, and with the money we saved, got a bus ticket that brought us directely back to Santiago.

Of course, not every holiday experience is good. My worst one is a time when my family and I rented a hut in zapallar. Unlike my backpacking experience, this vacation was not cheap at all. Not just the hut's rent was ridiculously high, but everything else in town was at least 5 bucks more expensive than the regular prices at supermarkets. Also, there were people tons of people everywhere, so there were a limited number of places where you could actually lounge. On top of everything, that was the summer where we found out I was allergic to bees, when I got sting by one outside the hut and ended up in ER, effectively ruining everybody's vacation. Even though the hut was already paid for two weeks, my parents decided that enough was enough, and the moment the hospital discharged me was the same moment my dad went back to Zapallar, grabbed all our stuff, put my convalescent self in the car, and drove all of us back home. I must say, the holiday we spent lounging in our backyard was much more pleasant.