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