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Well, we've been on a weather roller coaster of sorts over this past week, and we wanted to know how these dramatic swings may have an impact on physical and mental health
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Erie News Now's Elspeth Meisner takes a closer look. I think any time you see the sun, you're going to experience a lift in your mood, especially when you're not used to it
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It'll give you a boost of just positive mood. It'll give you more energy. typically you'll sleep less, make changes to your appetite that can all be considered positive
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According to Greg Parker, a licensed counselor and psychotherapist, a few days of warmth and
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vitamin D affects a person's mental health in a typically cold and gray time. However
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the up and down can cause kind of a vacillation in your mood as well. It doesn't necessarily have
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to mean that you're going to have major alterations in your mood, but you'll definitely
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notice the difference in terms of not only temperature, but mostly sunlight in the presence
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of just the ability to do things outdoors. While going from cold weather to warm weather
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could have a positive effect on somebody's mental health, it could have the opposite effect on somebody's physical health
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It's a change in barometric pressure, and that can definitely cause problems with the joints
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and for people who get migraines can cause some problems there. In addition to going from cold to warm and back to cold again
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Dry air and dust mites can also lead to an uptick in allergies, according to Dr. Morris
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The fact that we're going back inside again and then turning the heat on, turning the heat off
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you're going to get a lot of the allergy-type symptoms, which mostly affect the sinuses
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And then back outside again, we're getting right to the season where possibly we can start to get pollen
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and so you get a different type of allergy there. But both health professionals agree, a burst of sunshine provides hope for warmer days ahead
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Elspeth Meisner, Erie News Now
