With the arrival of spring, we feel that the days are longer and that the heat will give us the energy we need to face our daily routine. However, many people feel tired, with little desire to get going, and under a kind of emotional lethargy. This kind of drowsiness is known as spring asthenia and occurs when, with the change of season, our mood is affected.
However, spring asthenia is a temporary disorder, not a disease. Furthermore, there are no scientific studies that support the existence of spring asthenia, so we can only speak in general terms. What is certain is that many people say they feel fatigued when spring arrives. Some experts say that almost half of the population may suffer from it to a greater or lesser extent.
What does it feel like to have spring asthenia?
The main symptoms of spring asthenia are related to a lack of energy that we normally have. It is not usually harder to get up in the morning, we are more sleepy than usual or we have difficulties in carrying out various activities. The logical thing would be to increase the number of these when the weather is good and there are more hours of sunlight, but for many people, the opposite happens.
It is important to understand that this situation is temporary and that we should not give it the importance that the news or brands that want to profit give by creating diseases where there are none. If we suffer from fatigue when the good weather arrives, it may simply be due to the imbalance that our body experiences when it is subjected to changes in daylight hours (as happens with the time change that occurs twice a year) or to changes in climate (when we travel to countries with different climates to ours or simply, with the change of seasons).
In any case, this fatigue will last very little, just the time it takes us to adjust to new sleep patterns, humidity, atmospheric pressure, meal or work schedules, among others. After this adjustment, our life will continue as normal. This fatigue may not even appear, depending on how quickly our body adapts to the new situation. What’s more, if we suffer from a disorder related to the change of season, we will suffer with any of the seasonal changes not only in spring.
So what do we do to overcome it?
The main thing to overcome spring asthenia is to wait for our body to adjust. We can help by using natural stimulants such as caffeine and being strict about sleep schedules. In most cases, anything we can do will only bring us a placebo effect, since our biorhythms are quite independent.
In any case, an increase in exercise will not harm us, so we can adopt this new habit without any problem.
What to do if the symptoms are very severe?
Sometimes, the symptoms of spring asthenia can be very severe. In these cases, the first thing we should do is go to the doctor. Our discomfort may be due to another type of disorder. Perhaps our symptoms are anemia, dehydration, or any other disease with a similar clinical picture.
It is never advisable to self-diagnose, and even less so to self-medicate, since we do not know exactly what is happening to us. We must follow our doctor’s treatment guidelines and wait for the symptoms to subside.
In short, we should not label diseases those that are not. Asthenia (not spring asthenia) is a disease that can lead to a chronic pathology. Believing that spring asthenia is the same is not only wrong, but it also makes the real patients of these diseases invisible. Some people go to the doctor’s office every day, regardless of the season, with symptoms of asthenia, and it would not be advisable to minimize the importance of their disease.