Under Pressure: How Weather Affects our Health

Summer is winding down, and soon it will be fall. Lots of people are ready for sweater weather and pumpkin spice everything, while others are dreading the change of season with the shorter days, and colder temperatures ahead. We know that weather can impact our mood; perhaps we’re feeling irritable on a really hot day, or gloomy when it’s gray, but the connection between weather and our health goes beyond that.

On this episode, we look at the many ways weather affects our well-being and health, from its impact on menstrual cycles to chronic conditions like asthma and pain.

SHOW NOTES:

• Can extreme heat affect your menstrual cycle? The internet thinks so. In June, a strange phenomenon went viral on social media — thousands of women experienced unexpected changes to their periods as temperatures soared. For some, it came early; for others, late. Still others missed it entirely, or reported having a second period shortly after their first. Pulse producer Nichole Currie investigates the potential connection.
• Writer Alison Espach was taking a dip in the ocean one summer when something strange happened — she emerged covered head-to-toe in hives. She dismissed it as a fluke, but then it happened again when she swam in a lake, and again in a river. We talk with Espach about the bizarre culprit: her sudden allergy to cold. 
• Heat waves don’t just make for uncomfortable temperatures — they often lead to poor air quality, which, in many places, has been exacerbated by wildfires. Pulse reporter Alan Yu talks with patients affected by air pollution, why it’s dangerous to our health, and the people working to better track air quality.
• We talk with writer Lorraine Boissoneault about her new book of essays, “Body Weather: Notes on Chronic Illness in the Anthropocene,” which explores the ways in which her own chronic illnesses mirror the weather changes wrought by climate change.
• Psychologist Trevor Harley explains the science of how the weather affects our mental and physical health, the evolutionary roots of our sensitivity to the weather, and how we can use that knowledge to improve how we feel. His new book is “Head in the Clouds: How the Weather Affects Our Minds and Mental Health.”