Why Do We Hate Life Less in Spring? The Science Behind Why Life Feels Better In The Sun
The longer days seem easier to bear when the sunshine hits our tanning skin, but there’s more to spring fever than that.
This March may have been one of the wettest on record but that doesn’t matter anymore. Despite the rainy days, heavy clouds and unpredictable bouts of short lived sunshine, we can all rejoice in the fact that it is spring — finally. After a winter that seemed to last well past its welcome, the time has finally arrived to emerge from hibernation, shake off those grumpy dispositions brought on by dark mornings and even darker nights, and begin thinking about which sandals to purchase for the coming summer — I’m personally considering the Fisherman Black Leather Sandals from Oliver Bonas.
Now we’ve had time to adjust to the hour we lost as the clocks went forward, we can fully appreciate the bluer skies, the brighter mornings, and the ever-so-slightly warmer temperatures that mark out Spring as the season of hope. The changes may be subtle, but they’ve definitely been noticed. Even if you yourself haven’t left the house since spring has sprung, you may have seen people on TikTok sharing their new found energy; cleaning their homes, setting intentions for the coming months, and clearing out their wardrobes to make space for floatier items.
Simply, everyone seems happier. Life seems better. The bees are buzzing again, a delight for some, a horror for others. Flowers are blooming, making once damp dull spaces feel full of life. Days are soundtracked by singing or squawking birds. They’re all tell-tale signs that spring is upon us. But perhaps more than that, the start of the new season is marked by a growing optimism, a boost in mood and energy levels that after the long winter makes us feel renewed. This spring euphoria is not an illusion, there is in fact a bunch of scientific explanations to show why we feel like this — and while some are understandable, others are slightly strange.
It’s long been understood that cold, dark weather impacts our emotions massively. Seasonal Affective Disorder, who someone clearly named with the apt acronym SAD in mind, describes the seasonal depression that often raises its head during the winter months. SAD affects around 2 million people in the UK and more than 12 million people across northern Europe and has been doing so since the beginning of time. Even if you’ve never been diagnosed with the disorder, it’s likely that you’ve felt it to some degree; a persistent low mood, loss of interest in everyday activities, increased irritability, feelings of despair and lethargy that make you sleepy during the day. They’re all problems brought on by the lack of sunlight, poor weather and short days that winter consistently brings.
The opposite diagnosis? Spring fever. Not only does the season banish or at least reduce the effects of SAD, but it brings on an array of new symptoms — all of them good. It’s an ‘illness’ described by poets for centuries, from Theocritus of Syracuse in the third century to W.B. Yeats in the 20th, and all the symptoms are the same; a flushed face, increased heart rate, restlessness, daydreaming, and a desire to live at one with nature that often led the romantic poets to overestimate their labouring skills and share wishes of building a cabin in the woods to live a life of solace among nothing but the daffodils. This hope and excitement for the months to come, however exaggerated and over-indulged by romantics, is spring fever — a wonderful and optimism drenched disease we all feel in some form come April.
“Spring fever is not a definitive diagnostic category,” Michael Terman, director of the Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at Columbia University Medical Center told Scientific American. “But I would say it begins as a rapid and yet unpredictable fluctuating mood and energy state that contrasts with the relative low [of the] winter months that precede it.”
Sure, spring fever is not diagnosable as its antithesis SAD is, but it used to be. That’s back when spring fever meant something entirely different than it does nowadays. A few centuries ago, spring fever was a term used to describe the suffering of those with scurvy that had been induced by a lack of vitamin C in winter diets. It was a major threat to life in the 18th century and was brought on at the beginning of spring as the vitamin C stores in people’s bodies became depleted due to the unavailability of fresh vegetables through the colder months. The term has since fallen out of use as urban sprawl led to a general decline in growing local produce with food instead being transported to cities. So now people have repurposed the term to describe the excitement we feel at the start of Spring — a much nicer thing to be experiencing, we can all agree.
So how does spring banish SAD? The months aren’t particularly different; still punctuated with rainfall, misty days and chilly temperatures. But it’s not technically the weather that improves our mood, but the length of time between sunrise and sunset. A 2016 report by Brighton University found that SAD was linked less so to the weather, instead being impacted by the hours of sunlight in the day. Lowri Dowthwaite, a senior lecturer in psychological interventions at the University of Central Lancashire, explained the science to iNewspaper, “The human body thrives when the weather is warmer, but according to research, the main reason for mood changes is down to longer days and thus, exposure to more light. More hours of sunlight increases the production of the mood-enhancing chemical serotonin in the brain. Studies have found that the more sunlight we are exposed to, the more serotonin we produce.”
And spring means a lot more light — a whole lot more. Met Office meteorologist Aidan McGivern broke down the massive jump in light levels to The Guardian, “December is the dullest month, with an average 41 hours of sunlight in the UK. In January, it’s 47 hours, February jumps to 70 hours and then there’s quite a leap into March where we get 102 hours of sunshine. April sees another big leap to 148 hours on average.”
After the long winter, it’s exciting and smile-inducing to see the sun shine and feel its warmth on the parts of our body’s we dare to expose this early on in the year. We see flowers blooming as the sun encourages them to burst open; we see, on social media at least, lambs, piglets and calves being born and adorably running around fields of green grass and buttercups; while dodging bugs and brave squirrels, we can admire the afternoon sun with a dripping ice cream in hand. It might not yet be summer, but all of these things promise us that it will come. Despite all the snow, the rain and the wind, Summer is on its way and it’s this serotonin-induced hope, these signs of life, that bring on spring fever.
“Being hopeful helps to increase psychological resilience when dealing with hardship and it has also been suggested that it boosts our immune system,” Lowri Dowthwaite told iNewspaper. “The simple act of admiring bright, jaunty daffodils in March can fill us with hope — a sign of life following the harshness of winter.”
And the effects of this hopefulness are very real. A 2016 trial by researchers from a handful of Canadian institutions, including the prestigious University of British Columbia in Vancouver, compared the effects of light therapy, which is a treatment using daily exposure to direct sunlight or similar-intensity artificial light to treat illness, with those of pharmaceutical therapies, in this case the prescription of fluoxetine, aka Prozac, on people with major depressive disorder. According to the research paper, “They found that light therapy was just as effective as fluoxetine [Prozac] in treating depression,” which is handy considering sunlight is free.
So we need to be outside soaking up the sunlight as much as possible. In spring this is so easy; the cold winter has passed and the often unbearable heat of summer is yet to come. Even the most introverted and solitude-loving person cannot resist the call of a blissfully warm day or, as the English weather continues to evade us, the kind where it’s just bearable to go sans coat. Whether you go off for a walk or just transition to sitting outside the pub for happy hour rather than in the cosy corner, the abundant fresh air and increased socialisation brought on by these outdoor activities, plus the aforementioned sun exposure, all work to relieve stress and anxiety and make life feel that much more bearable.
Turning away from the outside influence spring has on our mood, there could also be a more evolutionary and biological reason why people feel excited in springtime. Yes, excited. Humans are mammals, complex mammals, but mammals nonetheless. Looking to the animal kingdom from which we descend, most other mammals time their births to coincide with the spring, the season where conditions are best for raising a baby. Some mammals even value the springtime conditions so much, they can actually pause their pregnancies to ensure their babies are born in the spring months.
The science behind this particular springtime excitement isn’t completely understood, the human body is a complex and confusing place. But, it has been shown that many people experience a surge in their sex drive during the spring. In a survey from Wet Products, a whopping two-thirds of respondents said they are more interested in sex when the weather gets warmer, and almost three-quarters said they feel sexier during the warmer seasons. That boost in libido and self-confidence is sure to make you feel a whole lot happier.
Whatever the reason for the growing excitement, if you find yourself getting riled up, more electrified and enlivened than usual in the coming weeks, embrace it, experience it, just go with it. Ditch the tights, order some sandals, and remember your SPF because spring is here and, before you know it, the Game of Thrones memes will be filling your feeds and winter will be threatening its comeback.
