As the experts debate the climates’ present and future trends locally and globally, the question of what it all means for human health crops up.  Tropical disease can creep into sub tropical zones with a rise of mean temperature and extreme weather conditions can cause quite acute health concerns for us but day to day how do seasonal weather changes affect us?

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) weather conditions have been considered relevant to human health for many centuries, not just in broad terms for everybody but for individuals too. This is obvious to some extent in the preferences that we as indivuals have for hot or cold, humid or dry and moving (wind) or still air. In TCM wind is referred as the “spear-head of all disease”, in TCM theory the wind is believed to cause colds and flu’s which somewhat stands to reason when we think about how viruses, bacteria, spores, pollens and particle pollution are swept up into the air by wind and are therefore much easier for us to breath in.

Wind was also thought to make people and even animals more aggressive, unpredictable and impatient, this is because wind is considered to be a “Yang” (male-like) force so something already quite Yang like a  man, a child or a dog becomes too Yang and over excited whereas women tend to like the wind more because they are usually not as Yang to begin with.

Ask any primary school teacher what they think of windy days and you will see them roll there eyes and tell you how unruly the kids can get on those days. My father when he was a boy living on a farm would set rabbit snares of a night time with his brothers and they always would catch more rabbits on a windy night because the rabbits seemed to run around more. Dogs seem to yap more too. In the Sahara being constantly buffetted by the Sirroc (strong seasonal winds) for days on end are said to at times drive men mad.

Women in TCM are generally considered to be more adversely effected by stints of damp weather rather than the wind*(unless a woman’s energy type is considered to be more “wooden”), digestive concerns tend to be more prevalent during rainy spells. An extreme example of too much rain is severe gastric and cholera in flood conditions.

Women in many cultures are considered to be more lunar and water like (emotional) than men are, the length of the lunar year is even the same length as the menstrual cycle. Women tend to suffer from fluid retention more than men do and feel less energised when it is wet than men do. Dampness tends to slow people in their thinking as well as their actions, even flies are easier to swat when there is high humidity in the air. As we age our climate preferences become stronger because our resistance to what doesn’t agree with us lessens.

You may have heard about a well known health study that concluded “feeling cold” doesn’t “give you a cold” Adding wind to the equation may have changed the conclusion.