Cold calling this season

Feeling a little low lately? Is your nose running and are you sneezing uncontrollably? Do you have a low fever and body ache? It's the changing weather, doctors will tell you. But what is it they mean? Why does changing weather have such a disastrous effect on the body?

The human body, internal medicine specialists will tell you, is used to a certain external temperature. The moment it fluctuates more than 15 degrees centigrade, the body has difficulty adapting "" acclimatising, as it is called.

For one, the body's defence mechanism becomes weaker, points out S Chatterjee of Indraprastha Apollo Hospital. And two, the sudden cold outdoors affects the body's vasomotor phenomenon, reveals Vineeta Taneja, consultant in internal medicine at Max Healthcare, which causes congestion, especially of the delicate blood vessels of the nose. This leads to the runny nose, sneezing and so on.

The ambient pollution makes it worse for people who have asthma and other diseases of the upper respiratory tract, or low immunity levels. Also, the weather "" not too hot, not too cold "" is just right for certain kinds of viruses, bacterias and parasites to breed. "Which is why you have diseases like chikungunya and dengue, both caused by viruses, occurring," says Taneja.

You might be making it more difficult for your own body to acclimatise by turning the air-conditioner on high, drinking water that is too cold, and not being adequately covered up, especially outdoors.

Apart from dressing warmly, there is another easy way out: get yourself vaccinated against the pneumococcus, and start popping those anti-allergenics "" just to be safe.

The changing weather, and the coming winter, does something else "" it slows down the body's metabolism. Which means that if you don't watch what you eat, especially in this festive season with its abundance of calorific foods, you could be in heavy trouble.

"Fat is insulating, and in winters the body tends to accumulate fat to keep out the cold," says Chatterjee. "In summer, if you overeat you break out in sweat and feel generally uncomfortable; but none of that happens in winter. So you tend to overeat in winter."