The sun puts us in a good mood… up to a point! When the thermometer keeps rising, many of us feel more irritable than normal.
How to explain it? Under the effect of heat, the heart rate accelerates, blood pressure increases: all symptoms that the body associates with exposure to anxiety. Result ? The secretion of cortisol, the stress hormone, surges and generates this uncomfortable emotion: irritability, occurring without warning and for no apparent reason. The tendency to impulsivity is also linked to the lack of oxygen suffered by the body when it is really hot. This reaction is one of the symptoms associated with heat stroke.
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Other factors come into play in this uncontrolled slippage of emotions:
Lack of sleep : when the temperatures do not drop sufficiently in the evening, it is not easy to fall asleep. The sheets like the air are not fresh, your time to fall asleep gets longer. And the risk of nocturnal awakenings increases if you are hot and/or thirsty, to an even greater extent if you also have to manage your children’s difficult nights. And the lack of sleep directly impacts the level of good mood the next day. When it becomes chronic, this deficiency even induces an increased risk of depression, according to Inserm.
Cognitive disorders: as researchers point out in the journal PLOS Medicine, heat waves have a direct and negative effect on our attention spans, on the speed of information processing, the ability to add and subtract but also to memorize. What put us in a bad mood if we are really not efficient!
The risk of dehydration: asking your body and especially your brain to function with an insufficient quantity of water can weigh on your nerves. A water deficiency will indeed decrease your blood flow and your brain will be less irrigated. This mechanism will cause dysfunctions of the body which will result in particular in phases of irritability and blues, as well as concentration and memorization disorders. The main symptoms of dehydration – irregular heartbeat and breathing, dark urine, dry skin – can help you link this mechanism to the occurrence of your bad mood for the day.
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