Have a Healthy, Happy Winter: Seasonal Health Strategies for Women

The winter season brings unique challenges for maintaining wellness. Shorter daylight hours can drain our mood and disrupt circadian rhythms. Dry indoor air, freezing temperatures outdoors, and being cooped up inside more often can take a toll on our mind and body. For us, the impact of winter on health can be particularly pronounced. Shifting hormone levels, greater susceptibility to seasonal affective disorder, and increased inflammation cause many of us to suffer more pain, depression and disturbed sleep during the colder months. Despite our best cold-weather wellness efforts, some of us will also inevitably get sidelined by a viral infection like Covid, influenza, norovirus or the common cold at some point during winter. In this edition of the Sunday Supplement I have covered strategies to prime your immune system and how to prepare for viral infections, as well as how to beat winter blues and rev up your metabolism to prevent winter weight gain. We may not be able to make winter magically warmer, but we can definitely make it healthier. Join me as we turn seasonal suffering into smooth winter sailing!

Your body is trying to tell you something

Our bodies are incredible. Every day, our complex systems work in harmony to keep us alive and functioning. But sometimes, our bodies send us subtle signs or symptoms that something is amiss. These clues can be so minor we brush them off or don’t even notice them. However, paying attention to the whispers of our bodies can provide valuable insight into our health from a functional medicine perspective. With a functional medicine approach, I view the body as an interconnected system instead of isolated parts. This means no one symptom is brushed aside or treated in isolation. Instead, all clues are pieced together to identify the root cause. For example, ongoing headaches, fatigue, and joint pain may seem unrelated. But I understand how these could indicate an inflammatory process that ties everything together. Instead of covering up each symptom with drugs, the root issue is addressed. This holistic approach appreciates how the whole body works as one, not individual organs and body parts in silos. No clue is too small when it comes to finding and resolving the underlying imbalance. By treating the body as one integrated network, functional medicine provides lasting solutions, not temporary band-aids that ignore the deeper cause. So while they may seem unimportant, subtle signals can indicate broader functional imbalances. Your body has an amazing way of signaling when it needs support. Learning its language empowers you to decode what it’s trying to say. Paying attention to the messages it subtly sends can help you to correct imbalances long before disease sets in.

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