Why Winter Adventures Are Good for Your Health
Winter is a stunning season, providing plenty of thrilling opportunities for outdoor exploration. Skiing, snowshoeing, sledding, skating, snowboarding, cross country skiing, building snowmen, having snowball fights, making snow angels… the list goes on.
However, winter’s chilly nature has a bad reputation.
“It’s too cold to go outside: you’ll get sick!” Sound familiar?
Sure, many viruses, including those that cause the common cold, remain infectious longer and replicate faster in colder temperatures. Plus, transmission is easier for viruses when its dry, typical of freezing weather. As our eyes and the mucus membranes in our noses and throats dry out, they become ideal environments for viruses to attach to. Inhaling cold air can affect immune response in respiratory tract in a negative way as well.
However, these aren’t the only culprits for the seemingly inevitable sicknesses that make their rounds this time of year. Germs spread as people spend more time indoors and around other people. Cough, like at extended family holiday gatherings, cough.
Not to mention the dips in physical activity, increased intake in sugary and other unhealthy foods and decreased exposure to sunlight—and thus low levels of Vitamin D, which is essential to a strong immune system—we tend to experience in winter.
The antidote to those unhealthy hibernation habits and short-day blues: go for a wintry adventure.
Despite the general belief that the frosty air can make you ill, embracing sub-zero temperatures can help strengthen your body, enhance your mood and energy levels, combat sickness and seasonal depression, improve your mental health and help you sleep like a bear.
The increased effort required to move in the winter is a huge part of the reason why: exercise boosts immune and mental health. Nothing will get you working up a sweat like snowshoeing or skinning up a powdery slope and get you smiling like gliding effortlessly back down an epic hill.
The key to achieving the full array of benefits is regular doses of Vitamin Nature: studies show a mere 120 minutes of time outdoors per week contributes to good health and wellbeing. Go for a crunchy walk under some evergreens, inhale the crisp fresh air while rolling a snowball or collapse in a silhouetted snow angel and stargaze.
Being outside helps real vitamin levels, too: even though your face is often the only thing exposed to the sun when you’re bundled up, short exposures to weak sunshine is better than nothing!
Combine movement with fresh air and the result is snowpiles of potential fun and health, complete with red-cheeked happiness and some snow up your back.
So, where does the cold come in, besides providing the white stuff to play in? Cold exposure, experienced perhaps while stopping to dig for a snack, can alleviate inflammation.
Between keeping the body warm, slogging through deep snow and humidifying the air we breathe out, hiking in the cold is work. The combination of motion and cold can activate brown fat cells, which make up the adipose tissues that produce heat and burn calories. Thus, our metabolism changes and we burn more calories in the cold than on warm weather hikes. The downside: that energy replenishing granola bar your stomach demands after a mere kilometer is frozen.
Luckily, studies also show cognitive control is improved in the cold, so you’ll know better than to bite into the solid granola… right?
We also know that sleep is improved with both activity and colder temperatures, so go ahead and put that winter camping trip in the calendar! Just remember to put your snack in an inside pocket to thaw before chowing down.
The trick to reaping all the benefits of the chilly weather while minimizing the cold’s affects on our snacks, immunity and virus transmission is to bundle up. For example, use a buff or scarf as a barrier between your respiratory tract and the blasts of frigid air that can weaken its immune response. Keep moving to stay warm, fuel your body with warm, nutrient dense foods and soak in the life-giving rays whenever you can.
So go on, get outside and make the most out of this winter!
Thanks Sylvia! Your article warmed me up; time to head outdoors. Winter camping is worth the effort! Where do you recommend in our neighbourhood? East side of the Rockies? K Country?