With a Spring in your step, get rejuvenated and healthy

Experts have had a common view about Spring being the best time and season for keeping your body healthy and fit. Our ancestors believe that seasons are our earth's clock. Seasonal phenomena are found inside the body of each living being.

As per Tibetan medicine and Buddhist tantras, the internal solar and lunar channel receptors react to different seasons in specific ways. The ancient Indian system of medicine, Ayurveda, also deals with the know-how of the effects of various seasons on body and mind.

Traditional Chinese medicine philosophy connects five basic elements to five different seasons. Wood with Spring, fire with Summer, earth with late Summer and metal with Winter. The ancient Chinese applied this knowledge to achieve overall well-being.

They believed the generation, flow and channelisation of heat energy (chi) alters with every season. The cooler and quieter, somewhat sluggish, kind of energy of Winter slowly transforming into a musical consonance of new joyful life in Spring rising to warmer-hotter days of Summer.

"Humans are not believed to be all that seasonal, (but) there are exceptions to this," said Iggy Provencio, a circadian biologist at the University of Virginia.

The strongest evidence of human seasonality comes in the form of seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. Its victims suffer major depressive episodes related to the seasons, usually beginning in late Fall or early Winter, and subsiding in Spring or Summer. This is one of the modern scientific evidences suggesting positive effect of Spring on human health.

Spring is the time when the body is in sync with its surroundings. The endocrine system is rejuvenated and this can up-regulate your mood in the best manner. Spring can get you going as it is this time when the body is most comfortably managing the heat-exchange or energy production and expenditure.

This is the time when your appetite is normalised as compared to those cold 'hogging' Winter days and hot 'anorexic' Summer days. Spring is the time when your hormonal system is at its best. This also increases your libido, sexuality, euphoria and spirituality.

These long-sunny Spring days would be a perfect time to start with a new fitness programme. This is because it will get you the optimum 'fat-burn' during the coming Summer. Summer is the time when the heat-exchange will become faster supporting quicker and better fat-loss.

 The author is an Ahmedabad-based health and fitness expert