The Day After Thanksgiving

Seasonal changes, holidays and shopping activities are among the environmental factors that can influence our health. What positive or negative effects can we expect on Black Friday and days right after?

The Friday-after-Thanksgiving was coined "Black" by police officers because of the fact that the traffic on the day after Thanksgiving is usually heavy and crowds are large. And they were right. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration & CDC, Thanksgiving is the most dangerous holiday of the year for drivers.

November is also one of the most financially stressful months. But stress is not always bad. The only stock market crash that happened the day after Thanksgiving (November 27, 2009) was in Dubai and did not affect global markets as much as "Black Fridays" in September and May of 1800s. What about the more common stress after Thanksigiving associated with holiday spending?

For retailers, "Black Friday" marks the transition from "red" to "black", indicating the start of Christmas Shopping Season. Should not this fact alone improve our mood and make us feel better? It definitely should. And researchers agree.

Even though there are many reasons not to participate in Black Friday, shopping can be good for you. It makes you burn calories, and feel happier. According to a recent study by Rick and colleagues, people often shop when they feel sad and making shopping decisions reduces their "residual sadness" as it restores a sense of personal control. Previous research, too, points that shopping can translate into rise of dopamine and activities of brain regions responsible for pleasure and positive thinking.

November is a great month for comforting food - and we do gain on average a pound after Thanksgiving. But it's also a great month for outdoors, bird watching, getting together and reflecting on the good things. According to academics, even people considering suicide are less likely to do it on or right after Thanksgiving Holidays. A paper from the 40s suggests we might be also a bit less sharp mentally (compared to the spring), but your brain does need some downtime. Mental breaks can increase productivity and creativity. Enjoy your holidays. Life only gets better after Thanksgiving.

REFERENCES

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2001). Reducing the risk for injury while traveling for Thanksgiving holidays. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 50 (45), 1016-7 PMID: 11724161

Hull HR, Radley D, Dinger MK, & Fields DA (2006). The effect of the Thanksgiving holiday on weight gain. Nutrition journal, 5 PMID: 17118202

Rick, S., Pereira, B., & Burson, K. (2014). The benefits of retail therapy: Making purchase decisions reduces residual sadness Journal of Consumer Psychology, 24 (3), 373-380 DOI: 10.1016/j.jcps.2013.12.004

Petrescu, M., & Murphy, M. (2013). Black Friday and Cyber Monday: a case study International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, 5 (3) DOI: 10.1504/IJEMR.2013.052884

Beauchamp GA, Ho ML, & Yin S (2014). Variation in suicide occurrence by day and during major American holidays. The Journal of emergency medicine, 46 (6), 776-81 PMID: 24462023

H.E.Jones (1941) Seasonal Variations in IQ. The Journal of Experimental Education. Vol. 10, No. 2, Dec., 1941

Knutson, Brian, Scott Rick, Elliott Wimmer, Drazen Prelec, and George Loewenstein (2007), "Neural Predictors of Purchases," Neuron, 53, 147-156.

Hull HR, Hester CN, & Fields DA. (2006) The effect of the holiday season on body weight and composition in college students. Nutrition & metabolism, 44. PMID: 17192197

Will you get the flu this season?

Worst of flu season may be over. But you can still catch a chill. If you shake hands with lots of sick people, for example. Or don't keep sufficiently warm. Yes, your mother has told you, and you thought it was just an old wives' tale, but it wasn't. Scientists (Johnson and Eccles, 2005) provide evidence that cold exposure may induce cold symptoms without any contact to sick individuals. As we all carry dormant (sub-clinical) infections in our nose, genitals and other parts of the body, and these viruses may get reactivated. Ever noticed the need to blow nose after spending some time in cold air? Your body might be trying to expel the waking-up microbes.

Emerging health analysis software tools like Aurametrix aim at keeping us healthy by warning about symptoms and diseases. Prolonged exposure to cold means that 4-5 days after the exposure there is 10% probability of developing nasal stuffiness, sneezing, throat irritation of mild fever. 10% if Aurametrix knows nothing else about you. Higher if you are in the most vulnerable age & health conditions group, have a history of more frequent cold infections in prior years or were recently exposed to other stressors. Aurametrix can draw additional conclusions from looking at ingredients in your diet and chemicals in your environment.  Medical records could add another thousand variables. Medical codes given to every documented complaint, prior medications, procedures, information about attending doctors and payments were shown to help predict C.difficile infections in hospitals using machine learning (Wiens, Guttag, Horvitz, 2012).

Social media (in addition to notifications by official sources) keeps us more aware and more afraid of the flu. But what if we are not able to keep away from exposure to a virus, forgot to clean our hands and could not avoid a non-ventilated area with sneezing sick people? The good news is that if we did everything else right we have a fighting chance. As it was shown in a scientific study (Huang et al., 2011), only 9 out of 17 healthy human volunteers exposed to H3N2 virus developed mild to severe symptoms.

So be happy to be healthy, in addition to doing your best to stay flu-free.

Image Credits: Allison Morris, OnlineEducation.net  

REFERENCES

Johnson C, & Eccles R (2005). Acute cooling of the feet and the onset of common cold symptoms. Family practice, 22 (6), 608-13 PMID: 16286463

Jankowski R, Philip G, Togias A, Naclerio R. Demonstration of bilateral cholinergic secretory response after unilateral nasal cold, dry air challenge. Rhinology 1993; 31: 97-100

J. Wiens, J. Guttag, E. Horvitz. Learning Evolving Patient Risk Processes for C. Diff Colonization, Machine Learning for Clinical Data Analysis, ICML 2012, Edinburgh, Scotland, June 2012.

Huang Y, Zaas AK, Rao A, Dobigeon N, Woolf PJ, Veldman T, Øien NC, McClain MT, Varkey JB, Nicholson B, Carin L, Kingsmore S, Woods CW, Ginsburg GS, & Hero AO 3rd (2011). Temporal dynamics of host molecular responses differentiate symptomatic and asymptomatic influenza a infection. PLoS genetics, 7 (8) PMID: 21901105

Pollen Distribution: Europe

Alder (A. viridis) is active January through May, high pollen season is in the end of February in West Poland, East Ukraine, South of France and North of Spain. High pollen season in Finland and Estonia is in the middle of April. It flowers from end of May to June in Alpine regions at timber line. Ash tree is especially active in France in the end of March. It's active through the first 10 days of May.  Cypress family is active entire year, but high season is February and March, especially in Spain, North Italy and Germany.

One of the most widespread in Europe,  Birch pollen  is observed from March till June, very high in April and May, especially in central and north Europe. cross-react with Alder and Hazel Oak's activity coincides with birch, but the territory is mostly on the West.  Olive tree and Plane tree should be watched on the West and South, Sweet chestnut  is mostly active in the end of July in France. Other trees such as Hazel display mild activities in February and March. Yew and Willow are also producing pollen in March in UK.
  Grass season is May through August, partially in September. Be careful in June, in Spain, France and a part of East Polland.  Weeds:  mugwort is active in the end of August: Poland and Estonia; nettle/wall pellitory is all over Europe in July and August and can be still observed in winter in South Spain and Italy. Ragweed is especially active in Balkans in the end of August.