Healthwise, April Is the Weirdest Month

T.S Eliot said April is the cruelest month. Geezer says it's the weirdest, at least as far as our bodies are concerned. In April, as spring fattens the days, strange things happen to our bodies: Seasonal Affective
Disorder becomes orderly; there are fewer heart attacks; and
the number of flu cases almost always declines. On the other hand, many
of us begin to feel weird. We are restless, have even more trouble than
we usually do paying attention, and find romance in strange places. The
L.A. Times offers some reasons for the seasonal weirdness that we
call spring fever. Let's start with chemicals. In winter, the paper
reports, the body secretes high levels of melatonin, a hormone that
governs sleep-wake cycles. Come spring, the increasing amount of
daylight is registered by light-sensitive tissue in the eye, which
signals the brain to stop secreting so much melatonin. As the hormone's
levels drop off, greater wakefulness results. Wait, there's more on the
chemical front: In spring, levels of another chemical, serotonin, rise.
This mood-elevating neurotransmitter may be at the root of the
giddiness, energy boost and enthusiasm that characterize spring fever. Read
more about spring fever in the L.A. Times.