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Winter Blues, Spring Highs & Our Emotional Calendars

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We look at the science of our emotional calendar — how our minds, bodies, and emotions surf the seasons.

A woman walks on a wintry road in Philadelphia. (AP)
A woman walks on a wintry road in Philadelphia. (AP)

It’s winter out there, and a bunch of the country really knows it today.

Our bodies are always aware of the weather and climate. Blood pressure, gut, immune functions, hormone secretions – all affected and, of course, our emotions.

We frolic more in springtime, hunker down in winter. We live large in summer, regroup in the fall.

For many, they’re natural transitions. For some, they’re really tough, emotionally. And then come days of hard personal history on the calendar, and their whack.

We look at the emotional calendar of the year, and how we deal.
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests:

John Sharp, psychiatrist and executive medical director of “Bridges to Recovery,” a residential treatment program in California. He’s on the medical staff at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and on the faculty at Harvard and UCLA Medical Schools. His new book is "The Emotional Calendar."

Rick Bragg, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and professor of writing at the University of Alabama. He's author, most recently, of "The Most They Ever Had" and "The Prince of Frogtown."

This program aired on January 24, 2011.

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