Why do I feel so sluggish in cloudy weather?

Question: I often feel more tired than usual when it is cloudy or rainy. Why is that?

If you feel tired on a cloudy day, it could be for several reasons, experts say. Maybe it’s because you’re lazing around at home and not being as active as usual. Or perhaps the change in atmospheric pressure causes headaches or other aches and pains.

Or maybe, says Dr. Alfred J. Lewy, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University, it’s because something else is happening in your body that experts don’t fully understand.

The truth is that scientists don’t know how (or even if) daily weather changes, such as the occasional cloudy day, can affect energy levels.

“It’s kind of a mess to study,” says Kelly Rohan, a professor of psychological sciences and clinical psychologist at the University of Vermont. And research on this topic is scarce.

Not everyone has the same reaction to the weather, the experts said. Some people hate rain or are particularly sensitive to a lack of sunlight, while others can’t stand a sweltering summer day.

“We’d like to say there’s an easy answer, but there just isn’t,” says Dr. Paul H. Desan, psychiatrist and director of the Winter Depression Research Clinic. at Yale School of Medicine.

The best research has tried to figure out how certain aspects of a day – such as the temperature or atmospheric pressure, or how sunny, cloudy or rainy it is – can affect your mood, while taking into account other factors such as the season and the amount of time you spend. outside. Most of these studies didn’t just measure energy levels, said Dr. Rohan, but assessed mood by asking people questions about how they felt and how active or alert they were.

What Dr. Rohan says about that research, she says, is that for most people the influence of weather on daily mood is “non-existent or very subtle.”

In a 2010 study For example, among more than 14,000 people in the Netherlands, researchers concluded that weather conditions were not associated with a gloomy mood. And a Research from 2008 among more than 1,200 people in Germany found that the average effect of weather on mood was small, and that both sunny and rainy days were associated with fatigue.

In general, said Dr. Rohan, your daily stress, such as from relationships or work, is likely to affect your mood “much more than the weather forecast.”

Fleeting feelings of lethargy should not be confused with seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, the experts said. SAD is a form of depression that affects about 5 percent of adults in the United States; it is more common in women than men and usually runs in families. Typically, SAD occurs in the fall or winter and lingers regardless of daily weather fluctuations before finally disappearing in the spring. (Although you can also experience SAD during the spring and summer months.)

In winter, the cause of SAD is not cloudy days, but shorter days that cause the sun to rise later than in spring or summer.

“You have enough light on a cloudy day to treat winter depression, but it’s not the right time,” says Dr. Lewy, an expert in the field of internal clock disorders. For most people the bright light therapy used for SAD should occur in the early morning hours, the closer to wake-up time the better, he added.

It may also be tempting to assume that melatonin, a hormone that helps induce sleep, may contribute to feelings of sluggishness on a cloudy day because it is produced at night and is associated with darkness. But “melatonin is always turned off by the body clock in the morning, even in the absence of light,” said Dr. Lewy, so the hormone does not play a role in daytime fatigue.

If you find yourself dragging the occasional cloudy day, it can help to focus on getting more rest at night and incorporating more energy-creating strategies into your day, such as taking exercise breaks or concentrate on what you eat. Maybe this is the boost you’re looking for.