I may have posted on this topic before but I was wondering if anyone has noticed that your symptoms begin to subside as the temperatures outside rise? Where I'm from we reached 75 degrees today--a very warm and sunny day. I've felt better today than I can remember feeling in the past 5-6 months! Its like everything in my body just starts functioning better. I have more energy, my depression lifts, my anxiety and panic attacks calm down, my mind feels more clear, and the malaise I usually feel throughout the day and after exertion seems to lessen a great deal. It's almost like a complete transformation overnight! The improvements are global--everything about me improves.

The problem is that I have absolutely no idea why this happens and how to prevent myself from getting sick agian when the weather gets cold. There has to be a physiological basis for this to happen although none of my doctors really have a clue about it. It would make sense that it has to do with temperature regulation...I check my temp in the morning and its usually a little low by a degree but nothing too drastic. Could it be that my body fights to keep warm in the winter months and thats why I feel so ill most of the time? When it warms up does that mean my body can just relax and soak in the heat?

I'm really curious as to how many of you have noticed this phenomenon and how you are being treated you for it...Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

You may have hypothyroidism, which if not treated can leave one feeling cold all the time, especially in the Winter months.

Peregrine...I've often thought of hypothyroidism as being the key factor in this although I don't think it's hypothyroidism as the medical community knows it in the standard sense. My thyroid function tests passed with flying colors on 2 seperate occassions. If thyroid hormones are responsible for this then they are present but not functioning...like a bunch of workers on strike; they can be present but not working!

Still though, I sense that most people with hypothyroid say they feel cold although thats not really how I feel in the winter...I don't really feel cold but I just don't function well WHEN its cold....its hard to explain really. But I have a lot of other symptoms of hypothyroid like low energy, depression, difficulty waking up in the morning, etc.

What's interesting is that many people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome are being prescribed thyroid medications even with normal lab results and still finding that they improve dramatically on them. I don't know but I feel it would be difficult to explain this to my doc...he, like me, is afraid of messing up my body even more. Maybe I should try Selenium which is supposed to be good for T4 to T3 conversions. Anyone familiar with this? Any more insights into this would be greatly appreciated.

Have you checked out the Thyroid Board here? There are some very knowledgeable people there who can probably interpret your Thyroid panel better than your doc. Oftentimes what is thought of as normal is not. And yes, I myself asked about selenium there and it is supposed to help with some of the T functions. Just make sure you are not already getting it in your multi vitamin as it is a common addition, especially in many multi's one would purchase at a HFS. I started taking it unaware it was present in my multi and experienced symptoms of anxiety until I realized this and stopped it.

Unfortunately I don’t have an answer for you, but I do have a different idea for you to consider. Is temperature the only variable that has changed? Increased outside temperature causes other changes in your environment and one of those changes may be the key to understanding the cause of your illness. There are many such possibilities, but I will briefly discuss a couple here.

On a nice day do you spend more time outdoors and have more windows open? If your problem is due to indoor pollution (manmade, e.g. carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, pesticides, etc or natural, e.g. mold), this could be the reason you are feeling better on warm days.

Another possibility is sunlight – do you spend more time out of doors? There has been a lot of talk about Seasonal Affective Disorder, but there is another aspect to seasonal sunlight that is often ignored, vitamin D production. Not only do we get more sun exposure in the warm weather months, but also the levels of UV required for the body to produce vitamin D are generally much higher (relative seasonal levels are dependent on the latitude where you live - the further north the larger the seasonal difference). In much of the US a person will produce more vitamin D from a few minutes of sunshine in July than from several hours of sunshine in December. Recent scientific studies suggest that most people (especially the elderly) don’t have enough vitamin D and that the currently recommended daily value for dietary vitamin D is less than half of what it should be. Vitamin D deficiency can cause a wide range of different symptoms.

Good luck and enjoy the nice weather.

Max127