The fall Equinox is this weekend, so we are officially headed into fall now! And for so many of us, shorter days and longer nights means a dip in our mood.
Fortunately, there are lots of great things to do to get prepared as the seasons change. Of course there are things like pulling out your sweaters and boots and knitting a scarf or two and planting a winter garden and getting the fireplace cleaned that you might look forward to this fall.
But one thing that I get every year, and absolutely never look forward to, is a drop in my energy level and mood as the days get shorter.
So today I want to share with you today my annual fall post with a collection of 12 important, personal things that I do to prepare my body now for a smooth transition through fall and into winter.
Run through these questions and ask yourself if you are ready for fall…
12 Fall Health Questions To Ask Yourself:
1. Do you have a way to stay grounded, even as it gets colder?
As I talk about in this video here, connected to the earth each day — particularly around transitions such as the equinoxes and the solstices — allows your body to be oriented to the season and more seamlessly adjust to it.
The time spent grounding to the earth will refresh your body and soul. This one daily practice is probably the single best thing you can start right now to smooth your fall transition. So make your plan now for how you can still get outside and soak in the fresh air, sunlight, and healing earth energy even as the temperature falls. Getting outside in even the cloudy grey days for a mid-day walk is better than staying inside even under the brightest artificial lights.
Even if the sun appears not to shine, your pineal gland senses the light in the environment and needs this pick-me-up to function best this fall and winter. Make a commitment to get morning or mid-day light (sunshine if possible!) every single day. I went into detail on a dozen ways to stay grounded outside, even in the cold of winter, in last week’s blog post, which you can read right here:
In it, I review all my favorite cold weather ways to get outside and still get grounded. Buy you might also want to consider a way to reliably get grounded indoors, too. I have organic grounding throw blankets that ground you while wrapping around you in warmth, even organic grounded hot water bottles, which is my absolute favorite way to ground indoors in the winter.
2. Do you make enough serotonin naturally?
Less daylight can mean a palpable drop in the mood boosting neurotransmitter serotonin. If you happen to be serotonin depleted, the winter blues are more likely to hit you harder than other people.
You can address this in two ways:
One, by taking supplements that help boost your natural serotonin levels. If you get a mild case of winter blues, you likely don’t need to take prescription medications for that. Instead, you can make sure that your body is getting all it needs nutritionally in order to make its own, healthy levels of serotonin. To do that, it needs a building block called 5-HTP. A precursor to serotonin (the positive, mood enhancing neurotransmitter that most antidepressants are targeting, in the hopes to elevate brain levels) 5HTP is a nutritional supplement that makes sure your body is getting what it needs to make serotonin as efficiently as possible. Do not supplement with 5HTP if you are already on serotonin boosting medications — like an SSRI or SNRI antidepressant. But if you feed your body what it needs (most of us don’t get enough of this precursor as it is) and you don’t already take any medications for depression, you can naturally boost the serotonin you’ll need to keep your spirits up as the light fades. I have 5HTP and several other supplements that have been shown to support seasonal affective disorder in my Mood Support Protocol right here.
The second way to help prevent the winter blues and boost serotonin without taking a supplement, is through light therapy. Light Therapy is medially studied to not only prevent and treat the winter blues, but it actually treats all forms of depression (and even treats fibromyalgia!). This is a great solution if you already take anti-depressants and want to add on an additional mood boost as well as a good circadian rhythm routine, as it can complement any medications or treatments you are already on for depression without any contraindications. My very fav, compact, therapeutic light box is clinically effective and is waiting for you right here.
3. Do you have a silver barrier cloth to open doors with?
There have been many medical studies over the years that show the antimicrobial properties of silver, like these:
- Application of Silver for the Prevention of Infection in Healthcare Workers
- History of the Medical Use of Silver
- Antimicrobial activities of silver dressings
- A review of the antibacterial effects of silver
- Silver nanoparticles as antimicrobial agent
- Antiviral activity of silver against H1N1 influenza A virus
- Colloidal silver and its antimicrobial effect on Staphylococcus aureus
- Nanosilver particles in medical applications
- Silver nanoparticles: therapeutic applications
- Mode of antiviral action of silver nanoparticles against HIV-1
- This article showed that live coronavirus dropped to levels that that were undetectable after exposure to silver: Efficient and quick inactivation of SARS coronavirus and other microbes
- And this study shows silver embedded fabric resulted in “quick and efficient” eradication of coronavirus: Fabric Lowers Zeta Potential and Eradicates Coronavirus Infectivity upon Contact. This means these researchers are suggesting that face masks, gowns and other protective gear be embedded with antimicrobial metals and tested for use in healthcare workers.
Watch this video on YouTube to see how I use my silver cloth countless times every single day:
If you prefer TikTok, you can watch the same video right here:
@laurakonivermd My favorite go-to when I’m out & about and can’t wash my hands #antimicrobial #cleanhands #intuitionphysician #holistichealth #laurakonivermd
If you’d like to use one too, you can find these silver barrier cloths right here. Of course, you can also have other personal care items made with silver, to boost their antimicrobial properties too. Things like silver fabric face masks to wear over your nose and mouth if needed, silver gloves to wear on your hands, a silver infinity scarf to have at the ready when you go out and about, even silver socks, t-shirts, and underwear if you want!
4. Are you sleeping enough?
This winter, please please allow yourself to re-connect to the natural rhythm of the earth and sleep longer when nights are longer. It’s really important to use winter as a time of repair — this is a time to go inward, deeply reset your health, focus on good sleep, good nutrition (like bone broth soups and stews) and emerge this coming spring in your best health yet.
In these days of bright artificial lights and TV channels that blast shows 24 hours a day and smartphones that beckon us around the clock, it feels like there isn’t much difference between the middle of the night and the middle of the day. But there is. To your body, to your pineal gland, your hormones, your muscles, your brain… the difference between night and day is iron clad. You are meant to sleep at night, and you are meant to sleep longer in the fall and winter months.
Allow your body to get an extra hour of sleep each night during the winter… at least give it a try this week: vow to sleep an extra hour each night this week and see if your mood, energy level, eating habits, activity level and joy all get a boost!
One way to do this is to lower your EMF exposures in your bedroom at night, as EMFs have a direct effect on your brain — for more on that read this article I wrote for you here. How to decrease EMFs during sleep? Start by following any of the tons of health tips on protecting yourself from EMFs that I wrote for you in here. And if you are going to scroll on your phone or watch TV at night, I highly suggest wearing blue light blocking glasses starting 2 hours before bedtime, if you absolutely need to be on a device to unwind.
Another thing to consider is that those of us who tend to be low serotonin (and get the winter blues as we talked about in tip #2, above) also tend to have trouble making enough melatonin naturally. This is because melatonin is actually made from serotonin… so folks who are low serotonin are generally low melatonin, and these levels dip in the winter because of the shorter days. So you guessed it — just as serotonin can dip in the winter, adding to the winter blues, your melatonin levels can dip too, wreaking havoc on your nightly rhythm. Even though the darkness makes you feel more tired and ready to turn in earlier, oddly enough you may find sleep elusive just when you crave it most.
While 5 HTP may helps boost daytime serotonin, at night you can take melatonin, as the sun sets, to boost your nighttime levels of melatonin. Taking melatonin in the fall when the days grow shorter (and you can combine this with using the light therapy box in the mornings as we discussed above!) will help your body re-set to its natural circadian rhythm once winter peaks. Sleeping well at night is an easy way to feel brighter during the day, beating those winter blues. My favorite melatonin as well as tons of other suggestions on improving sleep are waiting for you right here in my Sleep Restore Protocol.
5. Do you need to detox?
Like I do every year when the earth begins to transition to cooler temps, leaves changing and shedding and the earth diving inwards for renewal, I have a natural urge to dive deeper and detox my own body, from the inside out. There are a million ways to do this… strict raw food diets and prolonged fasting and colonics and a ton of wonderful different ways to feel like you are entering fall by shedding the old and rebuilding a new you.
For me, I go with a very easy and very simple detox. I’m literally aching to do my gentle 5 day detox again, like I do every fall… and this year I’m giving it to you my detox routine free as an instant download, right here. Take 5 days to reset your body for the fall. The earth is getting cooler, the days are getting shorter, and our bodies are going inwards for a period of renewal. So Gentle Restart Detox, here I come. It’s time.
6. Are your magnesium levels good (i.e. are you pooping enough? Are your muscles tense?)
Many of us are magnesium deficient and we don’t even know it. Magnesium is absolutely essential to 300+ different biochemical reactions in our body, like muscle function, nerve function, maintaining healthy blood pressure, blood sugar levels and more.
Without enough magnesium, we can have muscle pain, irritability, insomnia, constipation and even heart arrhythmias. So ask yourself… are your muscles tight? Do you feel anxious or have trouble relaxing into sleep? Are you constipated? If so, consider boosting your magnesium intake. Magnesium is a natural muscle relaxant, so taking a magnesium supplement at night is one of my favorite recommendations for anyone with difficulty relaxing due to muscle tension or soreness, such as issues with tension headaches, fibromyalgia, grinding teeth at night, TMJ, etc…. so this is why I have magnesium supplementation included in my Sleep Restore Protocol.
You can also soak in a nightly bath filled with magnesium rich Epsom salts, which will relax your muscles before bed and is a great treatment for restless leg syndrome, tooth grinding at night, and other issues with muscle tension such as fibromyalgia. You can then layer on a magnesium rich topical lotion to really relax and soothe sore muscles, here is my favorite magnesium lotion to help soothe tense or sore muscles.
If you are constipated, I would recommend taking magnesium internally, not just topically through baths and lotions, because it will naturally help loosen your bowels. My favorite way to do this is to drink a magnesium drink before bedtime (I like to drink mine in hot water, sipping on it like a nightly tea!) to help relax your body, loosen your muscles, soften stools, deepen sleep, and create a lovely evening ritual all fall and all winter long. That’s why I have included a magnesium drink in my Sleep Restore protocol here.
It’s normal for everything to slow down in the winter, so if your bowels are feeling full of rich and hearty winter meals and you are feeling dense inside, you can also up your water intake, take tons of healthy Omega 3 algae or flax seed oil, eat a prune a day and ground on the earth each day to help restore your daily digestive rhythms. But if that’s not enough, upping your magnesium intake will absolutely help!
7. Do you get enough Vitamin D?
Yes, you will get some Vit D when you go outside to get grounded each day… but most of us are deficient in Vit D even during the summer, so nearly ALL of us fall deficient in the winter. Not only is Vit D a powerful antioxidant, it prevents cancer, stroke, heart disease, boosts weight loss, decreases pain… you name it… we need it. Vitamin D needs to be emulsified for best absorption, which means if you are getting Vitamin D through a multivitamin that is a dry capsule or tablet or pill, it’s not getting well absorbed and you might find that your Vitamin D levels are not improving.
My favorite are Carlson’s Solar D Gems, found in my Seasonal Mood Support Protocol in my trusted online dispensary here. I love these the most because they are in an emulsified liquid capsule, so time and time again, when a patient comes to me with Vit D levels that are low despite supplementation with other brands, when we switch to the Solar D Gems, the levels return to normal. Woot!
8. Are you drinking just as much water in the winter as you do in the summer?
Hopefully you’ve kept yourself well hydrated during the summer, when hot temperatures and sweating drive us to remember to drink water more than at any other time of the year. But in the cooler temps, ones in which you are shivering, not sweating… it’s more important than ever before to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Dry heated air, dry cold outside air, wind chapping our lips, and no internal drive to remind us to drink leads to mid-winter dehydration, brain fog, and a sure-fire road to BLAH.
You can get so dehydrated that you actually feel semi-nauseous all the time and a bit depressed. Drink water and then drink some more… and start right now. I take the time to filter out the fluoride and chemicals in my water… I’ve got lots of articles on why I do that (you could start with this one if you want to read more) and here is the water filter I personally use in my home.
9. Are you allowing yourself gain a pound or two?
You might be an enlightened buddha thriving off the energy of the universe, but your body is an organic, human thing that is connected to the physical earth and responds to the rhythms of the seasons and needs nourishment. So every winter it is normal to slow down and allow a few extra pounds to sustain and warm you.
It is like-wise just as effortless and natural to lose several pounds in the spring as the world awakens and we are drawn to more physical labor such as preparing garden beds, trimming the lawn, spring cleaning our homes, and walking barefoot on the beach. If we don’t attach all the typical BS to our weight that we usually do, the few pounds that warm us in the winter will be shed without a second thought in the spring. This is the natural rhythm of the world all around you. The first half of winter, while food is still plenty and days grow darker, are a time to allow yourself to find nourishment in foods and warmth under your blankets, eating more and sleeping longer.
In a few months, as the pantry empties out and the holiday parties are long gone, there will be a natural thinning time, a time when the days become noticeably longer and your thoughts turn to the fresh spring salads that will be popping up in your garden. It is only when we attach a negative meaning to our weight that adds to the heaviness and permanency and bulk to it… and these pounds become a part of how we see ourselves forever. We get locked into battle with them and they fight to stay and add and grow, year after year after year. As a result, most people tend to gain a few pounds a year (despite being locked in constant battle and fighting against it the entire time) and accrue this mass permanently, instead of easily gaining and losing a few pounds with the seasons. It just shows that fighting weight isn’t the way to go.
If we dropped all our mental baggage around this rhythm, a rhythm of ebb and flow, of nourishment and lean times, of seasons, we would not gain weight year after year after year, instead we would gain and release. It’s only our society that fears weight gain that makes it almost *impossible* to drop the pounds without thinking twice about it late winter and early spring. Now is not the time to allow our culture’s baggage to taint what should be a natural time of celebration, stocking up, and preparing for the winter ahead. If you welcome this seasonal change with gratitude, you will be healthier for it. For more guidance on dropping your resistance to a seasonal weight gain, you might want to start with this article I wrote for you on how having a few extra pounds can offer a survival advantage:
Focusing on what you do eat (as opposed to restricting food) is a great approach in winter. You can arm yourself with some knowledge on the best party foods to reach for at holiday events, as well as ways to work with your own unique food cravings, in this article I wrote for you here:
10. Are you getting enough Omega 3 fatty acids from plant based sources?
I’ve already blogged a bit about how Omega 3’s can:
- effectively treat ADHD
- save your brain from atrophying (and decrease your dementia risk!)
- stabilize your mood so much that it can literally prevent psychosis
- help relieve constipation
- decrease prostate cancer risk
- prevent a fatal heart attack.
- and even cut your risk of diabetic retinopathy in half!
Winter means everything from a permanent brain fog to dry tight skin. Omega 3 fatty acids support brain function, digestion, circulation and skin… all things that we need help with in the winter. I’ve been asked about a recent study that suggesting fish oil may not be a good thing for those with cardiovascular disease (you can read that here) but please note that this is because it specifically studied fish oil — which of course the vast majority of fish oil supplements on the market are full of heavy metals and other contaminants that counterbalance the benefit of the Omega 3 fatty acids.
Omega 3 fatty acids are the most commonly prescribed supplements on the planet, for good reason, and yes these healthy fats are good even for your cardiovascular system. The key is that it is the Omega 3 fatty acid levels in the bloodstream that is cardio-protective, and contaminated fish oil supplements that are not. Studies that include plant based sources of Omega 3 Fatty Acids find benefit, for example, the meta analysis looking at data that included plant sources of Omega 3s in over 45,000 participants in 16 different countries: Australia, Costa Rica, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Norway, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, in both men and women (63% male, 37% female) and all ages (18 to 97) found that Omega 3 fatty acids correlated to a significantly lower risk of death from a cardiovascular event, and the results were shown to be dose dependent, meaning that every standard-deviation increase in levels of DPA, EPA, DHA and ALA (all Omega 3 fatty acids) lowered the risk of a death from a heart attack in a dose dependent fashion. These findings compliment earlier studies that show that Omega 3 fatty acids stabilize heart membranes and reduce the risk of ventricular fibrillation.
Ideally, the best way to boost your Omega 3s is to include lots of dietary Omega 3 fatty acid sources in the food you eat, from plant based sources like seaweed, walnuts, flaxseed, olive oil and coconut oils. And if you do take Omega 3 supplements that are made from fish oil, unless your fish oil is pharmacy grade, exceptionally pure, and routinely rigorously tested for contaminants, then my recommendation is to switch to algae oil or flax seed oil supplements to get your Omega 3s.
I have my favorite algae oil supplement listed in my Seasonal Mood Support Protocol right here.
11. Is your skin prepared for the winter ahead?
Winter can be a tough time for anybody’s skin… painfully dry hands and cracked heels galore (ouch!). Dry heated air dehydrates and cracks your vulnerable skin while you are inside staying warm, and combine that with whipping cold winds that chaff skin when you are outside and winter is just no fun on your skin, especially if you suffer from chronic skin conditions such as psoriasis, eczema or other forms of dermatitis.
Drinking twice as much water as usual will absolutely help from the inside out… but if you have specific trouble spots you might want a topical barrier cream to apply directly on a daily basis for protection. And luckily, if you like the barrier protection of petroleum jelly but don’t want petroleum by-products anywhere near your body, it’s super easy to make your own! So today I want to share with you the recipe I whip up each winter to use on our poor cracked hands and feet. Thank you so much to One Good Thing by Jillee (which is where I first saw this recipe!)
Homemade (Un)Petroleum Jelly.
- 1/4 cup Beeswax Pellets
- 1 cup Olive Oil
Melt together over very low heat in a saucepan or double broiler… once well combined, pour into a jar or recycled container and allow to cool for 30 minutes. I keep a jar by my bedside and by my kitchen sink to us on my winter cracked hands and heels.
12. Are you feeling burnt out?
Fall is the perfect time to turn inwards, nurture your adrenal glands, boost your internal energy reserves, and emerge this spring feeling better than you may have felt in many many years. It’s okay to take these upcoming months slower, to tend to our inner needs more, and to make sure we are getting lots and lots of sleep. It’s not only okay, it’s what we are *supposed* to be doing.
It’s like Mother Nature hand carved these months out for you to repair your adrenal glands and nurture your energy reserves so you can emerge this spring feeling triumphantly energetic! Repairing your adrenal glands is actually the easiest to do in the fall and winter.
It’s easier to sleep longer with the days getting shorter, easier to prepare and eat warm foods like soup, roasts, stews, etc… rich with fat, protein and salt (all absolutely crucial when repairing your adrenals) and easier to cocoon in and nurture your body, with less exertion and more repair.
Emerge this spring feeling better than you have felt in many many years! Ready to eat lighter, sleep stronger, lose weight, move your body more. To help, I am sharing my Adrenal Repair Book with you for free, right here. In it I have tons of uplifting, actionable things you can do right now to address adrenal fatigue.
A nice combo to do is start with my free 5 day detox plan and then move on to the free adrenal repair book immediately following the detox — this is an amazing way to head into the winter months feeling your absolute best, with several weeks of absolutely free holistic health support from me:
- Free 5 Day Detox Plan — download by ordering it here
- Free Adrenal Repair eBook — download by ordering it here
Let’s get you feeling better than ever… and enjoying this cooler weather and the beautiful fall colors that surround us.
I’ll be here for you all the way through it!
xoxo,
Laura Koniver MD
