Spring Fever and Awakening Libido

Spring horniness is a normal hormonal reaction to one of the most natural and most available aphrodisiacs – light.

The days are getting longer, sunnier and brighter and we have only a few things on our mind: sex, sleeping and being at one with nature. Our cheeks are getting flushed, our heart is beating faster, we lose our appetite, we are restless and inclined to daydream.

Mating season

The spring fever or the so-called mating season is not an old wives’ tale. Although it does not sound romantic at all, it is a normal hormonal reaction to one of the most natural and available aphrodisiacs – light.

After the long, boring, tedious and dark winter days, the spring magically introduces chaos into the entire animal kingdom, including people.

The epiphysis, which scientists popularly call ‘the brain’s third eye’, is responsible for us fantasising about men or women with perfect bodies, for getting excited at the slightest physical contact and for restlessly walking around the office and the city.

The epiphysis is located in the centre of the brain and is connected with nerves to various parts of the brain. The excretion of the hormone melatonin helps maintain daily and seasonal mating cycles in animals.

The dark sends a signal to the epiphysis to produce higher amounts of melatonin and the light has the opposite effect. The amount of the hormone in the body sends a signal to the ‘internal clock’ about the time and season. It is especially important for some animals for their offspring to be born at exactly a specific time of the year and melatonin plays the most important part in that.

At one with nature

Spring fever is a not a category for diagnosis. But it is definitely an all-present occurrence that is characterised by a fast and unpredictable mood improvement that is in contrast to the mood we have all winter, said Michael Terman who specialised in biorhythm and healing with light at the Columbia University medical centre.

Matthew Keller, psychiatrist and behavioural geneticist from Virginia conducted research whose aim was to ascertain how the weather affects our behaviour and emotions. The research was conducted on 500 people from Canada and the United States and it showed that the more time people spent in open spaces, in nature, the better their mood was.

Their mood was even better in the spring and summer months. But apart from the sun, another factor affects the mood, the temperature. In order to keep up the good spirits, we need the optimal temperature of 20 to 25 degrees Celsius.

As the spring fever has psychological effects, so it has physical effects. Evolutionary biologists believe that our bodies are programmed to be more active when there is more light. Men are more fertile and their libido is higher in the spring.

But research conducted by Michael Smolensky, a specialist in relationships and biorhythm, proved that couples were sexually most active in the autumn months.

This coincides with information that the level of testosterone in men was highest in the late summer and in the autumn, probably so that a child conceived in those months could be born in the most favourable period of the spring.

Now that we know why we are so restless and excited, we can enjoy the spring fever and walk, roller-skate, ride a bike and make lots of love.