Autumn Reflections and Health Considerations

On a personal level, I don't look forward to the shorter days. I don't like the fact that the weather is changing. I do like the colour supportive, so all of the lovely russets and the golds and the yellows and the reds and the oranges. I think we certainly move towards a little bit more comfort food, which is okay. I mean I'm not a great fan of comfort food, but certainly I think you're thinking about more hearty food because of the change in weather. But I prefer longer days and warmer weather. But last year we were quite fortunate because autumn was quite mild and I really enjoyed that. So yeah, that's some of the things from a patient perspective, I think it's very much the same in that some patients don't like the shorter days, they become aware of the fact that the weather is changing. It means that it's getting darker earlier, which limits their ability to go out and be as free and active as they would normally want to be. And I think a lot of patients, particularly now, as the weather changes and the temperatures change, it's getting colder, they're worrying about whether they're going to be able to afford to have heating on and a lot of them may actually leave turning their heating on too much later and probably when we are in too much colder temperatures and proper winter. This obviously has an impact on their overall health and I think we see a lot more earlier presentations of things like troll planes, people with colds, people with flus. So it's both an exciting time in terms of weather changing and looking forward to, you know, I think heartier foods and things like that. But certainly from a health perspective, I think we start thinking about the transition into winter when people will probably end up getting sicker and things like that.