Good and bad effects of rain

What effect can rain have on people other than refreshing in the heat or making our clothes wet? In fact, we simply underestimate the impact of rain on our lives.

9 good and bad effects of rain

1. Rain increases the risk of obesity

Some features of our body and psyche seem useless today. But once they served us to protect and improve the efficiency of interaction with the environment.

The same applies to the brain, or rather, its perception of cold. The fact is that when it rains, the body automatically associates it with cold, and the hunger hormone begins to be produced. What for? To replenish the reserves of energy that are spent on heating, and you want to eat more than on a clear day. And coupled with the fact that we try not to leave the house in the rain, you can eat even more than you need.

2. It makes us more irritable

It would seem that there are so many videos and audio where the sounds of rain and thunder are used as a calming effect. In theory, rain should cause calming, not irritation. But it’s not the rain itself, but the fact that the atmosphere at such moments is charged with positive ions, which increases blood pressure and makes people irritable, and also causes pain in the head. Especially, as scientists say, it affects young children who become restless before the rain and may start crying or throwing tantrums for no reason.

3. Rain improves sleep quality

As mentioned above, the sound of rain calms the psyche. This is because this sound belongs to the category of so-called pink noise – a signal whose spectral power density is inversely proportional to the purity of the signal.

It is important that this noise is one of the most common signals in biological systems and is found in heart rhythms, graphs of the brain’s electrical activity, and so on. The sound of rain reduces brain activity, so we think less and sleep better.

4. Reduces the crime rate

In 2007 and 2015, studies were conducted in New York and Manchester, trying to identify the relationship between weather and crime. It turned out that in rainy weather, the crime rate drops. The fact is that potential criminals, like their potential victims, try not to leave the house in bad weather and postpone their business until it gets better. In addition, fewer drunk people get on the streets who often commit violent crimes.

5. Rain can cause a feeling of sadness

Researchers believe that sad emotions caused by rain are, rather, not a mechanism inherent in us since antiquity, but the influence of society, since there are nationalities where rainy weather is perceived as a purely positive phenomenon in emotional terms.

As for Western culture, as the researchers found out, the number of sad posts on social networks increases by about half in rainy weather.

6. It makes us feel old

If you have had at least one fracture or suffer from rheumatism or other diseases of bones and joints, you feel how the joints begin to ache and maybe even hurt before and during the rain. This happens because the humidity of the air increases before and during the rain. Joints and tendons have barometric receptors that react to moisture, and this reaction causes pain.

7. Rain reduces the number of diseases

Many diseases are carried by insects and rodents. They reduce their activity to a minimum during the rain and prefer to get out only when the sky begins to clear. That is why the number of cases of infection with the same malaria in the rains, if we talk about those that occur outdoors, decreases, especially in heavy rains.

In addition, since rain and high humidity nail to the ground or bind some toxins, this also reduces the risk of disease caused by microorganisms or poisoning with certain substances.

8. Increases labor productivity

Everything is simple here: you don’t want to leave your office anywhere in bad weather. And if so, the number of smoke breaks decreases, as does the desire to get some air by walking around the local square. This, in turn, leads to the need to sit in the office longer to wait out the bad weather, and on average, people spend about 30 minutes of free time in the rain to do additional work.

9. Rain improves the environment

The air in cities is dirty, even with no heavy industries. What can we say about industrial centers, where you can literally feel the density of the inhaled air. Rain works as a kind of dust collector, which nails a fine suspension to the ground and cleans the air from various pollutants, including dangerous toxins. Of course, it does not destroy them but only fetters them at ground level, and then all this dirt will get into the soil and water. But at least it makes breathing easier.