Expert reveals why winter food makes couples more likely to argue and what you can do to stop it

An expert has shared an unusual measure which might help couples to not fight so much during winter.

Yes there might be the coziness of Christmas and all that fireside niceness, hot drinks and just general warmth, but it turns out that Winter is actually one of the times of year where couples are more likely to fight.

Of course, sitting in a sweaty shirt sticking to your body through a sweltering hot summer isn't exactly conducive to a good mood, either.

While Winter obviously has lots of wonderful qualities, it's not much of a stretch to see how this might come about.

The days are darker and it's colder and rainier for a start.

While there is Christmas in the middle, Christmas can also unfortunately be a time where long buried family tensions can bubble to the surface, sometimes with a blazing row as a result.

But one expert thinks that there is another factor which could be tightening up tensions during winter.

Being constantly cold is probably not helpful (Roberto Moiola/Sysaworld/Getty)

Private UK Dietitian Karine Patel, at Dietitian Fit, thinks the season might actually be one of the factors in more arguments in the winter months.

Winter affects the way our bodies work, including hormones, moods, vitamins, and all manner of mechanisms.

She shared some foods which may help to counter some of the ways that winter can make us a bit more irritable than our usual, affable selves.

One big factor is a drop in vitamin D due to shorter days, which can affect things like 'emotional balance, patience and happiness'.

So to counter this you can make sure you're eating foods which have plenty of vitamin D in them.

This isn't the only way that shorter days can impact your mood either, Karine says, as this can also make you not sleep very well due to your sleep pattern being disrupted.

There's also how our diet changes, especially around Christmas, with lots of sugary foods even causing sugar crashes that affect our mood.

Long nights are not helpful either (Maxim Rozhin/500px/Getty)

Karine also claimed that eating too much comfort food, which we do more of during winter, can also lead to inflammation that can also impact on our mood during winter.

Cold weather also means that we spend more time indoors, and if Covid lockdown taught us anything it's that being cooped with one person a lot can lead to more arguments.

So what foods does Karine recommend to help counter this, though to be clear these probably won't fix a relationship.

For vitamin D you an try eating more oily fish to help counter the lack of sunlight.

Foods like eggs and bananas are also recommended as they can help in 'calming the nervous system'.

Another fruit you can try is pineapple, which has its associations of holidays and sunny tropical paradises.

There's also matcha, which Karine says can help with a 'relaxed, focused mindset'.