While many people are looking forward to the annual festivities of a holiday season, many others are scouting out places to hibernate through the dark winter days and nights. I was one of those people until I learned about Seasonal Affective Disorder.
The term Seasonal Affective Disorder, or S.A.D., was coined back in the 1980s to help describe difficulties that many people experience as the days get shorter during the winter months.
A small percentage of people in any population share this disorder. It is more pronounced in people the further north they live.
Here in Redding the sun shines around 6 hours less during the shortest day of the year than during the longest day. Research suggests that one root to this disorder may be a wintertime lack of vitamin D which is produced in the body by exposure to sunlight, as well as a decreased level of serotonin and an increased level of melatonin in the brain.
Symptoms include lethargy, listlessness, and increased desire to sleep (or hibernate!), increased carbohydrate cravings and depression.
People do not hibernate, although there have been unproven stories of a tribe of people in Siberia who do. Many researchers believe our human ancestors were once able to hibernate, but that we no longer have the specialized metabolic processes hibernating mammals have to prevent changes in their muscle and bone during a long slumber.
There are two things that people in northern climates can do maintain their sense of well being. They can become what is known as a Snowbird by migrating south in the cold months of the year. Thousands of of northern people, including people in Shasta County, migrate to Arizona, Mexico, New Mexico, Mississippi or Florida to live in towns and pop-up colonies of snowbirds. Over a million people from Canada and many more from the northernmost states of the U.S. follow the geese south. Whole colonies of migrants from the north arise during the winter months.
If migration is not an option, light therapy lamps may be. My sister bought one for me years ago when the knowledge about S.A.D. and methods to deal with it were just making news. She had visited clinical sites in Washington and northern Oregon and noticed that many people had these special lights in their work spaces.
A website about surviving the Swedish Darkness includes tips such as the use of therapy lights, vitamins, exercise, learning new indoor skills such as knitting or sewing, reading, and staying socially connected with your friends and family.
Using a therapy light, upping my intake of vitamin D, and getting out in the sun at any opportunity during the winter months has helped me a lot.
While researching S.A.D. I learned that growing up in a north/south oriented canyon which received only 3 or 4 hours of sun each day during the winter could explain my childhood struggles with winter.
I learned not to dig into my “sack of sorrow” to find which particular event or loss would, once identified and “dealt” with properly, lift my spirits.
Some of the greatest winter holiday celebration traditions come to us from northern countries and they all involve lots of lights! Christmas tree lights, Hanukkah candles and homes decorated with colorful lights are part of traditions here in Shasta County. So is the yearly bonfire in the town of Shasta each year.
That these traditions have been around for so long lets me know that everyone can use a display of light during the winter months.
Joanne Snyder lives in Redding.
