Lightboxes and other SAD-busting magic

Hi, everyone,

I haven't posted anything really substantial in a long time, but now that the election season is over, I thought I'd update my blog with a little post-Daylight Savings Time health advice.

Living in New England has made me fairly aware of how my mood is affected by sunlight.  Even when I lived in New York, the slightly increased degree of sunlight was better for me personally than it has been the last four and a half years I've spent living in Rhode Island.  Winters here are brutal--darker, but also with colder rain and winter mix, along with a harsh wind that slices through thinner clothing.  I've had to spend a significant amount of money on thicker winter clothes since moving here, because my cheaper cottons weren't cutting it.

While I haven't been officially diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which has been publicized over the last few years as a psychological, debilitating reaction to longer periods of darkness, I definitely feel the gloom that days hiding under wool and indoors creates.  Because I have been here so long, and know how I react to the wintertime (during finals period and the stressful holiday season, no less!), I have spent a great deal of time researching how to prepare for this time of year.

Drink Water.
I have always held that staying hydrated is the most important thing that a person can do to maintain their health.  The adult human body consists of 55-60% water.  This should be constantly replenished with fresh water, which we don't always think about because we are not sweating it out as much in winter.  It's really important to pay attention to what your body wants; it is very common to conflate thirst with hunger, and often when people think that they need to consume more caffeine, they actually are just slightly dehydrated.  Drinking coffee (or Red Bull, or Four Loko--well, that's a whole other can of worms) will not help this.  When I drink coffee, I try to make sure to drink more than the equivalent amount of water, so that I will not further dehydrate myself. 

Moisturizing is also really important.  My skin never cracked and dried in New York as it does here, because it is humid all year-round as opposed to very humid in the summer and dry in the winter.  I never had as many sinus infections as I do here.  Keeping hydrated and moisturized is another way to combat wintertime illnesses in addition to DST blues.


Exercise.
This one is a challenge for me, as I am not a naturally athletic or physically active person.  This semester, I made sure to keep myself on a rigid exercise schedule by taking a modern dance class as one of my courses.  This was a great move for helping my mood overall throughout the semester.  Dancing has made me aware of what's going on in my body for a set period of time each day.  The deep stretches that we perform in the class incorporate aspects of yoga, which increases GABA levels in the brain significantly higher than simply taking a walk does.  While yoga has turned off some people that I know  because it seems too spiritually-based and does not function as aerobic exercise, I would argue that stretching muscles that are not commonly used in everyday life builds up lactic acid, which activates your metabolism.  Yoga specifically allows for both stretching, building up lactic acid, and deep, controlled breathing, which supplies oxygen to the body so that "warming down" is not as necessary as in other types of exercise. 

But if you don't want to be all touchy-feely and do yoga, at least stretch in the morning.  Stretch further every day.  Learn to touch your toes if you can't (it's taken me about two months to learn that one).  Stretch places you didn't know existed.  If you don't exercise regularly, then take 10 minutes out of your day to stretch.  Even if it's during your lunch break.  And you have to hide in the bathroom stall to do it.  Just do it.  And then take another 10 minutes during your day, another "extended bathroom break" if you will, to do jumping jacks, or run in place, and you will feel awesome about yourself, about taking care of yourself, and your body will thank you.

Take Vitamins.
Sunlight goes away, and along with it goes Vitamin D.  Recently, a paper came out talking about a Vitamin D deficiency pandemic and how little sun people now receive.  There is much research pointing toward the inefficacy of orally taking Vitamin D (though I'm trying it out, anyway), because it needs to be processed by UV light in the skin and then activated in the kidney.  Research points toward those chocolate women's calcium supplements with Vitamin D as being the only effective oral way of absorbing these nutrients.

If you don't want to do this, then I recommend eating fish!  Iceland, even though it is a very cold and dark place, has a significant lack of SAD, theoretically due to the ingestion of fish in the region.  Eating veggies is also great, although fresh veggies are harder to find in winter months.  Frozen veggies used in homemade soup can be a great way to resolve this problem, in addition to eating fresh "winter" vegetables like squash and hardy or indoor greens.

Lightboxes
I'll admit--the first thing I did when I realized Daylight Savings was upon us was research lightboxes.  These are super expensive, though Jason Fitzpatrick from Lifehacker managed to find a $40 Dawn Simulator (they aren't shipping until January, unfortunately).

Luckily for me, my university's Psychological Services rents out light boxes to students!  I just rented the large one today for a $25 deposit, and I can keep it for two weeks.  The sun is going down now, so I'm going to hang out with it after work for a while.  I highly encourage people who have therapists to ask if they could borrow a light box to see if it works for them--there is no use investing $150+ in something that might not help their problems.

Good luck and take care.

2010 Election Results

Click here to check out the RI NOW PAC Endorsement results. 

Thanks to everyone who voted in the general election; I'm really excited to see what will happen in Rhode Island politics during the legislative session.