Posted by:
RPackham
(
)
Date: February 09, 2011 05:36PM
I wrote a column about it a year ago October (I write a general intereste column on alternate Sundays for the local paper). Here's my column, published October 21, 2007 in the Douglas County News-Review:
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October can be a beautiful month, with the colorful fall foliage and the crisp cool mornings when the sky is a brillian blue.
But October is fickle, with many days of gray sky, winds and drizzling rain, and gloom everywhere. And each day is shorter than than yesterday, and each night lasts longer. We know that we're headed for the dark and cold of winter.
When I was a teacher years ago I noticed that every year in October I would begin to get depressed. I usually attributed it to the fact that when the school year had started in early September or late August, I was full of enthusiasm and great plans, with a completely clean slate and a fresh crop of eager minds to teach. By October it usually became evident that this school term was going to be no different from the last, these students were not going to achieve anything more than last term's group, and that was a depressing thought.
But not long ago scientists discovered that about one person in ten - and perhaps as many as two in ten - begins along around October to suffer from the physical reduction in the amount of sunlight available, and the principal symptom is depression. They call it "seasonal affective disorder," or "SAD" (what an appropriate acronym!). Sunlight affects the body's production of various chemicals that influence our moods, so a decrease in the amount of sunlight can affect how we feel emotionally and physically.
It's no wonder that alcoholism is a more severe problem with people who live in areas in the far north, such as Alaska or Finland. They're depressed.
Not everyone is affected. My wife can eat her breakfast in the half-dark kitchen with just one light on. I can't do it. I have to turn on all the lights, over the stove, over the sink, over the counters. Scientists suggest that this change in mood with the decrease in the amount of light available is in our genes, a relic from our early animal ancestors who hibernated in the winter. Naturally, my wife suggests that this proves she is more advanced on the evolutionary path than I am.
Fortunately SAD can be treated, relatively inexpensively, by supplying the body with more light than comes naturally from the sun. But not just any light will do. The light must mimic natural sunlight, and ordinary household lighting does not do that. Special lights, usually labeled "full-spectrum," are required. Many special lamps are available specifically for SAD therapy, but any lamp with a full-spectrum element will do. I bought a small desk lamp last year with a full-spectrum element, and it sits next to my computer screen so that the light shines on my face. It's important that the eyes are exposed to the light, but not directly.
Of course, if your depression is severe you should get professional advice.
I suppose my desk lamp is helping. How do you measure depression? And is it just the lack of sunlight? It's not only that we are heading for the dark of winter, but for us who are older it's also the realization that we are in the autumn of life. I could sit for hours in front of my full spectrum lamp, and still grow wistful and sad remembering old Walter Huston singing in his raspy voice, "For it's a long, long time from May to December, and the days grow short as you reach September, and the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame... September, November.... and these few precious days I'll spend... with you."
They are precious days, though few.
Now cheer up! Go turn on the lights!