Winter Darkness, S.A.D. Seasonal Depression
Without Prejudice
I get S.A.D. And it's the pits. I feel like hibernating all winter, sleep, eat, be sloth like and hide from the world. I read that the man in this article from Alaska, gets out in the winter weather and is happy. I try that each day now. I also sit under bright lights, write for seven hours, mainly in the morning as it is when I feel most energised.
In the afternoons I relax and just go with what my mind and body wants. I have suffered it for a long time and either used to just put up with it, or tried to fight it.
This year I decided to be a bit more proactive and read up on everything I could lay my hands on, mention it to the Doctor and NOT flee to Queensland to sun and clear skies but stay in the soft grey blanket, that is Melbourne in Winter.
Being born in Edinburgh I should be hard wired in my D.N.A to survive cold winters, not so. I hate the cold, it makes me feel physically ill. My Mother was a clinical depressive and things like S.A.D are mainly hereditary.
I rack my brain to remember if Mum was worse in Winter, than in Summer and I am sure she was. Although I remember a time in Unley Adelaide when I was just turned 12 where she slept a lot of the time. Unley at that time was baking hot, clear skied, the sun shone every day. I can remember walking back from the Unley swimming pool, barefoot and hopping in to the shaded parts of the path home.
My Mum was war injured as well and had untreated Post Traumatic Stress, heard and saw things later in life and eventually killed herself at age 53. She had an overactive thyroid that re triggered the PTS and the PTS kept the thyroid overactive. She begged my Dad to not have the operation so was put on pills that made her enormously fat. She had Graves' disease, schizophrenia, depression, an overactive thyroid was hospitalised over and over and at the end of her life was starting to get violent and scary.
There were no serontonin reuptake inhibitors then and Mums life was hell. They tried lithium, shock treatment, and at the end of her life she was on eleven different pills, daily and strong sleeping tablets. She saved them up and one day disappeared to Redcliffe after talking to my brother in law and saying she was off to put on a bet for the Melbourne Cup.
A man walking his dog the next day found her body in a park in Redcliffe. She looked asleep, head curled into her handbag as a pillow, a can of soft drink and empty bottle of pills by her side. She had tried and failed to take her own life about a month earlier in the Hospital. She was determined to go out her own way, in her own terms. A soldier to the end.
My Mother In Law at the time ( who loved my Mum ) said that if having a ten year old at the time ( my younger sister, Helen ) was not going to hold her to life, nothing was. I nodded and understood but it took me many years to get over it, to come to terms with it. At the time I was 24 and pregnant with my fourth little girl.
So when I too was diagnosed with depression and my older sister, six months later I and she absolutely freaked. I refused to believe it. I was sure I had a hormonal problem. And had gone to the family doctor because I was crying a little bit in the morning and again in the evening. He asked me twelve questions, and said I had depression.
I was openly crying by then, and blubbed I could NOT have depression as my mother had had it and killed herself. He replied and I quote.
" Don't be stupid, your mother was ill "
I went home with my tape on depression, anxiety pills for free as I had to get my anxiety down immediately, and a script for Zoloft. I watched the tape over and over, went out and bought the book, Black Dog about depression and decided to become active in my recovery from depression. I fell down and climbed back up so many times. It was all trial and error for a while.
But in the Winter it was worse. Wild horses could not drag me out of the house and if ever I did would imbibe enough alcohol to numb and stun me. Come home throw up, have a Panadol sandwich for breakfast and it would start all over again.
My sister took herself off to Italy with her daughter, had the time of her life, on her own, for once. Her husband is a delightful man, but her Doctor said she had to do something for her self. So she did. Her Doctor insisted that it had to be about her from then on, not the grown kids, not her husband but what she wanted. My Sister found this hard to get her head around at first, she, like so many devoted wives and mothers was happy to put her own needs on hold for the sake of others. Time for herself.
Mine lifted this year on Friday August 16th at 9pm at night. It's almost like a curtain lifts up and all I see is happiness. A weight off my shoulders, it's a physical thing as well as a mental one. Light floods my brain and it's like the next day, the grass is greener, the sky mire blue and the edges of my sight fill up with light. And I then realise how grey it has been before.
I realise once again, life is worth living, that spring is not far away, and with the spring comes new life and I am glad for the winter grey as without it I would never appreciate the light. Please read the following article and see if it helps.........
From Web Med
I get S.A.D. And it's the pits. I feel like hibernating all winter, sleep, eat, be sloth like and hide from the world. I read that the man in this article from Alaska, gets out in the winter weather and is happy. I try that each day now. I also sit under bright lights, write for seven hours, mainly in the morning as it is when I feel most energised.
In the afternoons I relax and just go with what my mind and body wants. I have suffered it for a long time and either used to just put up with it, or tried to fight it.
This year I decided to be a bit more proactive and read up on everything I could lay my hands on, mention it to the Doctor and NOT flee to Queensland to sun and clear skies but stay in the soft grey blanket, that is Melbourne in Winter.
Being born in Edinburgh I should be hard wired in my D.N.A to survive cold winters, not so. I hate the cold, it makes me feel physically ill. My Mother was a clinical depressive and things like S.A.D are mainly hereditary.
I rack my brain to remember if Mum was worse in Winter, than in Summer and I am sure she was. Although I remember a time in Unley Adelaide when I was just turned 12 where she slept a lot of the time. Unley at that time was baking hot, clear skied, the sun shone every day. I can remember walking back from the Unley swimming pool, barefoot and hopping in to the shaded parts of the path home.
My Mum was war injured as well and had untreated Post Traumatic Stress, heard and saw things later in life and eventually killed herself at age 53. She had an overactive thyroid that re triggered the PTS and the PTS kept the thyroid overactive. She begged my Dad to not have the operation so was put on pills that made her enormously fat. She had Graves' disease, schizophrenia, depression, an overactive thyroid was hospitalised over and over and at the end of her life was starting to get violent and scary.
There were no serontonin reuptake inhibitors then and Mums life was hell. They tried lithium, shock treatment, and at the end of her life she was on eleven different pills, daily and strong sleeping tablets. She saved them up and one day disappeared to Redcliffe after talking to my brother in law and saying she was off to put on a bet for the Melbourne Cup.
A man walking his dog the next day found her body in a park in Redcliffe. She looked asleep, head curled into her handbag as a pillow, a can of soft drink and empty bottle of pills by her side. She had tried and failed to take her own life about a month earlier in the Hospital. She was determined to go out her own way, in her own terms. A soldier to the end.
My Mother In Law at the time ( who loved my Mum ) said that if having a ten year old at the time ( my younger sister, Helen ) was not going to hold her to life, nothing was. I nodded and understood but it took me many years to get over it, to come to terms with it. At the time I was 24 and pregnant with my fourth little girl.
So when I too was diagnosed with depression and my older sister, six months later I and she absolutely freaked. I refused to believe it. I was sure I had a hormonal problem. And had gone to the family doctor because I was crying a little bit in the morning and again in the evening. He asked me twelve questions, and said I had depression.
I was openly crying by then, and blubbed I could NOT have depression as my mother had had it and killed herself. He replied and I quote.
" Don't be stupid, your mother was ill "
I went home with my tape on depression, anxiety pills for free as I had to get my anxiety down immediately, and a script for Zoloft. I watched the tape over and over, went out and bought the book, Black Dog about depression and decided to become active in my recovery from depression. I fell down and climbed back up so many times. It was all trial and error for a while.
But in the Winter it was worse. Wild horses could not drag me out of the house and if ever I did would imbibe enough alcohol to numb and stun me. Come home throw up, have a Panadol sandwich for breakfast and it would start all over again.
My sister took herself off to Italy with her daughter, had the time of her life, on her own, for once. Her husband is a delightful man, but her Doctor said she had to do something for her self. So she did. Her Doctor insisted that it had to be about her from then on, not the grown kids, not her husband but what she wanted. My Sister found this hard to get her head around at first, she, like so many devoted wives and mothers was happy to put her own needs on hold for the sake of others. Time for herself.
Mine lifted this year on Friday August 16th at 9pm at night. It's almost like a curtain lifts up and all I see is happiness. A weight off my shoulders, it's a physical thing as well as a mental one. Light floods my brain and it's like the next day, the grass is greener, the sky mire blue and the edges of my sight fill up with light. And I then realise how grey it has been before.
I realise once again, life is worth living, that spring is not far away, and with the spring comes new life and I am glad for the winter grey as without it I would never appreciate the light. Please read the following article and see if it helps.........
From Web Med
Winter Darkness, Season Depression
Winter depression is still a mystery to scientists who study it. But researchers agree that people who suffer from seasonal affective disorder are particularly sensitive to light, or the lack of it.comes over us in late autumn, as the last remaining leaves drop, morning frosts cover the ground, and the sun sets earlier each day.
Winter depression is still a mystery to scientists who study it. Many things, including brain chemicals, ions in the air, and genetics seem to be involved. But researchers agree that people who suffer from winter depression -- also known as "seasonal affective disorder," a term that produces the cute acronym SAD -- have one thing in common. They're particularly sensitive to light.
Many studies have shown that people with seasonal affective disorder feel better after exposure to bright light. It seems simple enough: In higher latitudes, winter days are shorter, so you get less exposure to sunlight. Replace lost sunlight with bright artificial light, and your mood improves. But it's actually far more complex. Alfred Lewy, MD, a seasonal affective disorder researcher at the Oregon Health & Science University, says it's not only a matter of getting light, but also getting it at the right time. "The most important time to get light is in the morning," he says.
He thinks seasonal affective disorder is due to a "phase-shift" of the circadian rhythm. The wall clock may tell you it's time to get up and at 'em, but your body's internal clock says you should be resting. Bright light in the morning resets your circadian clock.
This is relevant to the "fall back" time change, which happens in places that observe Daylight Saving Time. You might think that setting back the clock one hour would make seasonal affective disorder symptoms worse, because the sun sets one hour earlier. "Actually, I think it's the opposite," Lewy says. "The problem is waking up before dawn."
Lewy says he suspects that "true winter depressives," the people whose problem is biological and not related to other factors, might feel better after the time change. But the improvement would only be temporary, as days continue to shorten.
Arctic Winters
In Fairbanks, Alaska, in the dead of winter, less than four hours separate sunrise and sunset. With so little sunlight, it seems like no one could escape winter depression; but in fact, many Alaskans fare just fine. One study found that about 9% of Fairbanks residents had seasonal affective disorder. That's about the same percentage another study found in New Hampshire.
Mark D., who lives near Fairbanks, says he doesn't suffer from seasonal affective disorder, even though he rarely sees the sun. He pulls 12-hour shifts working in a power plant.
He stays active in winter, so "cabin fever" isn't a problem for him, either. "If you sit around the
house and do nothing all day I suppose it could eat at you," he says. "But there is always something for me to do -- snow-machine, cut firewood ... or just going into town and have a cup of coffee with friends at the cafe.
"There are people, though, that will have a ten-yard stare in a five-yard room," he says. Some seek comfort from a bottle, too. "In lots of the smaller villages, that does happen. Drinking is a big problem."
Seasonal affective disorder researcher Michael Terman, PhD, at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, offers some possible explanations for why seasonal affective disorder isn't more common in the arctic. For one, people with seasonal affective disorder may be genetically predisposed to clinical depression and light sensitivity. Most people, in any place, wouldn't have both genetic traits. "Another way to look at it is that those are the people who are still in Alaska," he says. People who can't cope might not stay.
But not everyone affected by seasonal changes has full-blown seasonal affective disorder, so estimates of how many people do have it may be low. "Winter depression is a spectrum of severity," Lewy says. You may have trouble getting up, have bouts of fatigue during the day, or feel compelled to overeat, without feeling depressed.
These symptoms can be treated with the same therapy given to seasonal affective disorder patients. Bright light -- generated by a special light box that's much brighter than a normal lamp -- is the first option. It's proven to work, but not for everyone. Also, the right time for it differs from person to person, Terman says. For a night owl, taking light therapy too early could make seasonal affective disorder worse.
New Ideas
Tom Wehr, researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health, has proposed a new explanation for seasonal affective disorder: It may stem from too much melatonin. When the brain's pineal gland starts pumping out melatonin, we get sleepy. During winter, animals secrete melatonin for longer periods than they do at other times of the year. Wehr discovered that people do, too -- but only those who suffer from seasonal affective disorder.
Light therapy would still work if melatonin were the main culprit, because light controls melatonin levels. Researchers are also testing a drug called propranalol, which they hope will improve seasonal affective disorder symptoms by curtailing melatonin flow in the morning hours. Lewy is studying the effects of small melatonin doses given in the afternoon, hoping that they will adjust circadian rhythms.
Raymond Lam, MD, researcher at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and others are studying the role of brain chemicals like serotonin and dopamine. "We know there are interactions between the serotonin system and the circadian system," Lam says.
Some antidepressants like Paxil and Prozac work for some seasonal affective disorder sufferers. But Lewy says he prefers light therapy to antidepressants, which he says "are probably more of a Band-Aid," because they're not specific to winter depression.
Terman has been testing yet another new way to treat seasonal affective disorder. This therapy involves aiming a stream of negatively charged ions at a person sleeping on a special conductive bed sheet. The discovery that high-density negative ions (not the same ions produced by home air filters) helped people with seasonal affective disorder came accidentally from a previous study. A second study, which will end later this year, has also found a beneficial effect.
The air is full of negative ions in springtime, and not in the winter. But that doesn't explain how ion therapy works. "We don't yet have an answer to that question," Terman says; nevertheless, "We're now convinced that it's real."
