Happy winter solstice everyone.
Today it's below freezing, but I still wanted to come outside, because you just gotta get outside in
the winter. In the northern hemisphere, December 21st is the darkest day of the year. The sun
shines for the least amount of time, and the night is the longest, and every day, from here
on out, is going to have about 90 more seconds of daylight. So little by little, the northern
hemisphere is going to get lighter, and brighter, and before you know it, summer will have arrived, and
I like to think of that as analogy for our lives. Little changes like that one new skill,
or one new way of thinking, just like those 90 extra seconds of daylight, that can create
a huge difference over time in our lives. Now lets leave that optimism behind for a minute,
and talk about how crappy winter is. In the clinic I work at we see some interesting
trends, and one of them is the fact that from June until August, we have a relatively lower
number of clients, and in January through March, we see a lot more people who are really struggling.
So in this video you are going to learn all about seasonal affective disorder, how
the seasons impact mood, and what you can do about it, and were also going to talk about
how seasonal affective disorder can surprisingly impact you during the spring and in the summer.
This video is sponsored by Better Help, where you can get professional, affordable, liscenced
counseling from the comfort of your own home. If you check out the link in the description,
you can sign up for services where you can start seeing a counselor really soon, and they
can work with you through video chat, or through messaging, and other ways, to help you find
new ways, and new strategies, to deal with the difficulties that you're facing. Now, we all know, 2020 has been
a little bit difficult, to say the least, and I think we can all use a little bit of extra
support right now. I was talking to one of my friends, she had signed up for Better Help,
and she said she had a really good experience with it, and that the counselor actually reached
out to her so much through the messaging app, that she got a little bit worried, she actually
told the counselor 'it's ok you take a day off you know'. So if you'd like to get a little
extra support, go ahead and check out the link in the description to learn more about Better Help, and what kind of services
they can provide you. Seasonal affective disorder is a type of depression that's associated
with the changes in the seasons, and it also has the clever acronym S.A.D. It's also called
winter blues. So these symptoms often start in the fall, and keep going through winter,
but a lot of people don't notice the cumulative impact on them until the middle of winter.
With winter seasonal affective disorder, people feel less energetic, and more moody, and they
have a lot of symptoms that are similar to depression. It can look like loosing interest
in activities you once enjoyed, feeling sluggish, or tired, having problems with sleep, feeling hopeless,
gaining weight, having appetite changes, and specifically in the winter, cravings for more
food, especially high carb foods. Now around 20% of Americans, that's like 65 million people,
experience seasonal affective disorder. This disorder impacts people who live closer to
the poles, so closer to the North Pole, or the South Pole, because the amount sunlight varies
there more dramatically with the seasons than near the equator. Now I'm from Cache Valley
Utah, where we only get about 9 hours of daylight on winter solstice. So, that means that if you work
indoors, and you go to work at eight, and you get home at five, you won't even see the sun
peaking out from behind the mountains. Temperatures often hover below freezing for weeks, and the air
quality is sometimes the worst in the whole country. So long story short, winter can be
pretty miserable, and that's not just for me, in one study 85% of people with mood disorders,
like depression, said that their symptoms got worse during the winter months. Now an interesting
thing is that most people don't know that seasonal affective disorder also impacts some
people in the spring. Some people feel depressed, have trouble sleeping, they loose weight, but
it's common for them to feel agitated, and anxious, to feel a lot more energy, almost manic at
times. This is most likely to happen with people with bipolar disorder, where spring and summer
can bring on mania, and fall and winter can bring on, you know, a time of depression, or
low mood. If you've read the book Educated by Tara Westover, the author talks about her
father, who showed these symptoms of bipolar disorder. Now, her family lives about 40 miles
north of where I grew up, and my mom occasionally runs into her mom in town. In the book, Tara
twice recounts the story of her father slipping into deep depression during the cold Idaho
winters, and to manage that, their family would drive south to Arizona, and the dad would just like
lay on the porch and bask in the sun for hours every day, and then eventually he got his energy
back, and then they would drive back to Idaho, but if you've read the book, on their drives
back to Idaho, the father was impatient, reckless, and irritable, and he may have even
felt invincible. Now, these are all symptoms of mania, and on both of those drives back
they got into really bad car crashes. Both the depression during the dark winter, and
the intense energy he felt after his exposure to sunlight, are probably due to how light exposure
changes brain chemistry. The light that enters our eyes triggers our brain to produce melatonin,
and serotonin. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter associated with happiness, sleep, digestion,
sex, and a bunch of other things, and our skin has the ability to produce serotonin when
sunlight hits it, and I think that's one reason why taking a mid-winter trip to the beach
feels amazing. Now, for me, during the horrible winters in cache valley I used to always travel south
in February for a sunny trip to St. George. We'd go climbing, and just a little bit of sunshine,
and even like 50 degree days, just like felt amazing. If you wanna learn more about how sunlight
impacts the brain, and impacts mood, and serotonin levels, go ahead and check out my other video
on light therapy for non-seasonal depression. But anyways, back to seasonal affective disorder.
In the winter, when there's less light, people tend to feel depressed, they tend to have low
energy, and to feel down, but in the spring, some people end up feeling more energy, and
agitation. Spring seasonal affective disorder is often overlooked as a contributing factor
to mental health issues, and suicide rates are at the highest right at that transition
from winter to spring, when people have been at their lowest, and then they start feeling
more energy, and agitation. So, this is interesting, because it's kind of similar to what we see
when people start taking antidepressants. Now modern society dosen't allow for natural
patterns. I think sometimes we get this idea in our head that our bodies, and our minds,
are out to get us, that we're just, you know, screwed up people, and we have to fight all
these negative impulses, and the instincts that we have in order to overcome them. Now in my
experience, I've found that's its generally more helpful to work with our drives, and our
instincts, and our emotions, and to channel those into positive directions, than to fight
them. So I genuinely believe that we, and our bodies, and our minds, are inherently good, and
that the things that stem from them are functional at their core. We just tend to sometimes get
in the way of those. So, for example, if you check out the symptoms of seasonal affective
disorder, it's things like oversleeping, craving food, gaining weight, these are all perfectly
functional drives, and behaviors, if you're a cave man right? If survival of the species,
or your family is important, then the only way for our ancestors to survive the scarcity,
and cold of winter, was to build up a fat reserve, and to sleep through the long, cold nights,
and to just hang out in your tiny hut during the short cold days. If you had tons of energy,
and excitement during those months of confinement, you may drive yourself crazy, or drive other
people crazy, not to mention burning tons of calories that you didn't have the food reserves
to replace. Spring seasonal affective disorder can also serve a function. That's a time to have
tons of energy, agitation, time to get those seeds in the ground, time to loose that winter
weight, right, get rid of that hibernation store you were keeping in your mid-section. All of
these "symptoms" served an excellent survival function before the days of indoor heating,
and nine to five work days year round. Basically, what it comes down to, is if we were allowed
to hibernate during the winter, and live outdoors, and work, and sleep following a more natural
schedule, then we might not have as big of a problem with seasonal mood disorders, but
our modern society, and work, and school schedules don't really allow for that, and since most
of us can't afford a trip to the beach, or we're all locked up during this global pandemic,
one of the ways that you can treat seasonal affective disorder is through light therapy.
Bright light therapy is when you use an artificial light to mimic the sun, this helps your brain,
and your body, produce more serotonin, and melatonin. Light therapy can help people fall asleep
more easily at night, and feel happier, and more energized during the day. Light therapy
has been shown through rigorous research to be very effective, and it has shown to be as
effective to treating non-seasonal depression as anti-depressants. It's also consistently
been shown to be really effective at treating seasonal affective disorder. It's also relatively
inexpensive, but it's not usually covered by insurance. Now this winter, I've tried light
therapy for the first time, I've been doing it for about six weeks, and I have actually
noticed a huge difference in my mood, and energy levels. After about two weeks of doing light
therapy, I was actually feeling like a little bit too energetic, and I needed to take a couple
days off, and kind of tone back how many minutes I was doing every day. Now, I just do like ten
minutes a day, and it really does make a difference. So, I would really recommend choosing a high
quality therapy light. Now Carex is not sponsoring this video, they sponsored one of my other
videos, they sent me a therapy light, and I actually, I loved it. So I would recommend their lamp
even without a paid promotion, or any thing like that, and you can check out the link in
the description. You don't have you buy that lamp, but what you're looking for is something
that has 10,000 lux, at a comfortable distance, its got an angle above the eyes, it's a
very large area, so you'll see a lot of cheap lights on amazon that are really small, and
they sit on your desk, and those are probably better than nothing, but there're not as effective
as the large lamps that come from a downward angle. So that's the kind of lamp that I recommend
getting. I'm also going to encourage you to work with your doctor before trying light
therapy, but it is something you can do at home, and just quickly, to tell you how to do
it, it's best if you do it right after you wake up, you wanna be consistent, it takes
a little bit of time for the effects to add up, you just do it, you know, fifteen to thirty minutes every
morning, you don't need to stare straight into the light box, you can just put it at your
table, or your desk while you're working, or putting on makeup, or eating your breakfast.
It's also really important to start your sessions around the same time every day because
what you're doing is help reset your circadian rhythm. The other thing I recommend
is that you just kind of keep track of your treatment, and your moods, so that you can notice what's
working, and what isn't working, and the other real concern with light therapy is that sometimes
light therapy can trigger mania. So if you have bi-polar, or if you've had manic episodes
in the past, I definitely recommend talking with your doctor to make sure it's a good
choice for you, and light therapy isn't the only treatment for seasonal affective disorder.
Building healthy lifestyle is essential to managing your mood anytime, but especially
during the winter. So some other treatments for seasonal affective disorder include: Medication,
so, medications including ssri's can be effective at helping improve mood in a lot of different
ways. Exercise, this is always good for the mood, and for the body. Therapy can be helpful, it
can help you explore how your thoughts, and your actions, may be contributing to your low
mood, and you can learn some new skills to manage, and combat mood disorders, and, you know,
therapy has been shown to be effective at treating seasonal affective disorder even
with just a few sessions. Another really important thing is socialization. In the winter people
tend to spend less time together you know, you aren't outside doing fun things together,
or running into your neighbors while cutting the lawn, or whatever. So it's, you know, whenever
possible, I know its really hard right now, but do what you can to get some socialization
in right? Whether it's a play group with other moms, doing zoom meetings, or zoom games together,
or even just gaming together. I know it's hard, but it's still really important to find a way to see
friends. Another thing to consider is vitamin D. Most Americans have low vitamin D levels,
and that is associated with depression. Your body uses sunlight to metabolize vitamin D,
and those levels tend to drop in the winter, but there are mixed results about whether
supplementing with vitamin D is effective, or not, so I do recommend working with your
doctor to explore that option. Another thing you could consider is see if you can adjust
your schedule to get a little bit of outside time when the sun is shining. So, if you
generally work from eight to five, you could try shifting your work schedule a little bit forward,
or a little bit backwards, so that you can get some sunlight, and it's best if you can
get some sunlight in the morning, that actually helps your brain have more energy, and be
a little bit happier. So if possible, you know, maybe you can bump your work back to nine
or ten, and then work a little later in the evening, but see some sunlight in the morning.
Another really important skill I believe is learning how to dress for winter. If you
know how to wear layers, and you know how to wear the right amount of clothes, then you
can still do a whole lot of things even when it's cold, or wet, or dark. My husband moved
from California to Utah, and in California it's like generally t-shirt weather like nine
days out of ten, if not more, right, and he just basically felt like when it's freezing
outside you just can't go outside, and, you know, I really believe that if you learn how
to dress, and what to wear, you can have a really good winter experience. So you
could buy a jacket like mine, that's like a sleeping bag. I mean, I like it. So things like good boots,
socks, a hat, and thermal underwear, can really make a world of difference, wearing layers
when you are outside, can make almost any weather accessible. My dad goes biking even in the
middle of the dark freezing winters. Some simple changes like light therapy, exercise, learning
how to dress for cold weather, can make a huge difference. Okay, I hope that's helpful, I hope
you all have a lovely winter, and don't whine about it as much as I do, and find a way
to make it a good one. Thank you for watching, and take care.