Despite the fact that we have so much technology in our daily lives Mother Nature through the seasons still reigns supreme because we are affected by the changing seasons. The cold weather makes many people eat more. The ability to resist many heavy foods diminishes during the colder months as we stuff our stomachs full to comfort us or make us warmer against the cold weather. The way we eat, sleep, and feel all change when compared to the summer months. This is caused by Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). There’s something about winter that makes many people sensitive.
The colder weather and shorter days make many people feel like hibernating, eating, and putting on winter weight. For some people there’s only a minimal difference, but for others, they are affected by the season really badly. So we might be sad which may be called seasonality, but we can also have SAD, which is a full blown illness.
What can we do about it? Seasonality or SAD can affect you and how to cope is to do things that make it easier for you to get through the winter. Dr. Norman Rosenthal, author of Winter Blues; Everything You Need to Know to Beat Seasonal Affective Disordder, is today’s guest.
Do you have the winter blues or even worse? Are you slightly or seasonally affected? Or do you experience seasonality? Or do you just have plain SAD? Do you lose your creativity, your will to live, and just do all you can to just get through the day during the winter months? Can meditation or medication help? These are some questions we will answer on how the changing seasons affects us.
When you’re feeling bad during the winter months, ask yourself, “What’s causing these feelings,” and then do what you can do about it. There’s a default thought that you just have to bear your sad feelings, which is not true, because you can make changes to make yourself happy and fulfilled. Understand why you feel bad and what you can do to feel better. Don’t think you just have to bear it. Become a detective in your life to investigate what’s occurring.
Some people develop lack of energy, lethargy, lack of enthusiasm with shorter days and feel off color. Some also see that their relationships are not working, but they only focus on why the relationships are not working instead of viewing it holistically and realizing that the changing weather may also play a part in the situation, but the idea that it’s the weather causing changes in their behaviors that affect their relationships doesn’t come to most people intuitively. So, think of the season first and then you can focus on other reasons.
Relationships are not easy to change or reverse and there’s a theory in psychology to deal with what’s easier to change first. Even sophisticated people begin scour their brains for incorrect reasons for why things are going wrong with them or their relationships during the winter months instead of thinking of the seasons. The first thing is to know yourself and how external elements change you. For example, ask yourself, “Do I begin to crave and eat more unhealthy foods during this period? This can be because you have carbohydrate craving and need warmth. There’s a reason that heavy foods people would easily avoid in the summer months become their favorites in the fall and winter months.
However, we all know that it’s better to substitute protein for carbohydrates because it is better than carbohydrates in larger quantities in our system. Also, slow cooked oats are better for our systems because they have a low glycemic index, which is how quickly carbohydrates are dumped into our blood stream when we eat carbohydrates, releasing blood sugar. This is when blood glucose spikes occur and cause repeated cravings where you want more and more carbohydrates in a bad vicious cycle. Carbohydrates that are more slowly digested are better. Slow oats with a glycemic index of 45 is better than quick oats with a glycemic index of 60-70. So you can cook a pot of cooked oats on Sunday and divide in portions and eat it during the week to stay healthy. Also you should get more light.
Caller: I’ am from Jamaica where it’s always sunny. Here in the US, I have difficulty waking up and getting up in the morning and by 3 pm in the day I also hit a low during the winter months. I also have low energy levels all the time, but when I’m in Jamaica or in the summer time, I don’t have this problem.
Guest/host: Take a timer and put it on your bedside lamp and set it to half hour before you want to wake up so you can wake up to a nicely illuminated room. Dawn simulators are also good but are a bit more expensive. They turn on lights gradually like a summer morning and you wake up to that. A light box in the morning is also good or in the after noon set low for 20-30 minutes of light to carry you through the rest of the day is also a good idea. Vitamin D is also good to take because most people have low amounts of this, but it’s best to take multivitamins supplements, so you get all the vitamins you are deficient in. To cope with negative weather mood swings in the middle of the day walk in the sun to get some light and exercise.
How do you fight back against the seasonal changes that affect you? What we do or don’t do affects us. People just want to hibernate during winter months, but they should go out to be in the sun and be active because they need the light and exercise.
During the holidays there are many reasons people feel bad and it can be a depressing and energy zapping time for many people because there are other issues like PTSD, family issues, depression, anti-socializing sentiment, and death, and all this can be a very challenging. Low mood problems should be treated, so people can enjoy the holidays. High expectations of the holiday seasons can exceed the reality, which also causes depression during the holidays. This happens because we are presented with idealized images of the holidays are that don’t reflect our own lives.
In reality people have real problems, such as lack of money, un or under-employment, financial loss in the stock market, and so many other reasons, so the holidays aren’t as pleasant as the media would like us to believe, so we should scale back our expectations and focus on reaching out instead of focusing on materialism. A thorough recalibrate of one’s expectations is necessary and focusing on giving immaterial gifts can be spiritually rewarding and fulfilling. One third of the people in this country are now poorer than they used to be. Broken families, death, dysfunction, isolation, feelings of having no where to go and feeling uncomfortable is very prevalent during this season.
Some people are so depressed that even when every situation is presented to them to take them out of that funk to try to make them happy, they can’t shake it and it makes you aware of the complexity of the situation and that it is not easily resolved.
Also, focusing on the biology of the season, the Melatonin which is secreted by the pineal gland at night helps us sleep and stay on track with our lives, while melanin is the skin pigmentation found in the skin. People of color feel the winter months badly because they may be genetically predisposed to it and when the light is low, we feel it and if you grew up in a beautiful sunny climate, you feel it more.
For me coming from South Africa, when I came to NYC to do my residency after daylight saving time changed, I didn’t know what hit me, but I knew I wasn’t the same. It happened to me annually and that’s how I figured it out. Having been raised in a forever sunny summer environment has patterned many people with that expectation and makes the lack of it more intense.
Also, peoples’ attitudes change. In high density areas like NYC, people are more apt to not be on their best behavior. Places with high people density, promotes negativity. Even in other places the more southern you go, the nicer the people are.
If you ask the right questions you get the right answers. You need to ask yourself the right questions, such as, “How did I feel last year at this time.” when you review the answer, then you may see a pattern. For example, a young lady was dating a young man in the summer months and they did so many things together, but when it got to the fall months like October later in the year; she was too busy for the guy. She was always too busy for him “cleaning out her sock drawer” or doing one thing or the other.
Then he ended the relationship. She was really sad that the relationship had broken up, but she didn’t view the relationship in the right paradigm. We should look at time as a cyclical not linear thing to see our reoccurring patterns. There can be psychological reasons for relationship break ups, which are often too complex to figure out.
If this sounds like you it may be a hard subject to brooch with your loved one, you are right because it’s not easily explained to other people who don’t understand it. A man was trying to treat his winter blues by putting a light on his head while running on a treadmill and his wife said you look like a jerk, which was demeaning.
That’s what ends relationships. She should have said, “How can I help to make this easier?” She should have said I understand because this is something you need to function. Before you can be a good partner you have to realize the specifics of what your partner is dealing with and find ways to help them. That’s the kind of relationship that’s likely to work. That’s how good partnerships work like a team.
Caller: My name is William, I am former radio DJ from long island and I live in Rhode Island. This is the worst time of year for me because my mother and sister recently passed. There are so many homeless children, but some people are just putting up Christmas trees and celebrating when others are in need. There was a time when I was homeless and I tried to reach out to those who had never been homeless, but they didn’t want to hear it.
Being a blind person from birth from a family of 9 and considered the black sheep of the family because my parents could not accept the fact that I was blind was difficult. If not for my grandmother, I would have ended my life a long time ago, but I tell people, don’t feel sorry for me. I try to give advice, but people don’t want to hear what I have to say. Another thing that depressed me is that baseball season isn’t here.
Guest/Host: When I look at people’s lives, I look at what they’ve been able to do in their past and what they can do in the future. Your voice has a certain comforting quality to it and you also must have learned a lot of lessons of survival to survive your homelessness in addition to being blind and what you can do going forward is teach others those lessons.
Another thing is that loss is memorialized in the season because it brings back memories of our loved ones. Try and work on the biology of the problem by getting more light, exercising and meditating to restore your spirit, and reach out and make connections with people that will feel meaningful to you. We must get over our losses and move on in the fellowship of like minded people who nurture us. If your basic biology is so depleted, you must attend to it first and nourish it to get back up to par.
Guest: Psychiatrist, Dr. Norman Rosenthal http://www.rosenthal.com/
Host: Theresa Caldwell
Source: The Audrey Chapman Show
Broadcast date: 12/17/11
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