"Health Beat"

Sunset in the Lappish Winter, Finland. Photo by Daisy Guilardini. Available as a poster from Allposters.com.

Up here in the Northern Hemisphere the days have gotten shorter, the nights longer. No, not because our clocks have mysteriously been messed up–we’re talking about the fact that the actual daylight has decreased. (I have to explain this to my 10-year-old from time to time.) And our systems don’t like it.

Followers of pre-Christian religions were very concerned about bringing back the sun every winter–who knew but what if they didn’t, the span of daylight would narrow to a sliver of a moment, and then one day they’d wake up and–no sunrise. Night, for ever.

Hence all the winter solstice festivals involving symbols of fire and rebirth: at once a celebration of the incrementally increasing hours of daylight and a reminder to the sun to come back.

Certainly people who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder could get behind this. It’s likely that such celebrations as people knew in the northern hemisphere were a kind of cultural therapy, which survived as it proved to be beneficial for both society and the individual.  In fact, Seasonal Affective Disorder has been recognized by earlier civilizations: it was first described in the 6th century.

Classic Seasonal Affective Disorder is more than just the winter blues. It’s more than just a touch of cabin fever. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a type of diagnosable depression that affects millions of people throughout the world. For SAD sufferers, symptoms begin in fall, peak in winter, and disperse in spring. These symptoms include dysthymia, memory or concentration problems, loss of energy, and other typical markers of depression. At times SAD can be intense enough to warrant hospitalization; in some cases there is a risk of suicide. So far, studies show that women are more likely to suffer than men, although men may have more intense symptoms.

Under the auspices of the American Psychiatry Association, for a diagnosis of SAD to be made, several qualifications must be met.

• The depression must hit at a certain time of the year.
• Improvement or mania must also occur at a certain time of year.
• The depression/improvement or depression/mania episodes must have last two years or more with no non-season-related depressive cycles during that time.
• If there are other depressive events, they must be outnumbered by these seasonal depressive episodes.

The most popular hypothesis regarding the cause of SAD is lack of sunlight. Several factors bear this out, the most obvious being that winter-onset SAD is more common in northern climes. Nearly 10% of Alaskans suffer from SAD, and it’s estimated that 16% of Siberians and 20% of Scandinavians are afflicted.

Various treatments are employed for this, singly or in combination. Good old exercise and diet, of course, are always helpful. Many folks swear by just biting the bullet, bundling up, and walking for 20 minutes or so. There are the standbys of anti-depressant medication, including careful regimens of melatonin.

The treatment that has gotten the most press, however, is phototherapy, or light therapy.

Light therapy involves specially designed lamps or light boxes, not just your ordinary living room lamp.

Full Spectrum Light Therapy Lamp - Verilux Happy Light, Deluxe

People who partake of this therapy sit at a certain distance from the light box, eyes open but not staring at the light. One can read, eat, carry on doing whatever one does, as long as one’s face and eyes are oriented to the light. Generally there is a defined amount of time for a person’s ‘light dose,’ about half an hour to an hour. Such bright light doses are suspected to inhibit the transformation of serotonin into melatonin. Humans need melatonin, the ‘night-time hormone,’ but too much melatonin production has been linked to depression.

Another means of aiding in SAD, or assisting in easier waking, is dawn therapy. Dawn therapy products use a gradual brightening of lights in the sleeper’s room to mimic dawn. This is believed to signal the body’s systems to ‘come on line’ and help the person wake less violently than via the much-hated electric screeching of an alarm clock.

Some people undertaking light therapy do report eyestrain, headache, and nausea, but generally these vanish after a week or so. A rarer side effect of light therapy is a swing into a more manic state.

If you suffer from SAD, light therapy may be just the thing for you. However, before investing in a light therapy product, please double-check with your doctor for an accurate diagnosis, and let him or her know what you’re interested in doing.

For the product pictured here as well as other light therapy lamps and boxes, please visit us at http://www.painreliever.com/ .