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Seasonal Affective Disorder
Typically, the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder will respond to light therapy, a balanced diet and increased exercise. Most importantly, make sure to maximize the amount of natural light exposure you get each day. Some people they may find benefit by trying light therapy. There are a variety of different light boxes that can be purchased relatively inexpensively to provide light therapy daily. Other strategies include limiting the amount of alcohol intake and increasing the level of daily exercise while your body transitions to the new time period. While you still may notice the symptoms that you’re having, they usually are not as debilitating as other types of depression, anxiety disorder or bipolar disorder. Most importantly, if you are feeling the impact of the seasonal change you are not alone and there is help available!
If you feel depressed, fatigued, and irritable shortly after this time change and you’ve noticed that this has occurred in previous years, you most likely have seasonal affective disorder (SAD). However, if your symptoms become severe enough that they significantly impact your typical daily routine or activities and you don’t feel like you can’t get out of a “rut”, that would be a great time to see your primary care physician to get evaluated for other types of depression that may require a different course of therapy.
While many people see daylight savings times as an opportunity to save an hour of sleep on that special Saturday night each fall, it can also bring on a variety of health-related issues for many people. For those of us living in the northern latitudes, it means significantly shorter days and much less light exposure. The reduction in light exposure and shorter days can affect the regulation of our normal sleep – wake cycle, in addition to bringing about changes in our own circadian rhythms. This can affect the production of several hormones in our body such as serotonin and melatonin. And less of these hormones can significantly impact our daily productivity as well as our normal sleep cycle. The ultimate result of these hormonal imbalances include sleep disorders, depression, fatigue and also seasonal affective of disorder.