Shorter days leave some people feeling under the weather, but plenty can be done to help.
Your Health
Winter Blues
When the sun spends less time in the sky, some people become SAD.

Have you ever wished you lived in a place with more sun, particularly during wintertime? The Kansas City area has an average of 120 clear days every 12 months, and 96 that are partially cloudy, while Phoenix has 211 clear days per year and Albuquerque has 167.

No matter where you are, if you gain weight and feel increasingly sleepy, down and withdrawn whenever the darker seasons of fall and winter arrive, you might have Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. A type of depression that follows the seasons, people with SAD apparently react to changes in the amount of available daylight during different seasons. You might have decreased energy and interest in sex, increased anxiety, a heavy feeling in your arms or legs, and carbohydrate cravings.

Up to 500,000 people in the United States — and more women than men — have winter depression, the most serious form of winter SAD, and 10 to 20 percent have mild SAD. Although the disorder most often arrives in late fall or early winter and disappears by summer, about one-tenth of SAD sufferers experience ‘summer depression’ instead, with a poor appetite, weight loss and insomnia as common symptoms. In either case, medical tests can rule out hypothyroidism, hypoglycemia, mononucleosis and other viral infections that SAD sometimes mimics.

“SAD is actually a subcategory of major depression and bipolar disorder,” says Antonette Acosta-Dickson, a family physician with Platte Medical Clinic. “SAD with minor depression is more common in women, and SAD with major depression is more common in men. The spring onset pattern is a lot less often recognized.”

When Diane Diehn, a naturopathic medical doctor with Integrative Medical Specialists, LLC, was doing her clinicals in Seattle, she saw cases of SAD fairly often, but she has only treated one case during three years of practice in this area. “There is possibly a decrease in serotonin that increases melatonin, which in turn, might bring on depression,” Diane says. “And, as melatonin goes higher, it makes people sleepier.”

Fewer than 10 percent of Dr. Nancy Russell’s patients have SAD, and she most often sees symptoms in women from age 40 to 60. The founder of Combined Health Care Professionals, she says people with SAD usually have a strong family history of depression.

Many winter SAD sufferers benefit from increased exposure to sunlight. “Get as much sunlight as possible and exercise three to four times per week for at least 20 to 30 minutes,” Nancy says.

“Do anything you can to get outside,” Diane says. If finding more time to enjoy the sun is difficult in your busy life, then sitting in front of a specially designed light box for a certain length of time each day might help alleviate SAD symptoms until more daylight returns. Using full-spectrum light bulbs and fluorescent full-spectrum bulbs that mimic the sun throughout your home might improve your mood during the darker months, too.

Processed foods and sugar (particularly refined sugars) could aggravate SAD symptoms, and caffeine causes blood sugar to rise and crash. Diane says to eat food that will help balance blood sugar and minimize stress in the body, and she emphasizes eating fresh, minimally processed foods, such as fresh fruits, vegetables and lean meats with a good balance of carbohydrates and proteins. “Don’t eat a lot of junk food because it makes your immune system worse and you’re more likely to get sick,” she says. Nancy and Diane both recommend drinking plenty of water.

“Medication and/or psychotherapy — learning coping strategies [for SAD] are very successful with a lot of people,” Antonette says.

Nancy says people who learn they suffer from SAD in the winter might need to take pharmaceutical medication during that first season, but nutritional supplements alone could help reduce SAD symptoms later on, without the risk developing a drug dependency. They include a good multivitamin with extra B-complex vitamins; 2,000 mg of fish oil per day, although Nancy recommends eating fish three times a week instead; 100 to 300 mg a day of the amino acid 5-HTP, a precursor to serotonin; St. John’s Wort; Siberian Ginseng, known as an adaptogen, a form of ginseng that helps support the adrenal gland; Vitamin D3; and magnesium, because a deficiency might aggravate SAD and other forms of depression.

“For three out of four people who follow these recommendations, I think we can   prevent use of medication,” Nancy says. “If [someone has] no kidney or liver problems, they can try some of these on their own.”

Diane suggests one other strategy to reduce SAD symptoms. “More than anything, [SAD sufferers] need to get out of their heads and do anything artistic,” she says. “They tend to be over-thinkers. They obsess and worry, and they need to laugh and breathe.”