Lighten up dark days ahead

Bam! It’s winter!

The end of daylight-saving time kicked up winter’s arrival a couple of very big notches. No wonder we hate it. In one day, we jumped ahead two months into the dark days of winter.

Check my math. If days start getting shorter in the winter by one minute a day, in 30 days we’ll have 30 minutes less daylight every day. In another 30 days – we’ll have a total of one hour less daylight. So, going back to standard time brings instant winter, with no time to adjust to the darkness.

Needless to say, daylight-saving time is our friend and when we go back to standard time, we call it daylight-wasting time around my house. It’s a big shock. It’s enough to send many of us into our seasonal funk practically overnight – almost like flipping a master switch.

For years, I would become so depressed during the winter months, I couldn’t even enjoy the holidays. Thanksgiving, my birthday, Christmas, New Year’s – they were all a complete drag for me. Then finally, I began to hear rumors of something called seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, a mild to disabling depression or sadness triggered by the lack of sunlight during the winter months.

Aha! That’s it! I’m not an old Scrooge, after all … I just have SAD, that’s why I feel so sad. It was a revelation for me. My body and my brain are sunlight- starved.

I am not alone. It is estimated that 25 million Americans suffer the “winter blues,” and another 12 million may suffer from the more serious malady known as SAD. This disabling disorder was recognized in 1982 by the National Institute of Health which coined the term, “seasonal affective disorder.” Many people have SAD and don’t even recognize it. We need about one hour of sunlight each day.

Why does diminished sunlight create such havoc with our bodies and our moods? For one thing, low light levels can cause increased levels of melatonin, which makes us sleepy. Low light levels also cause decreased levels of serotonin in the brain. Since serotonin is our brain’s mood elevator, a lack of it can cause depression. There are other causes of serotonin deficiencies, but that’s another subject.

Our bodies were designed to live in harmony with our environment and when the 1,500 different light waves that comprise sunlight, enter our eyes, they have specific, beneficial and essential effects on body physiology. Dark winters are only part of the problem –there’s air pollution, too, which can block some of these essential light waves.

Being a true winterphobe, I start dreading winter even before the arrival of the glorious summer solstice, June 21. On this day the sun starts to head south again and the countdown to darkness commences. The long, luxurious days of summer inexorably erode into the short, dark days of winter.

Are you a winterphobe? Do you dread the dark mornings and afternoons of winter? If so, you may also be a victim of this self-imposed, yearlong anguish, known as winterphobia.

Although it’s admittedly quite futile, winterphobes love to gripe among themselves about this annual insult played on all residents of a Northern clime. Maybe it is futile, but it helps to vent and misery loves company.

Those suffering from the winter blues can get quite good relief from using full spectrum light bulbs throughout their home. The FS bulbs emit a clear, white and refreshing glow and next to them, incandescent bulbs look yellow and dingy – yes, even somewhat depressing.

These FS lights work. Last year I replaced every bulb in my home with these new, screw-in FS bulbs. It was simply amazing – the effect was instant. I no longer have or feel SAD; I even feel better all year-round.

In order to inform the reader on where to find these bulbs I checked about five or six stores. Home Depot was the only place I could find a spiral, screw-in, full-spectrum light bulb. This one was made by N:Vision, and it claimed to be 5600 Kelvin, and cost just $7.

Kelvin is a technical term measuring brightness, whiteness and temperature. The higher the Kelvin number, the closer the light is to FS, and this is the main thing to look for. A lot of bulbs claim to be FS, or “natural daylight” but unless they are rated 5500 K or higher they will not give you the benefits of FS lighting.

The OTT-LITE, a fluorescent tube, is true full-spectrum. Dr. John Ott developed artificial, FS lighting – he needed a constant source of true sunlight for his fascinating work in time-lapse photography of blooming flowers. Ott wrote an interesting book called “Health and Light,” about the effect natural light has on living things.

Thanks to Dr. Ott – bam! It’s summer; just flip the switch.