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Winter is coming

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Re: Winter is coming

#21

Post by sdoering »

jaf12duke wrote: post #14
fein wrote: post #11

Complaining about the winter in SF? Really? I understand seasonal depression, but that can't even hold a candle to the bullshit we see up here in the Great Salted North. I wake up and bike to work during the winters here... It's pitch black until after 8 AM. After work? Darkness and cold by 5 PM. This is for around 5 months of the year up here. Sure, shit gets annoying during the nastiness of November through March,…

The important comparison is not the cause but the outcome. I've lived in Boston, New Hampshire, Scotland, and San Francisco. And in each, I've suffered from seasonal depression. A winter depression in any city is no vacation.

I second this.

No, I "just" have the "winter blues", not a real depression, for witch I am glad.

But knowing someone who does really, really well (and being empathic) just shows me year for year, that there really are a lot of people who just don't get it and try to "cheer" the depressed up.

Know what: Doesn't help, often makes it worse, if they say "Hey, there and there it is much worse, get up, get your sht together, don't make such a fuss...

... and so on.

Try being empathic, we all have our dark hours. Some have it darker, some a little bit lighter. Some are on the bright side, some not so. But we are in this world together and postings like the trolling grandparent really help no one.

So heads up, turn on the lights and I wish you the best during the coming month.

Greetings from Germany. If you are ever in Hamburg, Germany I'd be happy to invite you to a beer/tea/coffee or such.

Re: Winter is coming

#22

Post by AhtiK »

Does anyone have experience with either Philips goLITE [1] or Wake-Up light [2]? I wonder which of these will be more effective (blue vs warm yellow).

Alternatively, has anyone managed to build such a device at home? AFAIK 470 nm wavelength LEDs are the way to go but getting 10k lux out of the grid..

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Philips-goLITE-BLU-Therapy-Device/dp/B...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Philips-HF3520-Wake-Up-Colored-Simulat...

Re: Winter is coming

#23

Post by critium »

I know somebody that is actually diagnosed with this and its a serious condition.

Am I the only person that thinks that having the acronymn SAD is actually counterproductive? I mean, kind of sounds like a bad joke right?

Re: Winter is coming

#24

Post by ChuckMcM »

fein wrote: post #11

Complaining about the winter in SF? Really? I understand seasonal depression, but that can't even hold a candle to the bullshit we see up here in the Great Salted North. I wake up and bike to work during the winters here... It's pitch black until after 8 AM. After work? Darkness and cold by 5 PM. This is for around 5 months of the year up here. Sure, shit gets annoying during the nastiness of November through March,…

Except that Jason isn't complaining about the Winter. He was pointing out that it affects his state of mind. Surprisingly, a number of people don't recognize this.

Now I'm not particularly affected by seasonality, my daughters are sometimes the opposite, they love the winter because it is when they can go skiiing. But that aspect of it (the looking forward to it) I found is a behavior modifier.

If you find yourself always doing things that you don't like in a particular season, that can affect your mood, you pre-anticipate the sadness. Just like if you do lots of things you like you pre-anticipate the goodness. I figured that to keep balanced the only choice was to find things to like about all unavoidable conditions. Doesn't always work, but it helps.

Re: Winter is coming

#25

Post by IanDrake »

euphemize wrote: post #19
fein wrote: post #11

Complaining about the winter in SF? Really? I understand seasonal depression, but that can't even hold a candle to the bullshit we see up here in the Great Salted North. I wake up and bike to work during the winters here... It's pitch black until after 8 AM. After work? Darkness and cold by 5 PM. This is for around 5 months of the year up here. Sure, shit gets annoying during the nastiness of November through March,…

Will have to agree here. As someone who's working from Canada, this post is semi-funny. I've worked from SF October to January, and let me tell you that biking around town in a t-shirt is not winter.

It's about daylight exposure, not temp. Working indoors is a relatively new phenomenon in humans and effects us all a little differently.

When it's dark when you go into work, and you don't have a corner office, and it's dark when you leave your body gets no sunlight. For some, this has a profound effect on mood.

Re: Winter is coming

#26

Post by VLM »

On a side tangent resulting in similar (edited: milder) symptoms, for decades I've noticed the typical westerner calendar is extremely lopsided. June thru December is one holiday per month if not more, where you can take a vacation and not stress about whats going on back at work, in comparison the other half of the year January thru June has ... basically no time off. Oh you can take a vacation day, you'll just have two days of junk in your inbox tomorrow, and that makes stress worse not better.

I get slightly depressed in January for a couple weeks with the realization that my next day off is pretty much Memorial Day weekend at the end of May. That's a long time to go without a break, especially after spending the second half of the year never working more than about 3 weeks without yet another holiday.

That's why I don't think the articles advice to go on a vacation is useful. WRT stress reduction all you'll end up with when taking a vacation in the first half of the year is getting paged/called by everyone still at work and you'll have an overflowing inbox. In comparison, during the other half of the year you don't even need to spend vacation days to get long weekends and slow work weeks. 90% of the company takes friday after thanksgiving off, I may as well take it off too.

So to reiterate one last time I'm talking about something that happens at the same time of year with vaguely similar symptoms for a completely different reason (or maybe not?) than the discussion of low D3 vitamins or whatever... although I'm sure the lack of holidays does not help those suffering from medical issues.

Re: Winter is coming

#27

Post by jeltz »

I wonder what causes it since the variations in sunlight are tiny in SF (shortest day = 9.5 hours) compared to for example Stockholm (shortest day = 6 hours).

Re: Winter is coming

#28

Post by joshkaufman »

AhtiK wrote: post #22

Does anyone have experience with either Philips goLITE [1] or Wake-Up light [2]? I wonder which of these will be more effective (blue vs warm yellow). Alternatively, has anyone managed to build such a device at home? AFAIK 470 nm wavelength LEDs are the way to go but getting 10k lux out of the grid.. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Philips-goLITE-BLU-Therapy-Device/dp/B... [2] http://www.amazon.com/Philips-HF3520-Wake-Up-C…

I have the Philips goLITE, and highly recommend it. The blue wavelength makes a noticeable difference. It runs off of a rechargeable battery, which is very handy if you move around the house/office in the morning. It's also small enough to use as a travel alarm clock, and I've found using it makes it much easier to shift time zones.

Re: Winter is coming

#29

Post by arethuza »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #24
fein wrote: post #11

Complaining about the winter in SF? Really? I understand seasonal depression, but that can't even hold a candle to the bullshit we see up here in the Great Salted North. I wake up and bike to work during the winters here... It's pitch black until after 8 AM. After work? Darkness and cold by 5 PM. This is for around 5 months of the year up here. Sure, shit gets annoying during the nastiness of November through March,…

Except that Jason isn't complaining about the Winter. He was pointing out that it affects his state of mind. Surprisingly, a number of people don't recognize this. Now I'm not particularly affected by seasonality, my daughters are sometimes the opposite, they love the winter because it is when they can go skiiing. But that aspect of it (the looking forward to it) I found is a behavior modifier. If you find yourself a…

"you pre-anticipate the goodness"

That's pretty much exactly how I feel about skiing at this time of year - even though I'm in my 40s I still get a childish level of excitement looking out for snowfalls and trying to work out when we can go skiing first (which here in Scotland can be anytime between November and January).

Re: Winter is coming

#30

Post by ozh »

jaf12duke wrote: post #8
jdmitch wrote: post #3

Does taking vitamin D3 supplements really work for the OP? There have been a number of HN posts about how the vitamin fad started by Linus Pauling has not been backed up scientifically, such as this one: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/07/the-vitami... but maybe there is more to it when it comes to SAD...

OP here. I'll give a qualified yes. It's hard to actually know which action I take has the most effect. Vitamin D, bright lights, exercise all play a role. I've found it's important to try everything and hope for the best. If I were to pick just one thing to do though, it would be the bright lights in the morning. I know for sure that those work. Not only for myself, but for many other people who have given it a try.

Yes, fixing your Vitamin D level gives a very effective boost, however it is absolutely not harmless to consume too much vit D as the article implies. More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_D
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