Beyond
Walking

By Ronda Gates, MS

Ronda Gates, MS, is a pharmacy grad who traded her white coat for a pair of athletic shoes and never looked back. Her health promotion business, LIFESTYLES, provides motivational speaking, program development, and fitness assessment services to support people making a lifestyle change. She has developed health promotion programs for many organizations nationwide.
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An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

— Henry David
Thoreau

It’s SAD

As the last leaves fall from the trees and the sun sinks low earlier in the day, Pacific Northwest residents are keenly aware that we’ll have more cloudy weather to balance our mostly sunny summer. This change in weather may please some of you, but others may find yourselves sleeping more, eating more, discovering it harder to get your 10,000 steps logged, and wondering, “What’s happening?”

I lived in Oregon for 20 years before I realized my annual siege of grogginess was a well-recognized medical syndrome. Robert Sack, M D, Director of the Sleep Disorders Medicine Department at Oregon Health Science University, shed some light on my dilemma when he described a form of depression called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) or Seasonal Affective Disorder Syndrome (SADS).

Folks who live predominately in sunny or high altitude climates are unfamiliar with SADS. It’s precipitated by fewer daylight hours and lack of sunlight. It’s also commonly known as the “winter or holiday blues” because it is often first noticed when the media tell us we’re supposed to be enjoying cozy dark days around a warm hearth.

SADS is triggered in September when the days grow shorter and continues into April when days are, once again, noticeably longer. Characteristic symptoms include: sadness, loss of energy, disturbed sleep, overeating (usually carbohydrate-gorging which changes brain serotonin levels and elicits a temporary mood lift), irritability and withdrawal, difficulty concentrating, tension and inability to tolerate stress, decreased interest in sex, and loss of self-esteem — all hallmarks of depression. Many people who suffer with SADS also have a weakened immune system; hence, they are more vulnerable to infections and other illnesses. Like clinical depression, SADS is caused by a biochemical imbalance in the brain. Unlike clinical depression there’s no event that triggers the shower of brain-altering chemicals. In late spring, symptoms disappear — sometimes quickly — with a brief period of hyperactivity or hypomania. We don’t know why SADS is more prevalent among women, but it’s a good guess that hormones play a role.

For some people SADS is a mild condition that causes discomfort but not suffering. For others it is a seriously disabling illness that requires medical treatment. Either way, SADS is more than just a case of the blahs. Because the symptoms of people who experience SADS come on gradually and are rarely precipitated by a depression-causing event, folks who suffer from SADS are often subject to the “pickyourself up by the bootstraps” lecture by people who don’t suffer from the syndrome.

While cognitive coping strategies such as a positive attitude and intentionally reversing negative thinking can help some people, it takes more to overcome the underlying biochemistry. The good news is that daily exercise (such as a brisk walk) and a balanced, varied, lower-in-fat, lower-in-sugar, higher-in-fiber diet can set the stage for a adopting those cognitive coping strategies. The challenge is that when you are down in the dumps, those healthy lifestyle habits may not appeal to you.

Although a brisk daily walk, good nutrition, and positive thinking may bring relief, the most successful treatment is light therapy — the use of full-spectrum lights — to lighten up your life. Light therapy involves exposure — from 30 minutes to four hours a day — to very bright light that matches the optical brilliance of sunlight and is at least 10 times the intensity of the typical lighting in your home. Full spectrum lights are just beginning to be mainstreamed in stores (at Costco as this is written). They can also be purchased on the Internet. Some hardware stores carry less intense full-spectrum lights that help brighten a room.

In addition, for people who are more seriously debilitated by SADS, anti-depressants, counseling, or complementary therapies are helpful when combined with light therapy and a brisk walk. Avoid the use of over-the-counter therapies that can interact with prescription drugs.

Now, knowing how valuable sun exposure is to my moods I make a point to get outside (with sun block) when it appears. I also plan weekend jaunts to sunny Eastern Oregon where walking in the sun on snow with friends is good medicine to keep a spring in my step. It’s stunning how quickly my mood lifts.

Those sunny sojourns remind me of another interesting facet of illness. We often don’t realize how badly off we are until we feel better. Believing being proactive about my health is an important value, I penciled “begin light therapy” on my September calendar so I am already ahead of the game. If you think you may have winter blues, it’s not too late to begin light, travel, or cognitive treatment that can lift your mood in days.