Feeling SAD lately?
Light.
It’s the most observed radiation by humans and probably one of the more interesting energy forms. Nothing travels faster than light that we know of and few energies reach as far through the universe as light can. As matter approaches the speed of light, it approaches it’s transformation into energy.
Einstein’s observations of light gave birth to modern Quantum mechanics; that field of science that took Einstein’s predictable Universe and made it a matter of best guesses. Einstein spent the rest of his life trying to debunk what is now known as the Heisenburg uncertainty principle.
Light isn’t always so prolific. Dumb philosophers world wide have wondered how we know the color red you see is the same as the color red I see. They’ve asked, how would we know and been truly amazed at their brain power and dimly lit intellect.
But none of this is of importance to people. It’s all fun and games until you poke a portion of grey matter out.
During the winter season, the earth tilts on it’s axis pointing the Northern hemisphere further away from the sun and thusly shortening the day for all Northerners. So great is this daylight shift that at the poles, there are six months of night until the Equinox brings about the change for 24 hours days.
24 hours for the earth to rotate once in a circular turn. A circadian turn.
During the winter several people will start to have a slowing down of sorts. They will become depressed and they will have trouble sleeping. They might loose their libido while their appetite for food gets out of hand, and all right when those big meals start rolling in with the holidays.
These are some of the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. It usually sets in around September and doesn’t lift until April, although November through February are typically the strongest months for these symptoms.
I suppose it seems somewhat intuitive that a shorter day seems less cheery. After all, the bears can take a hint and hibernate for the Winter. But intuition has so little to do with it.
You see, your body is completely tuned to the hours of the day. You have circadian rhythms that govern hormone release and body functions such as sleep, appetite and Core Body Temperature. Your circadian clock sets the body to cool down a bit at 4 am and 2 pm (on average) which creates a lulling sensation. So powerful is this lull at 2 pm that several cultures have a form of Ciesta or Tea time to give rest when the body calls for it. Nearly 75% of all wrecks in a study by The Hartford were noted to occur between the hours of 10pm and 8 am with most drivers reporting they felt more awake than they actually were. Even on a bad night of sleep, most people suddenly get rest around 4 in the morning. People even remark “just as I was getting to some good sleep, my alarm clock went off”.
None of this is accidental. Your eyelids allow light through them for at least one reason. Those photons of light through the eyelids pass through the retina to the optic nerve where neural pathways lead a portion of that light stimulus to the most fun area of the brain to say (IMO). The suprachiasmatic nuclei lies slightly in front of the Thalumus in a region dubbed the pre-optic area. These bundles of neurons react to light levels to determine releases of melatonin which regulates your sleeping time and also sends messages to the reticular activating system in your brain stem to wake the rest of the brain up. This little nuclei performs best when it’s kept on it’s schedule.
Your body temperature begins to slightly rise just before morning preparing you for the day. Metabolism lifts a bit and you become hungry from the all night fast, so you break the fast, with breakfast. Your kidney function returns to normal operating levels, so you must evacuate your bladder almost immediately after waking; even the slower level they worked at through the night has still built up quite a bit of fluid.
You see, that little thing called light is responsible for your entire start, and consequently also sets the pace for when your day should end. The shorter days of Winter really screw this up for some people.
They will take anti-depressants, or they will sulk and sit and come to hate the winter time. They will underperform at work and continue to hate their alarm clocks even more than they did during the summer. And such has been my life as of late.
It’s complicated by the fact I work nights, which means I rarely see light anyways. Oh, I know, you think those desk lights and overhead lights count, but they don’t. They don’t even touch the Sun’s lumen output(50K to 100K lux for the sun versus maybe 500 for an office), nor do they ever touch the spectrum of light the sun contains.
I’m considering buying a light box to supplement the light I am loosing not only through the night, but during the winter. I’ll spend probably around $200 on a special box meant for this purpose and use it according to my needs as dictated by several well done studies. If I can manage it, I’ll put it on a timer to turn on just before my wake time, as to stimulate the optic nerves the way they were meant to be in the morning. I will lie to my body and it will be a sucker for it.
You don’t have to work nights to benefit from this. If I could undo one invention that would greatly improve the enjoyment of life for most people, it would be the alarm clock. The alarm clock intentionally disrupts your body’s natural rhythms, jolting it awake through coarse arousal rather than natural stimulus.
The more damning part of an alarm clock is that the more you use it, the more you become convinced you need it to get up. People don’t recognize the sleep debt they build up as their body is constantly shorted about an hour of sleep because they’ve got to make rush hour. Before they know it, they need their cup of coffee in the morning and then they ‘aren’t a morning person’.
The body becomes disoriented to it’s schedule and people start to wonder why they can’t get to sleep when they lie down but they feel tired. It’s like you’ve lost your watch in the middle of a day filled with things you had scheduled to get done.
So what to do? Ideally, you should wake up to light, not sound. That light should start out dim and gradually work it’s way up to a semi-bright intensity. Ideally, if it could be a light that could generate the suns lumens at dawn, you’d get the best waking clock instead of the most disturbing alarm clock. Your melatonin levels would regulate and you’d feel sleepy naturally a little earlier in the day, perhaps around 9 or 10 if you have to get up at 5 or 6 am.
Over the course of a month or so, your body would begin to recoup it’s sleep debt and you would function with greater efficiency and clarity, better mood and increased aptitude. You would find your watch and get things done. Perhaps, just perhaps, you wouldn’t dread getting up anymore.
I’m wondering if I should start using a jerry-rigged method to try this wake-up process. You know…a flourescent lamp on a timer would be a cheap substitute.
I’m also thinking that I may try to train myself to function without an alarm over winter break.
Comment by Jesse — November 15, 2005 @ 13:22
The only problem with a jerry-rigged solution is lux output. If the lux isn’t high enough, you won’t notice (more accurately your suprachiasmatic nuclei won’t notice).
Ebay has a shocking amount of lightboxes for sale, although, if you wanted to continue down the road of frugalness, it’s really about just finding the right type of tube bulb and using it in the right ballast. The timer idea is exaclty what a friend of mine is using per his Dr.’s orders (that’s MD, not voo doo doctor or any such the like!).
Comment by JT — November 16, 2005 @ 07:21
I’d just like to rephrase that, if you wouldn’t mind replacing that comment with this one for clarity:
Your findings don’t surprise me at all. This has been something I feel I’ve understood for quite sometime without the labels and names explaining it to me and how it effects me.
I love the winter time BECAUSE OF the shorter days. The only thing that disrupts my balance is when we lose or gain an hour… This part of life seems the most disruptive, by the time I gain an equillibrium of, “It’s 10pm, I need to be ready for bed by midnight to have a good day.” The hour is dropped off. In order to maintain this equillibrium I have to understand that, “It’s 9pm, I need to be ready for bed by 11pm to have a good day.” Vice versa for when we ’spring’ forward an hour. Over time, I adjust to the differential and come around in full swing. Perhaps its the politicians who make it worse, and not nature or alarm clocks.
Why not take Pavlov’s experiment for example? The alarm clock, overtime, can condition the body of when it needs to sleep, or wake, therefore resetting the circadium rhythm. As long as this feature is not abused, it can provide a gentle recycle into a position where, as long as nothing creates a need for MORE sleep, you can wake without the clock entirely. I’ve heard countless stories of people, including myself, who will wake up at 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10am on their days off without anything to interfere because of their normal work schedule dictating their circadium rhythm. Do you think I use some infernal machine to wake me up on the weekends? Hell no! I figure I’m going to sleep in, right? Wrong. My re-programmed circadian rhythm commands me to awake, not light (lord knows I love dark rooms). Even if I were to hammer down a heavy night of activity I would still be arousing from sleep within a time frame of 8-9 am, where I normally wake up for work at 8am, unless of course I don’t rest until 8 or 9am, in which I throw my own balance off on purpose.
Does this depress me? Never. Does this make my life any less fulfilling? Absolutely not.
Perhaps there’s a form of evolution here not easily recognizable, but I’d think that a lightbox is not going to solve your problems, but merely confuse yourself more.
Better yet, maybe it has something to do with how you are perceiving your sleep needs and regular rhythms. Instead of dwelling on what is understood of how your body works, why not dwell on how you can manipulate your body to work for you by recognizing where it seems to be dragging and focus on fixing it?
No drugs necessary, just a bit of mental focus and plenty of self reflection should get the job done.
Comment by alphapyro — November 18, 2005 @ 18:27
The alarm can condition the body, but it’s not a circadian manipulation, it’s a stress response condition.
The response to light isn’t a hypothesis or dreamed up cure, but a scientifically researched and studied field in mammals, reptiles, humans and several other animal groups. Circadian components are found in nearly all life forms.
Using a lightbox is also beyond hypothesis(Further than Intelligent Design, let’s say). Enough light over enough time does shift circadian rhythms. Your patterened sleep isn’t a reflection of alarm clock conditioning, but rather a healthy state dictated by circadian rhythms. The alarm clock wouldn’t even be what moved your rhythm back or forward anyways, but the tiredness you felt at the end of the first few days might prompt earlier bed times. More likely to be the influence is just the amount of light you will turn on just to get ready for work. While not a large amount of lux that results in quick circadian changes, it’s enough to skew it over time.
Caffeine is also commonly used to ‘adjust’ circadian rhythms, but again, it does it indirectly. It’s not the ‘perk-up’ that encourages an adjustment as much as the ‘hang-over’ at the end of the day.
Can you adjust your wake and bed times through non-light mechanisms? Yes – Do those methods incur greater side effects over time than light therapy alone? Yes Which is considered to be in greatest keeping with the body clock typically in place? Light
Curiously, using light is what my dwelling led to as a solution. Through light, I can manipulate my body’s perception of time and trick it to run as if I were on days even though I’m on nights (I’ve been using light therapy for about a week with notable improvement)
Reprogramming bio-rhythms encoded millions of years ago just seems a more daunting task than simply using the pre-wired configuration; Light! Also, light is sans drugs and medications, and you can not shift your clock long term with mental focus alone. Mental focus alone, while capable of keeping you awake, does not prevent response time degradation, ability to perform mental tasks degradation and other such measurable exercises.
Lastly, needing or using a lightbox doesn’t dictate the body has a problem. Actually, it might even be a sign of good function.
Comment by JT — November 21, 2005 @ 02:54
[quote] Also, light is sans drugs and medications, and you can not shift your clock long term with mental focus alone. Mental focus alone, while capable of keeping you awake, does not prevent response time degradation, ability to perform mental tasks degradation and other such measurable exercises[/quote]
I highly disagree with that.
While most laugh and consider hemi-sync as something not very realistic I find it otherwise. My mind, being hyperactive, has sensory integration problems. At times, so much can happen at once that I succumb to sensory overload and simply lock up and cannot do much but retire for the evening, however, after many nights experimenting with hemi-sync I’ve discovered that not only can I withstand some overload, but handle more load than usual.
What this amounts to is my ability, if desired, to recenter my thoughts and concentrate my energy into any direction I choose. This means I can reprogram myself in little ways, through the subconcious, to adapt to what I deem important or necessary at any time.
For example: I used to have a huge problem with being on time, more so being unprepared for when I arrived to my destination with little time to spare which resulted in great stress. With a little reprogramming I can now rush myself, and in the process gear up my mind to function as it needs be by the time I arrive by simply understanding and focusing what it is I need to get done.
I mention this in my off sighted Astral Projection blog, but I practice it constantly.
I just think that maybe there’s more than one way, and perhaps yours works for you, but that isn’t the all inclusive 100% positive answer.
It’s a very slim shade of grey.
Comment by alphapyro — November 22, 2005 @ 22:27