SAD...what is it and what can you do about it?

SAD impacts adults during the winter months. Do you have it? If so there is something you can do about it!

Doc David

Transcript

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Hey friends, let's talk about seasonal affective disorder.

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You are listening to Head Shink Inc. Relationships and Daily Living.

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Hello, hello, hello. Happy holidays. Wherever you are celeb hopefully you're celebrating them. Maybe you don't celebrate them. Well, happy season, I suppose. Hey, um, I wanted to talk about something that for for years it kind of I didn't really understand it. Um, but more recently I've been doing a little digging into it and um wanted to share a little bit about what's what's all called SAD. Um, but sad is short for seasonal effective disorder. SAD can also be short for um social anxiety disorder, um which uh isn't is a thing as well. But we're gonna be talking about SAD today, seasonal affective disorder. Now, the interesting thing about SAD is that a lot of people don't know that they have it. Um they think, oh, I'm just kind of in a funk. The weather just makes me not happy, and they recognize that piece of it, but they don't recognize that it's an actual diagnosable uh thing that can be treated and doesn't have to just be tolerated. A lot of people just tolerate it and they think, I'll start feeling better in the spring. Um, but the problem is, and they miss out on, depending on where they live, they miss out on you know a good four to six months of of life, um, and they just kind of resign themselves to the fact that I'm just gonna be feeling bad, so uh I'll just kind of sit in my house and become a hermit. Um, and that doesn't have to be the case, honestly. So I view uh so so kind of as I've thought about sad, I've kind of viewed SAD as a sibling of depression. Um so so most people know what depression is. You you get sad, you uh are tired, you are low energy, you're not interested in doing things, um, you sleep a lot. Those are all similar things to seasonal affective disorder. Um seasonal affective disorder, you um have this similar symptoms of fatigue, um, weight gain, feeling sad, loss of interest in things. Um the loss of interest in things, the clin a clinical term for it is called anhedonia. Um and the little to no energy or lack of energy is called energy, um A-N-E-R-G-I-A. Uh, those are clinic more clinical terms. Most people aren't going to know what those mean, but those are classic symptoms of depression and seasonal affective disorder. Um there's an increase in act in purposeless activity. Um so it's hard to sit still, or there's you know, there's just kind of overthinking about things, or people find themselves sitting on couches and vegging and just scrolling through TikToks or Instagram or playing just playing video games, but then being bored with video games, just kind of sitting around, um, feeling worthless because you're not contributing, or you know you should be doing something and you just can't get yourself motivated to do it. Um difficulty, thinking, not able to focus on things, or even extreme case thoughts of death or suicide. Um, sad can begin at any age, um, but it it typically starts uh between ages 18 and 30, and I think that's most more likely because there have probably been lots of studies done on adults for seasonal affective disorder, but not with kids. Um it's it's more difficult to do studies. There's quite a bit more required for research that's done with kids, and so it's easier just because you can get consent from adults versus getting consent from the adults of kids. So it's just easier. That's why most studies don't have a lot of data around what happens to people under 18. Um so the the interesting thing with seasonal affective disorder is that there's uh there's a treatment for it that's different than depression. Um, so it can be treated in several ways. Medication is a way that it can be treated. Um, you know, medications can work, but a lot of times they just don't work for people. There's really negative side effects for medication. And and if you think about it, medications used to treat a specific thing that's happening in the brain, but it impacts your body systemically. And it's a it's a lot of reason why people uh try to steer clear of medications because there's just wicked side effects sometimes. There's like weight gain, uh cotton mouth, dizziness, nausea. Um, a lot of times people report feeling like they're in a fog, there's uh lack of sexual interest. There's any number of things that impact you systemically, which things that impact you systemically, uh in my opinion, they're not great. Um, usually you want something that's gonna just like really focus on whatever you're needing help with. Um, and again, that's a problem with medication, is that medication, not just not just um psychotropic medication, but like medication in general. Um, you may have heart high blood pressure, for example, and you're taking medication for that, but then there's side effects to that, even. So medication is often systemic, which is it impacts you systemically, so that's a lot of the reason that people don't like taking medication. Um, but with seasonal effective disorder, you can take um medication. Talk therapy is talk therapy works. What I found is that talk therapy will work uh really well for situational depression and can work well for seasonal effect disorder. When a person die when a person is diagnosed with a chronically or clinically depressed, um talk therapy is limited in the impact that it has. And so most studies will tell you that talk therapy plus something else is going to be most impactful for depression. Um, but for seasonal effective disorder, while it is a diagnosable thing, um, I tend to think it's more of a situational thing because a lot of it's based on weather. And so once the weather starts turning uh once the sun starts coming out more, then the seasonal effective uh disorder symptoms tend to go away. Um now the key the key there is the sun, right? So that's another treatment that you can do that um won't work, won't, isn't a course of treatment for typical depression. Um what I tell people is that that have a diagnosis of seasonal affective disorders the more sun you can get on your skin, the better. Now, the challenge you run into is like if you live in the north, it's you know 20 degrees out, so you can't walk around in a short-sleeved shirt and shorts. I mean, I suppose you could, but it's just not most people are not going to be comfortable in that. Um, and that's how you get sun on your skin. So there is a so there's a light therapy treatment that um is really uh effective for people that have seasonal affective disorder. Um I did a webinar on this probably about two weeks ago, and the the consistent comment that I got from participants in the webinar was that they had moved from a sunny place to the northwest and they got a light box and then it changed their life. Um and so they were confirming this idea that the sun impacts mood uh and and getting sun on your skin will make will essentially make you feel better. So the the solution of a light therapy box is super simple. There's there's if you go on Amazon right now, there's hundreds, if not thousands, of these light boxes available for sale. The the the research that I've done says the minimum lumens, lumens is the light output, I believe, um that you're gonna want is 10,000. Um and then the again research that I've seen recommends that you uh are in front of this light for at least 20 minutes a day. Um now, what I what I've seen is like I've gone into an office space and I've seen people keep one of these light things on their desk, they keep it down by their feet. Um wherever you need it so your skin can get that light is what's going to help you with your seasonal effective disorder. Um so seasonal affective disorder usually starts for most people in uh Octo end of October, beginning of November, and it really gets bad in January, February. And if you think about that, it's like that makes sense because most of the time people are thinking, oh, here comes this bad season, okay. I'm gonna just white knuckle, I'm gonna make it through. And so they they do okay in November, December, but then the gloom isn't going away. And so January, February, they've just reached their limit where the gloom is there. And then um March shows up, April shows up, more sun comes up, it gets warmer, and then the seasonal effectiveness sort of goes away. And a lot of people, uh as I've talked to them, they just think, oh, great, it's sunny again, I'm feeling better. And so it kind of goes out of their mind. Um, but then again, August, September rolls around and they start thinking, oh great, here we go again. It's I've I'm just gonna prepare myself for the worst, and I'm just a white knuckle it through. And so it becomes this pattern, kind of a dysfunctional pattern that people find themselves caught in. And so um the thing that I encourage people to do if they think they have seasonal affective disorder, is to make a journal of some sort. And it doesn't have to be super complicated, it could just be on a calendar somewhere that you keep either digitally or on paper, where you just kind of make a notation of the weather and kind of what your mood is like that day. Um, and then you got to be consistent with it. And so then you can see if there's a pattern that emerges for you. So then you can kind of determine, oh, maybe I have seasonal affective disorder. So if you do have that, if you go to a professional like me or a doctor or something and they diagnose you with seasonal affective disorder, then you know there's specific ways to treat the seasonal affective disorder. Um, a lot of times people, people that do light therapy, they'll see they'll see some kind of improvement if they do it consistently 20 minutes per day. Um, the easiest is probably first thing in the morning when you're sitting at a table, maybe drinking coffee or having breakfast or something something like that. Um they'll usually see uh an improvement within one or two weeks of beginning that treatment. Um, but you gotta do that consistently throughout the winter. Because if you do it one day and then or you do it for a couple days, I'm starting to feel better, and then you stop. Obviously, it's it's not the impact of it is not gonna last you for the whole winter. Um so the the and I'm not making any money off of Amazon. Um, so I would encourage you if you think you have two things. I'd encourage you, if you think you have um seasonal affective disorder, go to a professional and get a diagnosis, possibly. Or if you think you have it, but you don't want to go to a professional to get it diagnosed, um, go on to Amazon, get a light box, and start treating um treating it that way with sitting in front of a light box for 20 minutes. Um what could compound your seasonal affective disorders also is the fact that it's the holidays, right? In my previous podcast, I talked about how to do holidays and relationships. Um yeah, because holidays and relationships during the holidays are a little bit interesting because you're around family, potentially, that you're not around the rest of the year, and so you're having to learn to have some tolerance towards these people and different opinions, different ideas, etc. etc. Um, one of the things that I would encourage you to do, and again, I'll I encourage you to go back to my previous podcast to to hear what I the suggestions I gave for um relationships. But what I would add is that I think social media is I I just really been realizing recently social media is like a huge downer um for a lot of people, including myself. And so if you can limit your time on social media, um I I would encourage you to do so. Because if you have seasonal effect disorder andor depression, scrolling through social media is not going to be uplifting to you and help you. Most people would agree with that, I think. Um, holiday season, I'm gonna be out of my office for two weeks. Um, if you want to know where I'm gonna be at, you are more than welcome to follow me on Instagram, Dr. David Simonson. I'll probably be over-sharing um my vacation that I'm taking. And if you like this, if you enjoy this podcast, I'd love it if you'd share it with other people. Um, again, it's just me doing all of the editing and everything. And so I don't, I'm not perfect at it. It's not what I went to school for. But if you find it enjoyable, if you find it useful, I'd encourage you to share it with a friend. Um this is pod, I just looked, and this is podcast number 81, which it kind of boggles my mind that I've done 80 previous podcasts. So, welcome to podcast 81. I I one of the things I want to try to start doing, and I I'm gonna rely on you, the audience, to maybe help me do this, is I want to start interviewing people that um I think are interesting or that you guys think are interesting. Now, the challenge is trying to get those people to come on come on the podcast with me. And so I've been making attempts to get people that I think are interesting to come on here so I can interview them. But again, I'm just some guy in Washington State Um who's a unknown. I'm not a big like celebrity where someone can increase their status by coming on my podcast. So it's been kind of a challenge. I I've I've reached out to a couple people through Instagram. I suppose I could go through Twitter. Twitter's probably a way to do it as well. But if there's people that you guys think are interesting and that you would want me to interview, um, I would love to get suggestions from you. And you can set you can go to my Instagram and message me. You can go into docdavid.net and in and message me uh your thoughts. But I'm totally open for um interviewing most people. I should put a qualifier in there. Uh there's some people I may not want to interview, but I'm open to suggestions. So uh please send them my way. Hey, uh if I don't do another podcast, like I said, I'm gonna be out of um office for two weeks. Have a great holiday. Um hopefully you will be able to celebrate with your family and um if not, celebrate with your friends. Because I think that this time of year is a time where uh like we just came out of Thanksgiving, where we should be thankful. We should be thankful every day, but like a specific day was created to be thankful. Um, and so I would encourage you just to be mindful of the things that you're grateful for this year, and if you're grateful for someone this year, let them know. That's gonna create some goodwill on earth for you to do that with them. But hey, thanks for listening in. Um, have a great week, and we will talk again soon.