A Source of en-LIGHT-enment

Winter SAD: Not so bad this year

Well, it's been a while since I posted.  I've been busy, maybe too busy, but in some ways that's a statement to me that my SAD is under control.  When it's not, I'm home a lot more.  I started taking anti-depressants in July this year, and have been on them almost continuously since then.  It really has made a big difference.  I'm out more with my friends, and carrying through on responsibilities that I've let slide in years past.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to make much of a difference in the amount of laundry that isn't getting done!

I'm even exercising sporadically, albeit I may not be making it to the gym 5 days a week like some of my girlfriends, but I'm also involved in different things than they are, namely my community festival board.

It's Fall...Already Past the Equinox, and Definitely SAD Weather

Ah, the crisp short days of fall.  It's now cold, and I get stuck behind the school bus if I've got a late morning at the hospital...It's the time of year where I won't ever see it being light before I'm at work again until approximately next May, at the end of the academic year.  The last few days have left me dragging a bit.  Not to the point that I am in tears, but the fact that I have had a hard time getting motivated to do anything until about 5:00 PM.  I've tried coffee, light, exercise, antidepressants and more, but I figure it's going to take a few more days before it all has an effect.  I start super early mornings on Monday and will be leaving the house long before the sun is up. 

Shifting my body clock again is going to be a struggle.  I hope to avoid the general blah feeling that I seem to go through every winter.  I've actually been fighting it off and on since the end of July.  I was really good for a while about going outside and exercising for about an hour, but then I've slipped back into my old habits.  When I am at the hospital though, I do have to walk downtown to catch the bus, so I know I'm forced to get some additional exercise.

Junk food is too constant of a companion and forcing myself back on a schedule I can only imagine will help. 

Rhythms of Life by Russell G. Foster Leon Kreitzman

Lately, I've been fascinated by circadian rhythms.  I want to know more about these cycles that affect pretty much all cells in all creatures, bacteria, fungi, mammals, amphibians and more!  This book was recommended to me in passing.  I haven't had a chance to get a hold of it, but it looks like a nice break from festival planning.

How do they affect me and what I do?  What happens when I stay up all night...how does that relate to jet lag?  From the little I know, I'm just genetically wired to need 7-8 hours of sleep to function, while some folks I know are able to be sharp on 5.  I think it would be interesting to read about how the timing of one's biorhythms affect daily life, and especially effects it has on medication, mood, and mental acuity.

This is definitely going on my list of reading for fall!

Amazon's Review:  From Publishers Weekly
Are you a morning "lark" or a "night owl"? Do you put your feet up after lunch, or can you get by on a few hours' sleep? Foster, a professor of molecular neuroscience in London, and Kreitzman (The 24 Hour Society) survey the biological clocks that dictate circadian rhythms, the daily cycles that affect creatures from cockroaches to humans. A little bundle of nerve cells in the front of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei is responsible for many circadian functions in mammals. Other controls may be embedded in our genes. The authors explain that all living creatures run on several different biological clocks simultaneously: some make it possible for us to recognize the passage of short intervals of time, whereas others (in the retina) respond to light and regulate our bodily functions over 24 hours and even longer cycles. Your very perception of time depends on your body temperature, which varies by almost one degree Celsius during the course of a day. In their final chapters, the authors explain that the very efficacy of medication for many diseases, notably cancer, depends on when it is administered. Biology buffs will marvel at the fascinating material, and medical professionals should put the book at the top of their must-read lists.

Rhythms of Life: The Biological Clocks that Control the Daily Lives of Every Living Thing

Definitions of Circadian Rhythms & Random Thoughts

The circadian rhythm is a name given to the "internal body clock" that regulates the (roughly) 24 hour cycle of biological processes in animals and plants. (The term circadian comes from the Latin circa, meaning "around" and dies, "day", meaning literally, "around a day").
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm

Mine are really out of whack right now.  I spent a couple hours outside yesterday and was able to wake up for the first time in several weeks.  I'll try and go outside again today to continue to reset my circadian rhythms.  Modern human life can make these things go nuts.  I've been thinking about eliminating coffee from my diet because I'm trying to get back on a more even plane.  I came across an article http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/05/040512041022.htm that talked about how caffeine in small, regular doses can help stave off sleep, but does this alter the human circadian rhythm cycle?  I drink caffeine all day, and not always in big quantities... they also state:

As the researchers hypothesized, the behavioral differences between the groups appear to be due to caffeine's effects on the homeostatic rather than circadian system.

SAD Early This Year?

It's almost the end of August and I feel more like it's the end of November.  What is going on?  I think that I'm starting to be affected much earlier than normal by my winter SAD.  There have  been a few days where I have been on the verge of tears all day, which is highly unusual, especially for the middle of summer. 

Part of the problem is that I've spent most of my daylight time indoors this summer.  I've been really busy with a lot of projects, even on the weekend, so going outside has mistakenly taken a back seat to other things that I've needed to do.  I have an appointment with my physician today, and have been working to scale back my appointments and obligations for the last several weeks to allow more time for exercise and whatnot. 

Hopefully that and a couple other steps will get my body back in sync because I don't like feeling lethargic and depressed, especially during the summer!

Flower Clocks

With the weather getting nicer in Seattle, my usual gardening urges are coming back.  Unfortunately, I don't remember to water things by the middle of August, so I'm not sure I can call myself a gardener.  I'd have to be a lot more ambitious to undertake a project like this. 

Different types of flowers open under different circumstances.  Typically, they are either temperature driven, light driven, or open at the same time of day despite outside stimuli.  Linnaeus, father of moder taxometry made notes about growing a flower clock.  With this, you'd be able to glance out your window and see what flowers were opening.  This of course depended on using aequinoctales, or flowers with fixed opening and closing times.  Looks Like humans aren't alone in our biological clock functions.

A British list of approximate opening and closing times for flowers is suggested here:

0200 – Night blooming cereus closes
0500 – Morning glories, wild roses
0600 – Spotted cat’s ear, catmint
0700 – African marigold, orange hawkweed, dandelions
0800 – Mouse-ear hawkweed, African daisies
0900 – Field marigold, gentians, prickly sowthistle closes
1000 – Helichrysum, Californium poppy, common nipplewort closes
1100 – Star of Bethlehem
1200 – Passion flower, goatsbeard, morning glory closes
1300 – Chiding pink closes
1400 – Scarlet pimpernel closes
1500 – Hawkbit closes
1600 – ‘Four o’clock’ plant opens, small bindweed closes, Californian poppy closes
1700 – White waterlily closes
1800 – Evening primrose, moonflower
1900
2000 – Daylilies and dandelions close
2100 – Flowering tobacco
2200 – Night blooming cereus

The Northwoods August Activity Calendar (northern Wisconsin) suggests you try the flowers in the list that follows.

6 a.m. Spotted cat's ear (opens)
7 a.m. African marigold (opens)
8 a.m. Mouse-ear hawkweed (opens)
9 a.m. Prickly sow thistle (closes)
10 a.m. Common nipplewort (closes)
11 a.m. Star-of-Bethlehem (opens)
Noon Passion flower (opens)
1 p.m. Childing pink (closes)
2 p.m. Scarlet pimpernel (closes)
3 p.m. Hawkbit (closes)
4 p.m. Small bindweed (closes)
5 p.m. White water lily (closes)
6 p.m. Evening primrose (opens)

Have fun and plant yourself some flowers this summer.

Great Summary of Circadian Rhythms

, The Health Link at the Medical School of Wisconsin has one of the easiest to read and understand broad overviews of circadian rhythms that I have come across.  Circadian rhythms are important because many of us with SAD have body clocks that are very sensitive to light.  It's these circadian rhythms that help you wake up in the morning, go to sleep at night, and function on a day-to-day basis.  The circadian rhythms control your hormones, blood pressure and more.  The internal clock runs on a 25-hour schedule but can be reset by outside stimulus like light or alarm clock.

There is much reasoning out there that the lack of light and how it affects the body leads to SAD for some people.  Check it out, it's interesting!

Basic Overview: http://healthlink.mcw.edu/article/922567322.html

Summer Sad and Heat: Interesting Commentary

This is from a blog I've read off and on for years.  I find it interesting that people can have such a diversity of reactions to summer.  I guess it's not all that surprising.  I definitely don't have summer SAD.  I think the most common theme I"ve seen in people hating summer comes along with the heat and humidity.

Also, I think I  have "summer depression" (i.e. Seasonal Affective Disorder which hits in the summer). Apart from the "haw haw, too sunny for you" attitudes in some comments, I was struck by how some people described my reactions to summer so well -- I hate the heat, particularly the humidity (I can't sleep when it's hot; I feel lethargic, suffocated, apathetic, nearly sick. I'm a night owl and always have been and always perk up around 10-11 PM, but that's especially true in the summer, when there are night breezes and stars and clouds. I love fall and spring -- winter's okay, although February usually kicks my ass. The grey drizzly wet cloudy weather so many people in Seattle complain about (Jesus, move to Phoenix, ) I find invigorating, even energizing.

...

So yeah, the idea of sitting in front of a light box? I don't think so. (I grew up in a  light box. I hated it. I love overcast skies, clouds, rain, thunderstorms, water, breezes, coolness. The local weather forecasters on the evening news and a bunch of people I know here have all been unceasingly whingeing about how the weather "sucks" now after a few days of near-miserable heat. GOD. MOVE TO MIAMI. These idiots all remind me of the jerks on Ray Bradbury's Venus longing for their goddamned Sun Domes.)

Summer SAD in LA: That's My Polar Opposite

Saskia Smith is a 30-year old in LA.  Like me, she suffers from SAD.  However here's our biggest difference.  She's starting to feel down, just as I'm about to hit my high point for the year.  She lives in LA land of eternal sunshine and warm temperatures.  Just the kind of weather I'd kill for in mid-December.  I'm in Seattle, and we're just hitting 15 hours, 32 minutes of daylight here.  This is perfect as far as I'm concerned. 

Saskia is originally from Seattle and didn't start to feel affected until she moved to LA 3 years ago with her husband.  She is starting a website devoted to SAD, a forum, links and more.  Good luck to her in her new project!http://www.seasonalsad.com/

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-sadsummer28may28,1,6223923.story?coll=la-headlines-health

The Big Round Cubatron

Well,  Light Art is always kind of neat.  Burning Man is smart, wealthy hippies (or something like that).  You add them togetehr and come up with something cool like this fully programmable light sculpture with 28 spokes, and lights that can turn on and off up to 50 times/second.

Link:  http://nw.com/nw/projects/brc/