A Source of en-LIGHT-enment

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

Dealing with Depression List

I found this neat list of resources over at Amazon about personal experience in dealing with depression.  One of the more hefty tomes on this list is called edited by  Ray Lamb, one of the leading SAD researchers up at UBC.  It's published by a medical publsihing company, but looks like it's a collection of items by various authors on light and light-related topics and treatments for depresson. 

Unfortunatly, the $65 price tag means I'm a bit hesitant to order it, but maybe the Seattle Library system has it.

If you're interested in reading the summary at Amazon, they've got part of the book online: Seasonal Affective Disorder and Beyond: Light Treatment for Sad and Non-Sad Conditions

Getting a Hold of Levity Vitamins...

I've stopped by my local health food store twice now in the last week trying to get my hands on the vitamins that are recommended by the Body Blues book. Apparently, they can't keep them in the store. They're going to call me when they come in later this week. The store charges quite a bit more than ordering them directly from the Body Blues website, but in order to try it, I'll avoid shipping and handling costs this time. If they work well, I order them here from then on.

http://www.thestoreforhealthyliving.com/MERCHANT2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=TBB&Category_Code=WBGB

Starting on the "When Your Body Has the Blues" Wellness Program

Ok, I've finished reading the When Your Body Has the Blues. I'm interested enough in their outcomes that I want to try for myself and see if it makes a difference. Much of the program deals with doing simple things to help your body increase the amount of feel-good chemicals in your brain through a combination of bright light, moderate exercise 5x a week, and a vitamin combination that was tested at the University of Washington School of Nursing with over 100 volunteers (all female). Results were impressive, with more people responding to this than taking anti-depressants.

Body Blues is a general term for what is termed a vegetative depression. Its fairly mild, but leaves people feeling blah, and inclined to overeat and be lazy, moody, and sensitive to criticism. I don't deal with most of this in the summer, but I know with fall and winter coming, creating a buffer can't hurt anything.

One of the most interesting things I got out of the book is how vitamin shortages can leave your body with below normal levels of dopamine and serotonin, both important feel-good hormones. I went looking for the supplement created with the same levels of vitamins used for the UW study, but my local health food store was out and wont' get more in until Tuesday.

I've decided to try this for the next two months and see how I'm feeling at the start of October. I think the biggest challenge is going to be convincing myself to exercise for at least 20 minutes every day.

How Bright is Your House?

I've been reading "When Your Body Gets the Blues". I was fascinated to see that a sunny day outdoors at noon may produce upwards of 10,000 lux. (I'm going to have to figure out exactly what a lux is...), but that a well lit office usually will be about 400 lux, a well lit house 200 lux, and a typical room in a house is around 100 lux. That's getting only about 1% of the same intensity light that you get when your outdoors during the summer. No wonder so many people react to the lack of light in the winter.

Maybe I'm not as strange as I thought for wanting to leave all the lights on all the time!