Ask HN: How do you navigate Seasonal Affective Disorder?
Now that the sun is setting earlier with daylight savings time, I’m finding that I struggle with the increased hours of darkness in the evenings.
I’m finding hanging out in well-lit areas with people and music in the evenings are good to counteract this (mall, cafe, gym, book store).
Do you do anything to offset fewer hours of daylight?
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadPrices in my area are up 10-15% on Zillow since then. Hopefully I can find a Greater Fool to sell to before the city disappears beneath the rising seas.
Yeah, except for the occasional car bomb…
Unfortunately, due to government policy during the Franco years, the south of Spain continues to consistently attract the worst kinds of people.
Even if most days are peaceful, you can never know if today is the day some shit kicks off between the drug cartels and the restaurant you’re eating at gets shot up.
And in the areas that don’t entirely depend on the drug trade? There’s nothing at all.
> Even if most days are peaceful, you can never know if today is the day some shit kicks off between the drug cartels and the restaurant you’re eating at gets shot up.
The only area I know it's pretty problematic and have a lot of mafia acts involved are Marbella, specially Puerto Banús, where a lot of rich mobster do their "business". Outside that, and outside the few slum districts in some cities, there isn't places where you can say things like that could happen.
- Go outside every day at lunchtime and get sun on your face. Even if it's cold, raining or whatever, it's very important to get sunlight on your face.
- Get a grow lamp if you feel really bad
- Take Vitamin D suppliments
Before that in the UK, as another poster suggests, I made sure to get out for a walk in the sunshine every day in the early afternoon. Get some sun on my face every single day.
Totally get that these two solutions may not be practical for OP, but it's helped me a load.
Standard mental health stuff also applies. Any form of exercise and keeping an eye on alcohol/whatever poison intake will help.
I still 'feel' winter, but not so much and not so deeply.
In New York this means waking up around 6 or 6:30am (sunrise: 6:36am)
If you’re waking up after sunrise, shift your sleep schedule if possible so you’re awake during as many daylight hours as possible.
Live in Norway 300km from northern polar circle.
From what I've understood from Huberman Lab podcast, sun affects mood mainly in two ways : 1. Vit D production, 2. Circadian Rhythm timing control.
1. First one can be supplemented. I use 80ug, as 40ug that I use in summer doesn't cut it. Found this dose trough experimenting. Too much feels like having overdosed on coffee. Too little and I don't have energy to do stuff unless I really must do it.
2. Circadian Rhythm - recommend listening to Huberman's episodes on Sleep (around 4 eps), Dopamine and motivation, and Depression. Not getting enough light in the morning makes the circadian rhythm drift, which messes your sleep, which is your daily psychotherapy. To help prevent it, you can exercise in the morning. I'm planning to buy a light therapy light on Black Friday and use it during morning 'Sun Salutations' (yoga exercise). A breakfast and warm shower in the morning can also help stop the drift.
Another thing is lights control. Phillips Hue lights can be scheduled to glow dimmer past 18:00 (I'm assuming you sleep 22 to 5:30). At night just two very dim lamps. Bathroom lamp at my place is very bright, so if I have to shower past 19, I shower with lights off and avoid hot showers in the evening.
The TV I have has 4 screen brightness &color tone settings. I've toned down brightness on all of them and one is very dark (and red tinted) for usage past 18 or 19.
Not saying that this is what will help you, but hope you can find something working for you.
P.S. If I don't want to get up early on the weekends, I at least make sure I go out for a walk before 9 o'clock. Even if hangover will put me back in bed, the inner clock got the message - at 22 we need to sleep again.
The part of winter that crushed me the most was the excruciating commute in the cold in the morning, and the dark + cold in the afternoon when going home. When working from home, I no longer have to do that commute so I find it a lot easier to get through the winter.
In retrospect, I’m amazed I made it through high school without snapping, what with such mornings and going home when it was already completely dark out. Teenagers are a different breed.
If I haven't had my morning wank, it ruins my whole day. If I neglect to enjoy my evening wank, I can't sleep.
The calming effect of fucking one's own hand should not be underestimated.
If you're in the US, many of the "middle western" states have significant sunshine. Oklahoma, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Texas are surprisingly sunny.
Anecdotally it seems like a scam to try and sell you overpriced LED lights, but the more you google the more you find some people swear it affects them, even though I've never felt the difference. This together with the fact that I was born and grew up in a place with ~3050 average annual sunlight hours per year, as well as lived in places with ~1500 for the past 5 years without any perceived difference in mood.
It's fairly frequent that I'll be skiing in full sun above the clouds, which is an excellent source of Vitimin D. When coupled with endorphine release from exercise it's basically impossible to be anything but ecstatic on that day.
That said, the principal to combat SAD, in my experience, has been vitamin D and exercise. Try to maximize your exposure/intake of those (in whatever way is possible to you) and you'll feel good :)
If I had my druthers I would have 2 weeks of heavy snow around Christmas and then back to spring, alas, the universe has not yet conformed to my will.
Anyway, I read this article a while back about stringing up a bunch of extra lights and how the extra light seems to ease the winter blues. I may try it out this year. Maybe worth a shot?
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hC2NFsuf5anuGadFm/how-to-bui...
https://youtu.be/6bqBsHSwPgw
Starting in mid-October and ending early March, I make sure to stand in direct sunlight, with the light hitting my face, for at least 10 minutes on all the days when weather permits. This entails unscheduled breaks from work, as such periods might only last a few minutes. Often combined with a walk outside. (There will often be weeks when the sun is not visible at all).
In fact, I took such a break while writing this comment, as it's the only sunlight I'm likely to see today. It was attenuated by clouds, but was very pleasant during the ~4 minutes it lasted. Had to stand up from my office chair, as otherwise neighboring houses would occlude it. I swear I'm not making this up, or even overstating the regularity with which it happens. I consider myself prone to seasonal depression, but maybe it's just the climate.
On days when I don't get my dose of sunlight, I use a daylight lamp that I sit in front of for at least 20 minutes. Often as much as an hour.
This alleviates the worst winter depression. When I feel it coming on, I feel markedly more awake after getting some more light. Also make sure to take care of myself and listen to my needs, more so than usual. Enough sleep, enough relaxation, enough socialization, enough solidude. Have been doing this routine for about a decade, and it works well.
https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/vitamin-d-myths-debunked
The seasonal depression itself feels pretty distinct. I've been "normal" depressed before, and this is more like a "turned down the dimmer switch on the consciousness" combined with the regular suspects like lower initiative, less joy from fun things, muted feelings and so on. And my subjective experience is it responds well to light and general self-care, to a greater degree than the "standard" variety does. But who knows!
I’m sure vitamin D had some role in it though.
But it needs to be an extremely bright light, and broad spectrum. LEDs / fluorescents couldn’t replicate the effects of “facing the sun”, only extremely high wattage halogens.
It kind of worked for me on cloudy days depending on the degree of overcast occlusion but I would drop ANYTHING I was doing whenever the sun was shining enough to create crisp shadows.
This became a ritual of my “personal religion”.
>Is it best to get your vitamin D from the sun? Definitely not!
—David J. Leffell, MD, Yale Medicine dermatologist and chief of Dermatologic Surgery
That whole section is worth reading. Light may be useful in a Circadian context, but from strictly a Vitamin D point of view you're better off with a diet rich in Vitamin D, or supplementation.
Unsurprisingly wild-caught salmon and pasture-raised chicken eggs yield higher Vitamin D content, but supplementation also works. If you're vegan and deprived of sunlight, then supplementation might your only viable option.
Does the sunlight work better than the lamp, or do you just prefer it for some other reason?
But I don't think that attitude is conductive to point B; taking extra care with work-life balance, getting enough exercise and decompression and so on, so I have a low threshold of just dropping what I'm doing and taking a break in the daylight :)
Went outside to compare app results: Not too bright living room - 10lux
Brightly lit kitchen - 400 lux.
Outside (it's 15:45 in Norway, already getting dark), cloudy late autumn day/early evening - 50lux (which doesn't really prove my point :/)
From memory: Sunny day, direct sunlight - 40k lux Cloudy summer day - 10k lux.
A window filters 50-80%
You see that even on a cloudy day you get as much as sitting 20cm from a SAD lamp.
With 10k lux you need approximately 30min exposure before 9 o'clock to keep circadian rhythm from drifting.
Yet, I’m afraid it’s not really an option for most us (including OP I guess) to move to West Norway.
The rest of the paragraph explains exactly why living in West Norway would be an unhelpful move.
We've got easy access to some wicked and lonely nature, though, so it's not a big hassle to arrange an interesting lifestyle that makes up for it.
There is light during the day in winter it just doesn’t last as long, so important to get what you can. I may explore building some led lights for when the sun goes down. UFO lights on Amazon are quite inexpensive now and very efficient. Heat they generate indoors in winter works to heat the house as well and depending on your gas prices might not be that bad compared to your gas furnace or could even be cheaper so it is like free strong lighting.
https://www.pickhvac.com/calculator/heating-annual-cost/
A good calculator here. A reminder that LED lighting is ~100% efficient just like an electric space heater, as all heat generated is trapped in and heats your house. Of course things like heat pumps can reach over 100% efficiency (up to 300%!).
Last year was another fall when I could feel myself getting more and more tired and lack of energy and I couldn't figure out why. Christmas came around and my mom got our family high lux lights and literally the first time I tried it I could feel a difference. The tiredness was zapped away instantly. You can feel your body's reaction to the lux.
Pretty much whenever I'm sitting at a desk I have it on. The one I have has the ability to change the intensity, so sometimes I move it down from the max if I can feel overly bright. I plan on getting another one soon to have on the other side of my desk.
I don't have a brand to suggest, but doing test searches shows there are many different kinds. Thinking about price, they're so beneficial that from the benefits I get from it, I'd legit pay over $1k for one. Life in the dark cold winter is so much better. I hope everyone reading this gives one a try at least.