Sunshine in a Pill?

“We starve, look at one another…Walking.. in our winter coats…Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, the SUN shine IN!” ~ lyrics from the musical Hair

Today is a good day… in fact, today is a GREAT day!

It’s unseasonably warm and the sunlight is pouring down like the rain we in Chicago have had so much of.  This for me makes all the difference.

A friend of mine once commented, watching me skip across the lawn on the first sunny day after 9 straight days of downpour, “WOW, you really are solar powered, aren’t you?”  And yesterday, one of my favorite baristas at Starbucks noted, “You’re like a flower, always turning your face to the sun.”

It’s true; I am.  I blossom in the summer and feel as if I begin to wilt as the days grow shorter and winter looms.  In the past few years, I’ve noticed that fall brings with it a sense of impending doom as I slowly feel the brightness of my personality slip into hibernation.

This year is no different- actually, if anything, this year it’s worse.

Perhaps it’s the fact that we here in Chicago only got about 6 weeks of “real” summer before the cool days began again.  Maybe it’s my body memory of what seemed like an endless stretch of gray from Halloween to 4^th of July last year…

In the past, in order to combat my winter blues, I’ve upped my exercise, watched my diet, increased my water intake, taken melatonin, and purchased a light therapy box – sitting in front of it daily, like a plant under grow lights.  Last winter, against my more rational judgment, I broke down and went tanning once a week.  All of these things have helped, but nothing has ever completely dispelled the sense that a great weight was dragging me down or the urge to go to bed and not get up again until spring.

All I know is that I’m not interested in living like that again.  So I’ve done more research…

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) affects more than 6% of the population, with people in northern climates 7 times more likely to be diagnosed than those in the south.  Three quarters of those affected are women.

According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms include:

• Depressed mood
• Irritability
• Hopelessness
• Anxiety
• Loss of energy
• Social withdrawal
• Oversleeping (feeling like you want to hibernate)
• Loss of interest in activities you normally enjoy
• Appetite changes, especially a craving for foods high in carbohydrates such as pastas, rice, bread and cereal
• Weight gain
• Difficulty concentrating and processing information

Sound familiar?

In the past few years, some scientists have linked the growing number of SAD sufferers with a high rate of vitamin D deficiency.  With the very real threat of sun cancer, very few of us spend enough time in the sun without heavy duty sun screen which not only blocks the cancer causing rays but also prohibits our bodies from creating D naturally.

According to a very well sited wikipedia article, “Vitamin D deficiency results in impaired bone mineralization and leads to bone softening diseases, rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults, and possibly contributes to osteoporosis…  Vitamin D malnutrition may also be linked to an increased susceptibility to several chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure, tuberculosis, cancer, periodontal disease, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, seasonal affective disorder , peripheral artery disease, cognitive impairment which includes memory loss and foggy brain, and several autoimmune diseases including type 1 diabetes. There is an association between low vitamin D levels and Parkinson’s disease, but whether Parkinson’s causes low vitamin D levels, or whether low vitamin D levels play a role in the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease has not been established.”

(other great information about the D deficiency epidemic can be found here and about D’s potential role in preventing Swine Flu here)

In addition, new research suggests that D may be crucial in both cancer & cardio vascular disease prevention.

YIKES

So armed with all this research, I took myself off to the store.  Now, there’s also a lot of information out there from some very reputable sources that suggests that the current daily recommended dosage of vitamin d may not be anywhere close to sufficient for healthy living, never mind correcting deficiency.  I settled on a dosage that I felt comfortable with and went for it…

And, within a couple of days, I felt better.

I was leery, of course.  Perhaps it was just a placebo effect?  But it’s been several weeks now and I continue to feel bright and sunny on the inside even when the weather is cloudy and gray.  And best of all, I don’t feel dragged down… the spring is back in my step; I’m interested in being social, and I feel like I’ve got new buds on me – hopefully enough to keep my me-ness blossoming through the winter months.

That internal sunshine, that sense of lightness, that sense of being grounded in who you really are instead of being at the mercy of the season…. it’s worth the research, worth consulting your primary care physician (which of course we recommend that you do), worth the trip to the store.

“Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.” ~ Anthony J. D’Angelo