Let There Be Light!
- The English Herbalist
- Dec 11, 2024
- 4 min read
Winter sun – Seasonal Affective Disorder.
A few years ago we returned home early from a holiday in the East Devon. It was our first holiday in 8 years and we’d been really looking forward to it. We started with 3 days in Somerset, visiting the obligatory town of Glastonbury, followed by the rest of our holiday near Ottery St Mary, Devon. We were staying in a little cottage ten miles from the coast.
We adore autumn and back then we had a triple coated dog who struggled with the heat so we chose an autumn holiday when four paws would be more comfortable and when we could appreciate the colour tones of the foliage, kick the leaves and have the beaches to ourselves.
We’d booked our 13-night holiday earlier in the spring, however we returned home after just 8 days. It wasn’t through illness or any emergency back home, it was, unbelievably, because of the lack of natural light. Okay, it was October, but despite this there seemed to be a veil of gloom that held fast over East Devon.
We'd moved to Norfolk almost 6 years prior to this holiday, from Yorkshire, and in that time we hadn’t given a second thought when artists moved in their droves to Norfolk and spoke about ‘those big East Anglian skies, shedding light across the county’. Subsequently, our journey to this part of Devon brought about a realisation. Neither myself or my husband suffer from the condition known as SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder, yet not having the skies cast its brightness over our heads, even in the season of autumn, really troubled us.
Thankfully, I had remembered to pack my vitamins and this included my vegetarian Vitamin D. As a human and animal therapist my working time is split between working both indoors and out, however many of our ancestors seldom worked indoors, certainly not mine being farmers working the land. Most of their time in productivity was spent outdoors as offices and supermarkets didn’t exist, their living was made outdoors upon the earth, connecting with nature, animals, the sun, the sky and the elements. These people weren’t cooped up in centrally heated, brick built buildings.
Because so many of us now work indoors, leaving for work in the dark and returning home in the dark, many of us don’t get enough sunlight on our bodies. Sunlight’s energy helps convert Vitamin D within the body through its ultraviolet rays.
Vitamin D.
Research has shown a link between vitamin D deficiency and low mood, even depression. This was certainly the case in the 1990’s when I was at university. I suffered from constant low moods and lethargy. Depression was ruled out, yet further tests provided a conclusion of Vitamin D deficiency.
Vitamin D affects the amount of chemicals the brain produces, one of these chemicals is serotonin. Exactly how vitamin D works in your brain isn’t fully understood. Most mammals in the natural world respond to light. As a result, the body is tuned in to the daylight hours in order to maintain our circadian rhythms. Circadian rhythms are physical, mental and behavioural changes that follow a roughly 24-hour cycle, responding primarily to light and darkness in an organism's environment. Your circadian rhythms are effectively your body’s internal clock and if these rhythms are disrupted it can result in you suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder and may require light therapy.
Most people with SAD feel better after they use light therapy. Light therapy comes in the form of lamps simulating natural daylight indoors, dimming in spectrum just as it would at the end of the day. Light therapy may be most effective if you use it first thing in the morning when you wake up. You and your therapist can determine when light therapy works best for you. Response to this therapy usually occurs in 2 to 4 days, but it may take up to 3 weeks of light therapy before symptoms of SAD are relieved. The price of such devices start from just £29 so for people with SAD they can be a boon.
I like to incorporate a few alternatives in my articles and as we’re speaking about Vitamins, usually I’d speak about how we can incorporate Vitamin D rich foods into our diet, but actually there are very few foods that contain it! Foods with higher amounts of vitamin D include fish, liver, and egg yolk, the 2 former products not possible if you are vegetarian like myself. Excellent sources of Vitamin D are foods and beverages that have vitamin D added to them. Cow’s milk always has added vitamin D.
So what if you’re vegetarian and don’t eat fish or liver or even vegan and don’t eat eggs? What if light therapy is out of the question? Well, stick to summer holidays and spend the darker months at home - after all, there’s no place like home to make you feel better.
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