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What Is Winter Depression and It's Causes?
Most people experience an extremely mild form of SAD generally referred to as the "winter blahs" or the "winter blues", and its origins are biological. Think about it - we've only had the ability to monitor our environments to ideally suit humans for about a hundred years. That means our bodies still take their cue on what they should be doing from the outside world. In wintertime, food is supposed to be scarce, which means your body wants to conserve as many calories as possible in order to survive. This is why people often put on weight in the winter. They crave carbohydrates and store more fat than usual. Their bodies are trying to protect them from the lean times of winter and make sure they have enough calories to get through a spell of no food.
It also explains why we need more sleep in the winter. You burn far fewer calories while sleeping than while running around, and your body encourages this lethargic behavior as a survival tactic. If your body has a lot of calories stored in the form of fat and isn't burning a lot of calories on physical activity, then you're going to get through the winter just fine.
This is all perfectly normal, but SAD patients experience these symptoms to an overwhelming, and unhealthy degree. Instead of simply craving more carbohydrate-laden foods than usual, they binge eat. Instead of being a little less energetic than they are during the rest of the year, they may find it near-impossible to drag themselves out of bed. It's your basic winter blahs taken to the extreme - and it can be crippling.
SAD affects more women than men and symptoms tend to appear by the time the person is in their 30s. If symptoms appear consistently at the onset of winter in teens, 20s or 30s, then symptoms will likely not improve without treatment or a move to a lower latitude. If you are older than your 30s and have never experienced debilitating symptoms, you will probably never suffer from SAD as diagnoses decrease with age.
As you might suspect, people that live in the North suffer from SAD more frequently than people in Southern latitudes. Some people don't discover they have SAD until they move north. Light therapy can be a simple way to get relief from SAD symptoms all winter long. No longer do you need to suffer from fatigue, lethargy, depression, over eating, irritability, social awkwardness, and anxiety. Just a few minutes or hours of light therapy each day is all it takes.
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