A common question is whether the amount of light in the morning can affect the mood of a person for the day? The logical and truthful answer is “Yes, it can”. “Winter blues” is a common enough term and refers to the constant low energy one experiences during the course of a day, in the cold weather. Feeling depressed, low energy, overweight, and literally forcing yourself out of bed in the mornings throughout the short days of winters can be extremely taxing.
This condition is generally termed as Seasonal Affective Disorder, or the SAD syndrome, which occurs due to the lack of exposure to light. When you wake up in the early hours of the morning, it is still dark outside that gives you a general feeling of gloominess, lingering on for the whole day, if not exposed to enough light. This happens mostly in winters, because days are shorter, and when your day starts, it is still dark at that time, which leaves its affects on you.
On the other hand, have you noticed how a bright sunny day can suddenly lift your mood? The bright sunlight outside, with the noise of the birds chirping and people going out there, daily business seems to make the start of a day a much happier affair. People certainly complain less about having to get up early in the morning during summers.
Many medical studies have confirmed that the amount of exposure to the sunlight affects the mood of a person, which may cause SAD. This means the more the exposure to the light, the merrier the mood would be, and vice versa.
During winters, you wake up in the dark, usually in a cold rather damp environment, get ready for the day and then drive or walk to your office/college/school. By the time the lunch break arrives, you weigh the option of getting out of the office to get a bite to eat outside, against the shortage of time (lunch break is usually just one hour), and more often, you will probably decide to stay put. By the time it is time to go home, it is dark again. One feels as missing out a whole day and experiencing no or less daylight.
There is always a remedy for every problem. There are a few suggestions for it in order to deal with these winter blues. Take a light therapy to lift up your mood and put the gloom away. Use a full spectrum light therapy at the start of the day, as a substitute to the natural sunlight. This light therapy has been widely used for treating the SAD syndrome.
Light boxes and visors are also helpful along with body clocks – these work by using the natural reaction of your body towards sunrise, and sunset, in order to help synchronise your awake/sleep routine. Every morning, the light comes on very gradually, just like a normal sunrise, so that your body responds to the slowly increasing amount of light around you, subconsciously.
The options mentioned above can be very expensive for some people, so you can use more lamps and tube lights to brighten up your surroundings. Another thing that can be done is to keep one or two lights on before going to bed. The idea behind this is to provide exposure to you to more light that you miss during the day.
Rosana Horowitz is an health expert. She is helping people in getting out of depression and she has recommended many products like lumie to get-up on time. You can use it for time management. For more details visit http://www.bodykind.com.