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The four saddest months of the year are November, December, January and February. Due to the lack of sunlight at this time, many of us have a deteriorating mood, apathy, drowsiness appear … Five ideas to help avoid losses.
Perhaps, for some, late autumn and winter are filled with the romance of evenings by the fireplace, long walks through the forest and cooking warming dishes. But for 20% of men and women, every winter morning is a struggle with a blanket, infusion of liters of caffeine and uncontrolled eating of sweets in order to somehow energize themselves.1. “Due to the lack of light, our body literally falls into hibernation,” writes psychologist David Servan-Schreiber, “vital instincts (hunger and sexual desire) weaken, and even curiosity and the desire to learn new things fade away.” Five of the best ideas to help you get through this winter.
Pass the tests
- Why are you so sensitive?
- What is your biorhythm?
1. Use the right alarm. When the sun rises, its rising light gradually reduces the production of melatonin, the sleep hormone. That is, as soon as the sun rises above the horizon, we ourselves wake up in an absolutely natural way. This is why waking up in the summer months is so easy for us. This is exactly what the Philips Wake-Up Light achieves. At the right time, it will begin to fill the room with light, simulating the rising of the sun and providing a comfortable and natural awakening on a dark November morning.
2. Keep a schedule. Try to get up and go to bed at the same time. Gradually, your body will get used to this rhythm and begin to wake up at the right time, and the risk of insomnia will be minimized. Do not use gadgets before going to bed, try turning them off an hour before bedtime – the bright light of the smartphone and laptop screens “wakes up” the brain, preventing it from relaxing and falling asleep. Do not forget to turn off bright lights: a working TV or a table lamp contributes to weight gain2. For 40 years, doctors and psychologists have observed the sleep of 13 women. It turned out: the brighter it was in the bedroom of the participant in the experiment, the higher was her body mass index and the wider the waist.
David Cervan-Schreiber
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The arsenal of dealing with anxiety and depression is not limited to the psychoanalyst’s couch. We can help ourselves a lot. “Antistress” is the second book translated into Russian by the outstanding doctor and psychotherapist David Servan-Schreiber.
3. Go outside. Nothing energizes like real sunlight, albeit covered by clouds. During your lunch break, try to leave the office for a twenty-minute walk. Not only will this reduce your stress levels, but it will also be a great exercise to help keep you in shape. Walking during daylight hours literally slims both women and men3. It’s all about melatonin. Its production is directly related to the synthesis of insulin, a hormone that controls blood glucose levels. Light normalizes the metabolism of glucose in the body and thus regulates our weight.
4. Phototherapy. Even the most brightly lit office is not enough to replenish the body’s energy reserves. If you’re feeling severely short of sun, try phototherapy. Using a special lamp, you can quickly get a light similar in strength to the light of a sunny spring morning, which is five times brighter than ordinary electric lamps. Thirty minutes a day in front of such an apparatus will protect against manifestations of seasonal depression and energize you for the whole day.
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- love the dark
5. Watch your food. The less light, the less energy remains in us. Many try to replenish its reserves with sugar, but it gives only a temporary effect. After a few minutes, the body will begin to produce insulin to lower the sugar level, and we will again feel sluggish. Try to avoid fast carbohydrates and sweets. Make your choice in favor of bananas, nuts, seeds and avocados. The energy from these foods will be used up slowly, and you will be able to avoid the effect of a “roller coaster” with mood. In addition, do not forget that with a lack of ultraviolet radiation in the body, the synthesis of vitamin D slows down. We may complain of chronic fatigue and depression, but in fact suffer from a lack of vitamin D. “Vitamin D refers to vitamins that can both be synthesized in our body, and to stock up from the outside, – says nutritionist Sergey Sergeev. – In any case, even if we actively spent the summer in the sun, supplies are often enough only until the middle of winter. Therefore, vitamin D must come from food. Its main source is fatty fish, more precisely, fish oil, cod liver. Also sources of this vitamin are meat, egg yolk, milk.
1 According to the Seasonal Affective Disorder Association (SADA), http://www.sada.org.uk/index_2.php
2 E. McFadden et al. «The Relationship between obesity and exposure to light at night: cross-sectional analyses of over 100,000 women in the breakthrough generations study», American Journal of Epidemiology, May 2014.
3 PLoS One, April 2014.