Info on SAD

[lorimt]

I have a feeling I'm at least mildly affected by Seasonal Affective Disorder, given how much darkness and rain affect my mood. It's far from clinical, but I figured I'd look into the research around dealing with it. In case other people find it useful, here's what I found.



Vitamin D appears to be at least tangentially related. A bunch of other studies show most people are low on Vitamin D, so it's worth paying attention to, regardless.

As far as lighting goes, the relevant factors appear to be 10,000 lumens (at whatever distance makes that happen). What I found didn't clarify well on light - maybe natural spectrum, maybe specifically blue. It appears to help if the light comes from at or above eye level, and you have to be awake/open-eyed, but don't have to look directly into the lamp. Time seems to vary from 15-20 min to 30-45.

It looks like most lamps advertised for SAD don't actually have enough lumens to be useful - they mostly focus on being full spectrum. The ones that do mostly look pretty expensive, around $200. I did see one which was only ~$100 now with useless "ion therapy".

I looked at several Ask Metafilter links, but they're mostly pretty anecdotal.

Comments

[yaleartificer.livejournal.com]

I'm affected by the weather, too. I think SAD is like general depression in that people generally "have it" to some degree -- it's a spectrum (har har) and not a boolean on/off thing.

Like everything else, it's probably also affected by the placebo effect, as well as the nocebo effect (like the placebo, only believing things are harmful makes them so). A nice walk outdoors during the day, even if it's cloudy, combined with a fair amount of conviction that it will help, can probably help.

[lorimt]

Yeah - that's sort of what I figure. I'm nowhere near diagnosable, but I figure extra light and vitamin D can't hurt.