Too Little or Too Much Light?

Several weeks ago when we had the first signs of fall here in Texas, which is another way of saying it wasn't the middle of summer anymore, I had some thoughts. I've always loved the winter and hated the summer. Now, I know this is largely explainable by where I live. I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and now I live in Texas. Both warm and southerly states. Both places where the winters are very mild and the summers are both very hot and very long. So, I always thought it was rather normal.

But this time I wanted to know more. I have theories about it, such as that my very fair Scottish skin and hair are simply better designed to live in lands with less heat. And, really, that might be the answer, or at least a part of it.

I looked up Seasonal Affective Disorder, SAD, which I'd heard of before, and is the condition in which people get clinically depressed in the winter. People with this disorder have predictable chemical changes that create depression, and that do not result from a conscious decision to change their emotions or hormones but rather are caused by less sunlight. This is both more indirect rays and fewer hours per day of sunlight. The best solution to SAD appears to be sitting in front of full-spectrum lights for a certain prescribed amount of time per day in the winter.

I investigated the existance of an inverse SAD effect, and I found it. Not as many cases exist, of course, since most people in this country live further north of me. The condition, in fact, is said to be most commonly found in the southern most states of the US. It is called Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder and is marked by the same symptoms, with the opposite cause.

I knew this applied to me because of the sheer rush of happiness and feelings of extreme peace that I feel in fall and especially in winter.

I thought for the longest while that it was temperature, that I just liked the cold, so I watched myself for the past two months. I get cold just like everyone else. Cold makes me happy, but only sometimes, not all the time. So it wasn't a uniform cause of any chemical changes. I began considering light. I know there is actually a rare condition in which people are allergic to light, and have to live in the dark, so I figure it's not unreasonable to postulate that there could be a large group of people who are merely uncomfortable in too much light. And, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that most of those people are fair-skinned people living in near-tropical latitudes, such as myself. :-)

In fact, I might even go so far as to say that the hormone inbalances present in my family might have been triggered by living at the wrong latitute for our genome. Clearly, we haven't had these imbalances forever, or else our counterparts still living in the UK would share those imbalances.

So far, my observations on myself have proven this light thing to be quite viable. For example, I love my sunglasses. I need them for basic survival and prevention of massive headaches in the summer, and even in the winter, when it's overcast, I'm still a lot more comfortable wearing them. I've noticed that, disproving my theory that cold weather is what makes me happy, that temperature isn't nearly as important as light levels outside. If the sky is completely overcast, I'm as happy as I can possibly be!!! When the sky is the opposite, clear and sunny, even if it's cold outside, my mood is most definitely quite subdued. This is not even going into how incredibly sensitive I am to being sunburned, and how much I hate the feeling on sunlight on my skin or clothes.

The solution? Once you know a new part of yourself, addressing it is more of a priviledge than a chore. When I find myself stressed, just try to get to a darker place. Simple as that. Close the drapes more often, turn off a lightswitch when it seems appropriate. Basically spoil myself in ways that I always thought were socially unacceptable. I'll have to keep learning more as the year progresses, and as the dreaded sun comes back in the spring. In the meantime, I intend to live it up during this cool, darker winter.