Don't be Sad, Be Glad with these Herbs

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SAD is especially prevalent in countries at the extreme northern and southern ­latitudes, where there may be only an hour or two of sunlight each day during the winter. 

Every fall, like clockwork, Maureen went into an emotional slump. As she sat in my office one December morning, the thirty-eight-year-old bookkeeper and mother of two teenagers said that her body felt heavy and her brain in low gear. Her usually manageable life seemed like too much to handle.

“I can’t get up for work in the morning,” she said. “I jump at the kids, seem to have no patience at all, and my mood is in the dumps.”

Maureen (not her real name) further described feeling sluggish and ­withdrawn, craving sweet and starchy foods, gaining weight, and sleeping whenever and for as long as she could. These are all symptoms of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a form of depression that occurs with the decreasing amount of sunlight during the fall and winter. Maureen’s mother and one sister had the same problem, and her recollection of the winters in her childhood home were particularly gloomy, indeed.

Sound familiar? If so, you may also be one of the 10 million Americans with full-blown SAD. More than twice that many people experience less serious versions of the disorder.

What causes SAD?

Traditionally, psychiatrists have labeled this condition the “holiday blues.” The assumption is that this festive time of year brings up gloomy feelings for those who had unhappy childhoods, unfulfilled holidays, or are far away from their loved ones. These influences aside, scientists are now discovering that this condition actually has some biological underpinnings.

An accumulation of evidence confirms that the decreasing sunlight portion of a twenty-four-hour period (called a photo­period) is the culprit. In people prone to SAD, sunlight deprivation triggers biochemical changes in the brain, directed by the chemicals melatonin and serotonin. This, in turn, results in a disturbance in the natural cycles of the body (called the circadian rhythm) that control sleeping, wakefulness, and hormone secretion. Although everyone has lower brain serotonin levels in fall and winter, people with SAD appear to have a more pronounced problem with serotonin transmission.

Our internal biological clocks are ­synchronized to the twenty-four-hour light-dark cycle in the physical world. This ­allows us to be alert by daylight and to become sleepy as the sun begins to set. This pattern worked well for Stone Age people, who could rest and regenerate during the dark night hours. However, the invention of the light bulb (and earlier, the discovery of fire) has led us to run counter to our inborn cycles. No longer living a primal life, we are called upon to function during hours of darkness. In fact, our society is built on this precept—can you imagine the slowdown if in the late fall and winter everyone slept from dusk until daylight?