Don't Be SAD: Improve Your Mood

With winter and the holidays behind you, spring is a natural time
torevitalize your body and mind. To help you get back on track,
Psychology Today brings you the spring guide to complete wellness. PT
covers mood, aging, nutrition, fitness, detoxification and skin care--all
important to well-being. Read about seasonal affective disorder, losing
weight, how to fight aging and much more.

Bid your blues good-bye, A burst of bright morning light just might
reset your inner clock and boost your spirits.

Who hasn't had the winter blahs? The season's cold days and long
nights are enough to make spring seem as if it's a hundred years away. A
recent study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts found that
depression, anger, irritability and anxiety peak in winter.

Some of this might just be cabin fever, a frustration stemming from
being cooped up for long periods. But research shows that every winter
tens of millions of Americans suffer from a mood disorder brought on by
lack of light. The condition is known as seasonal affective disorder
(SAD), in which the brain's internal clock can be thrown for a loop if it
doesn't sense a bright burst of light in the morning.

How does the brain know how much light there is early in the day? A
clump of nerve cells, known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, regulates the
brain's internal clock by measuring the amount of light the eyes
register. Light in the morning helps set the internal clock. And what if
you oversleep? The suprachiasmatic nucleus can measure the light that
seeps through your closed eyelids.

Of course, the suprachiasmatic nucleus can reset your internal
clock only if it gets the right stimulus--and on dark winter days, that
can be all but impossible. Unfortunately, many bodily functions actually
depend on the establishment of a day-night cycle to work properly. One of
those functions, researchers believe, is the production of the hormone
serotonin, which is associated both with wakefulness and a sense of
well-being. People with SAD may be suffering from depressed levels of
serotonin.

For years the treatment for people with SAD has been to use a
simulated light source. Specially made fixtures known as "light boxes"
have provided relief. The boxes mimic the brightness of sunshine; experts
recommend that people suffering from SAD sit in front of one for half an
hour to an hour each day.

Yet new evidence suggests the timing of light may be more important
than the total intensity of light. A recent study at
Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City found that people
who got a burst of artificial light in the morning were twice as likely
to overcome their seasonal depression as were those who received the
light in the evening. And a recent controlled experiment by researchers
at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle found that
a simulated dawn--a gradual brightening for 90 minutes in the early
morning--was more effective than a sudden burst of light for half an
hour.

Once spring arrives, the longer days tend to drive away SAD. But
often people are so happy to throw off the cloak of winter gloom that
they go too far in the other direction. There's a name for that tendency,
too: spring fever.

Kava Kava:

This Polynesian herb is a pepper plant that has long been used to
ease stress and anxiety

When stress gets too great to bear, some people have been turning
to a natural mood booster: kava. South Pacific islanders have long served
the brewed root of the kava plant in a coconut shell as a means to
relieve anxiety. So it is fitting that its Latin name, piper methysticum,
means "intoxicating pepper."

Chemists have been able to isolate the active ingredients in
kava--a group of fat-like chemicals known as kavalactones--and though
popping a kava pill doesn't have an exotic appeal, it seems to work just
as well. Some experts believe that kavalactones act much like Western
tranquilizers, but without many of the side effects.

PHOTOS (COLOR): TENS OF MILLIONS OF AMERICANS SUFFER FROM A MOOD
DISORDER BROUGHT ON BY LACK OF LIGHT