Do I have any of these?
Symptoms of SAD
Welcome back! This is Blog 2, Week 2: This week I thought I would provide some of the common symptoms of SAD. The list of symptoms comes from the knowledge and research of Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal in his book: Winter Blues. The core symptoms of SAD are as follows:
Reduced energy
Increased eating, including carbohydrate cravings
Disturbed sleep
Lowered sex drive
Thinking problems, such as difficulty concentrating and processing information
Mood problems, particularly depression
Do any of these resonate with you? Or perhaps you have some other symptom that isn't included on this list. Interesting to me is the physical symptoms sufferers may experience. Some of those are: backaches, muscle aches and headaches. In addition some experience different types of infection. Further, Dr. Rosenthal states that many feel as though they have the flu all winter long. However, the predominant symptom, which many already know and experience themselves, is the lack of natural light during the long winter months. I want to stop for a moment to recognize that there is hope. And there are so many self care choices to manage your symptoms today. But, it bares listing out the possibilities one might be suffering during this season. Not everyone has the same experiences, nor do we all suffer the same length of time or the same time/times during the year. Another interesting point is that as I write this blog post, we who live in the Northern Hemisphere (North America for instance; that is where I live) are beginning to come out of our seasonal depression; whilst those living in the Southern Hemisphere, such as Australia and New Zealand are just going into their seasonality. So it can be assumed that someone, somewhere, at any given time around our world, is next in line to wrestle with their own particular brand of Seasonality. Keep in mind, whether you are on the upswing and coming out of your brand of symptoms or find that you are heading into them, you have common ground with nearly 14 million Americans alone that can relate. We are united on that front for sure.
In closing,
I will be back next week to continue this conversation as well as talk about and suggest the first tool in the the arsenal kit for SAD, again offered by Dr. Rosenthal. Until then, thank you for checking in...take care, Jeanine