Anyone know a good cure for S.A.D.?

During the winter months the sun has already set by the time I get to work.

Eat salmon. I crave it every October due to it being about the only food that contains ample vitamin D.

ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/nutrients/ … easureby=g

Ideally we should get sun between 10am and 2pm in order to receive UVB and UVA in balance and we should avoid sun exposure outside that band due to UVA dominance. There is no sense is receiving UVA damage without the benefit of UVB vitamin D generation.

All indoor lighting probably extends into the UVA (since UVB requires more energy) and probably contributes to cataracts (A/B imbalance).

Blue lights (daylight bulbs) are pretty, but have more energy which causes more damage than yellow light. This is a big deal right now, especially with regard to public safety. gunnar.com/do-environmentally-f … blindness/

Well that last bit isn’t a worry for me, since I’m already blind.

Maia, I remember you were trying to be a neo-pagan at some point. Have you abandoned it?

No, not at all. I’ve become even more serious about it and hope to be able to train as a priestess.

Well then, perhaps you can incorporate it into your worldview and try to somehow work with it, instead.
Your pagan ancestors most likely also experienced it, but they may also incorporated it into their spirituality and world view as part of their adaptation to their environment.
And their ancestors probably had it even worse, to the point where what mattered the most was not just upholding the psychological well-being, but actually just surviving through (especially long) winters. Starvation was a real concern and possibility in winter even in not so distant past. Perhaps back then just knowing that they had enough food to last through the winter (a good harvest) may have been enough to keep their spirits up (especially if you know that you might not make it through).
Granted, today we live on an artificial schedule, with different energy demands, but maybe some kind of synthesis or compromise could be attempted. That could be your challenge. For example, there are some diets which encourage eating local seasonal foods. So, the emphasis is on available local fresh fruits and vegetables in summer months and meats, nuts and fats in winter months. Some activities that focus on solitary inner work may also take priority during winter months. The idea is to go with the natural flow and also try to incorporate it into modern lifestyle (as best as you can).

I don’t know how I feel about pagans suggesting using sun lamps. As a pagan, how comfortable are you in tricking your body into thinking it’s summer? I feel like something valuable would be lost in the process (even if it’s not pleasant).

I would never consider using a sun lamp and always try and avoid drugs or suppliments, even if they are supposed to be natural or herbal (real herbs don’t come in capsules, for example). I’m a great believer in the idea that a healthy humam body shouldn’t need such things because it’s already perfectly adapted to its environment. I would go even further and say that everything we need to cure ourselves of anything can be found around us, growing in the forest for example, and we can take such things in the form of herbal teas, as our ancestors did.

That’s the theory, anyway. But none of us are perfect and I fall short of that ideal. In particular, while I would very much like to get into a natural routine of spending the daylight hours outdoors, given that I work in the evenings, this is not always possible, as I have other things to do in the afternoon. If I’m to train as a priestess I would have to give up my job and begin a totally new daily routine, which is one of the reasons it is so appealing, but as of now, I am still reluctant to give up the sense of independence having a regular income gives me, even if that independence is ultimately spurious.

I agree with both you Maia, and Pan, on not tricking the body with artificial stimuli, as who knows what repercussions and effect they can have on the body over time.

Hypericum tea, made from the flowers from the Hypericum plant, is the natural alternative to the capsule form, and is covered in the most stunning buttercup-yellow bowl-sized flowers - I have one in my garden, and a smaller variety in a shady corner, but I have not ingested from them due to unnecessty.

If it grows naturally in England I would certainly consider it.

Hypericum Perforatum and Hypericum androsaemum are both native to Britain.

That’s definitely the sort of thing I would use then, rooted in our native soil.

Yes, I bought a reptile light, but rarely use it because I kinda feel like you: that the light may be missing something that occurs naturally in sunlight.

During the winter I usually seek out vitamin C and D foods, not because I’m trying to be healthy, but because I crave them. Fermented pickled peppers (or fermented anything really) is a good source of vitamin C in winter and was the cure for scurvy on ocean voyages. Vitamin C is hard to store and easily destroyed by heat, time, light and is very hard to obtain in winter.

Then about march, or as soon as it’s warm enough, I lay out in the sun daily until I get too busy to manage it.

I believe that we shouldn’t force medicine on ourselves and health routines should be in response to cravings. Like Mark Twain said, “Be careful reading health books; you may die of a misprint.”

The foods that we crave are exactly what our body needs. Or at least they would be if we were able to lead an active, outdoor life.

I think so, although sometimes we can go overboard into addiction where the thing we crave causes harm. For instance a friend starting craving salt and initially I told him the craving is probably medicinal, but then he began consuming a whole shaker every couple days. About a year later he had a heart attack and kidney failure. I don’t think the salt caused it, but such an intense craving was a warning sign and no doubt all that salt didn’t help. Here is a doctor who says refrigeration is unnatural and it’s causing a deficiency of salt in people since salt was used for ages for food storage before refrigerators: youtube.com/watch?v=TV-36i2nmx4

Anyway, I find food cravings fascinating.

Craving salami, pepperoni, sausage (fermented meats) is almost certainly a craving for vitamin K2 ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/nutrients/ … easureby=g And that could be indication of atherosclerosis (or other calcification of soft tissue)

Craving liver is probably a vitamin A craving ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/nutrients/ … easureby=g

Craving peppers, especially pickled, could be vitamin C ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/nutrients/ … easureby=g

Craving salmon (fatty fish) is almost certainly vitamin D ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/nutrients/ … easureby=g

Others are more difficult to figure out. Craving vinegar pickles could be a craving for calcium since lots of acid is required to breakdown calcium components. Craving dirt is thought to be a craving for calcium. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophagia

I think animals are more in tune with their cravings than people since people are obsessed with right and wrong behavior and fall victim to fashions in science (low fat, low salt diets).

The problem with the ‘only do natural things’ approach is that our current environment isn’t natural at all, and not the environment for which we are adapted. Most of our evolution happened in much warmer climates, and later periods were much colder (the last ice age ended 11000 years ago), and the Genes associated with S.A.D. arose farther north than England. Many foods we eat are transplants, most of our local environments are heavily modified by human activities, and our daily routines are generally almost nothing like our daily routines in the ‘state of nature’.

It shouldn’t be impossible to find artificial lights that faithfully mimic natural lights, because we have good data on the spectrum of natural light and can measure spectra for artificial lights as well. It also seems that the light isn’t just about creating vitamin D, because shining extra light on people’s skin was found to have no effect on S.A.D. symptoms. And, relevant to the present case, the presence of S.A.D. in the blind lead to the discovery to additional photoreceptive cells in the retina that are tied to S.A.D., that allow the blind to synchronize their circadian rhythm and are also related to S.A.D. In line with other observations, these cells are most sensitive to blue light, which is also most effective in treating S.A.D.

I’m sure all those things are many more like them are true. Our body surely has a way of telling us what it needs.

I don’t have any retinas. I also have no circadian rhythm and it is always the hardest thing sticking to times every day, for my job, for example.

Yes, the reason we aren’t very efficient at converting carotenes to retinol… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_A … enoids_(IU

And the reason we aren’t efficient at converting K1 to K2… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_K … vitamin_K2

And the reason we can’t manufacture B12 and who knows what-all is because we’ve been too reliant on animals to make these conversions and most of that reliance has come by way of artificial domestication.

To your point about modified food I would submit that ALL of our food would not exist without us, at least not in the form that it exists: ducks, chickens, cows, pigs, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, you name it, all was selected for by us and couldn’t exist without our stewardship.

Unless one moves to the mountains and learns to eek out an existence on bugs, berries, rabbits and deer, then it is impossible to have a natural diet. Fortunately or unfortunately, we have evolved to be reliant upon our own technology because to truly thrive in the jungle, we’d need the fermenting guts of the apes that live there or else the claws and fangs of the cats, but we have brains instead and our bodies have evolved in accordance with our own artificial selections such that what is truly natural is now deficient and detrimental.

That is why I’d rather listen to my cravings rather than some idealization of what’s natural and proper. If I’m wrong, at least I didn’t spend a lifetime force-feeding myself bran flakes lol

The lights that exist are expensive and the reptile bulbs have various spectrums which vary with time as the coatings deteriorate. Here is some research on it uvguide.co.uk/phototherapyphosphor-tests.htm

I have this one zillarules.com/all-products … cent-bulbs because it extends farther into the UVB range than the other brands.

Have you ever noticed that cats enjoy sleeping under lights? Apparently cats get their vitamin D from licking their fur. vitamindwiki.com/Controversy+cats+and+vitamin+D

There is also something about washing vitamin D from our skins in the shower. vitamindcouncil.org/washing … -m17CXwaHs

Interesting. I’m not sure what the limits of propriety are here, so I apologize in advance if this is rude or invasive, and please feel free to tell me to fuck off if I deserve it, but: Do you have eyes? If so, do you have optic nerves?

There are some photoreceptive cells outside of the retina, but I get the impression that most of the actions is in the retina, even for non-visual photo-receptivity. And the observation that light applied to the skin doesn’t affect S.A.D. suggests that whatever other non-visual light sensing systems exist aren’t playing a big role in S.A.D.

Does it get cold where you live? I wonder if the cold might play a role in S.A.D., since it is common in Nordic countries (though apparently not Iceland, possibly due to significant fish consumption there).

My understanding is that cravings aren’t reliably associated with nutrient needs. While this would be logical, in practice cravings seem to be influenced by psychological and social factors, e.g. “comfort foods” are craved during stressful periods, possibly because they’re associated with safety or literal comfort. Pica (eating non-food things like dirt) is associated with nutrient deficiencies, but the causal direction isn’t clear, and in any case the things that people are eating don’t necessarily help: dirt isn’t particularly iron rich, so a craving to eat dirt, even if caused by a nutrient deficiency, isn’t related to the nutritional content of dirt (at least, not local dirt; maybe dirt in our evolutionary environment was actually a decent source of iron and zinc).

What about greenhouse lights? That seems like somewhere that optimizing lights has been thoroughly investigated, though they probably tend redder than what humans need.

What about tanning bed lights? You expressed some concern about the harmful effects of UV lights, but again it seems like somewhere that trial-and-error might have hit upon some good trade-offs.