Feeling blue?!

Feeling glum now that darkness has descended upon Germany for the next four months?

It's not even four o'clock and already the sun is slinking off to enjoy 16 hours of slumber. It was doing a feeble job anyway of beating away the clouds, which are so low they seem to be brushing the top of your head.

You're feeling tired, irritable, guilty, unsexy and hungry for sweet, starchy foods.

You may, according to German doctors, be suffering from winter blues, known in psychiatry as seasonal affective disorder or SAD, a mysterious condition that seriously affects one in 25 people in Germany, touches many more, and can drive sufferers to suicide.

Now is the time that winter depression will start to bite. The days are a little under eight hours long. On the winter solstice, December 21, the sun will be up for a paltry 7 hours, 39 minutes, rising at 8:15 am and setting at 3:54 pm.

During that brief window, your brain will be using the neurotransmitter serotonin to keep you bouncy and active. Serotonin promotes good moods and people with serotonin dysfunction are at risk of depression. About an hour after dark, when decent amounts of light have stopped entering your eyes and hitting your retinas, your serotonin will peak, after which some of it is converted to melatonin, a hormone that tells your biological clock it's time for sleep.

Before artificial light, our ancestors simply slept longer during winter nights. Today we soldier on through darkness, going to work and coming home in darkness. So although doctors have been noticing some form of winter depression since Hippocrates in ancient Greek times, it is a particularly modern curse.

The symptoms to look out for, Professor Heinz says, include low mood, lack of motivation, an inability to enjoy normally fun activities, feelings of guilt, overtiredness, a craving for sweet or carbohydrate-rich foods and weight gain (unlike normal depression, in which sufferers are often unable to sleep and lose their appetite).

To avoid the wintertime blues you ought to get as much sunlight as you can. Go for a walk in the morning and play some sport if you can, as physical exercise reduces melatonin levels.

Special lamps are available that produce very bright light. These are as effective a treatment for winter depression as anti-depressants such as Prozac and Zoloft, Professor Heinz says.

in http://www.thelocal.de/lifestyle/20081204-15905.html