Now that the Christmas tree is composting and radio stations have shelved that cheery holiday music until next winter, let’s get real with some rewriting: ‘Tis the season to be melancholy.
You know the feeling: You’re more tired these days, maybe anxious or moody. Cocooning with some leftover Christmas cookies or other sweet and high-carb fare sounds better than hanging with the crowd. Your sexual appetite may be on a diet, or even fasting. It’s harder to get out of bed, and when you do, your mood resembles the landscape you see cold, dark, and nasty.
That’s the problem: The gloom caused by Mother Nature each winter in much of the country is biologically felt to some degree by an estimated one in four of us — usually starting around October and then magically ending by April with spring’s thaw. For most people, it manifests as winter doldrums, the “I-can’t-wait-for-winter-to-end” feeling that produce mild but manageable sluggishness and food cravings. But about 11 million Americans have a more severe form of winter depression — seasonal affective disorder, the aptly acronymed SAD that is typically diagnosed after at least two consecutive years of more intense symptoms.
