Dr. Kelly Rowan

It just gets really, really dark, and it can get really depressing.

I should be in a bikini on a beach with a mojito in hand somewhere.

It was negative six degrees when I woke up this morning.

And we have snow from the monster storm that has not melted.

We got probably 18 inches that's still on the ground.

So seasonal affective disorder is on a continuum where most people at a high latitude are going to have some symptoms.

It's just a question of how many and how bad, how interfering are the symptoms.

Seasonal affective disorder is the extreme end where it's clinical depression in certain seasons.

Folks who have the winter blues have some of the symptoms, but not a clinical depression tied to the seasons.

And then there's the rest of us at a high latitude that have a few symptoms, like maybe we're a little bit more fatigued, our appetite changes with a preference towards carbohydrate-rich foods, we're moving a little bit slower, maybe socializing a little bit less, but not having significant symptoms that interfere with our life.

So the reason most of us can confer around the water cooler at work and talk about seasonal affective disorder is as something we can relate to.

People have some symptoms.

It's just a question of how many and how bad.

So when the days are shorter, specifically when the sun is rising later in the winter months, our circadian clock is affected by that, by the long nights that we have in the wintertime.

The circadian clock is the part of our brain that regulates our daily rhythms and things like alertness and our sleep rhythms so that when we have a longer night, the circadian clock gets kind of out of sync with the light-dark cycle and can make us feel kind of sloggy, especially in the morning when the alarm is going off and it's hard to get out of bed.

It's because the brain is saying, wait a minute, it's still dark out.

It's still time to be asleep.

What is this?

You want me to get up and get going now?

It's a bit confused, this time of year.