Living Well
Fighting the Wintertime Blues
Cold winter days do not have to mean dealing with the depression that comes with seasonal affective disorder. Columnist Ann Brennan shares how she fought back and now enjoys Maryland winters.
It is cold outside. It is the kind of cold that has many of us avoiding the outdoors at all costs, moving from car to house or office as quickly as possible. And if we are exercising at all, it is in our homes or at a gym. For most of us, the winter months can mean putting on weight and losing the conditioning we have built up over the rest of the year. Worse still it can mean depression and moodiness brought on by seasonal affective disorder (SAD). According to Medicine Net, “your mood is influenced by a complex web of relationships between sunlight, melatonin (the sleep hormone) and serotonin (the hormone associated with wakefulness and elevated mood). As darkness falls, your melatonin levels naturally increase. And as the morning …
