SUMMERTIME SADness

AO Warning: This article contains information on Seasonal Affective Disorder (a type of depression). If you might not feel comfortable reading this but do want to read the rest of the article, you can read everything up until the last heading named ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)’.

With the sun finally starting to shine again after the cloudy and rainy days of the past months, you’ve surely heard people commenting about their happiness with this new weather. Exposure to sunlight is good for the production of, for example, vitamin D and serotonin, explaining why people tend to feel good during this time of the year. However, the spring and summer can bring their own troubles with them.

Daylight Saving Time .

Daylight saving time, or summertime, means advancing the clock by one hour in the spring. The reasoning behind this is that since the sun rises quite early in the summer, earlier than most people get out of bed, advancing the clock makes mornings seem dark and the evenings light for longer. A disadvantage of this, however, is how it affects certain people. For example, some people experience sleeping trouble after this time change. In fact, it can take us weeks before our biological clock is used to it. Summertime has a bigger effect on our biorhythms than wintertime does because we are more capable of adjusting to an extra hour of time than an hour less. Your biorhythm is also geared to follow the hours of light we have. There are fewer hours of sunlight in the winter, so our brains can adjust to the dark hours in the evening better during this season. This helps us sleep better. Evening people also tend to sleep less in summertime than in wintertime because of this.

Hay Fever

A common problem that starts to arise during the spring is hay fever. This common allergic condition affects up to 1 in 5 people. During spring, tree pollen is released, followed by grass pollen during the end of spring/the beginning of summer. Although symptoms tend to get less severe for people as they get older, they can still cause some trouble.

Common symptoms of hay fever include frequent sneezing, a runny or blocked nose, and itchy, red, or watery eyes. Less commonly, people can also experience headaches, fatigue, and the loss of their sense of smell. Unfortunately, there’s no cure for hay fever, but there are some treatment methods. Since avoiding exposure to pollen is close to impossible, especially during the summer, there are some other measures you can take:

- Taking antihistamines prevents an allergic reaction.

- Going outside with (sun)glasses on reduces your exposure to pollen.

- Applying a small amount of Vaseline (petroleum gel) to the nostrils traps the pollen there.

- Taking a shower and changing/washing your clothes after being outdoors removes the pollen from your body and clothes.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder, can be another consequence of the seasons changing. SAD is a type of depression that follows a seasonal pattern. People sometimes call it ‘’winter depression’’, because the symptoms tend to be more severe during the winter and this type is the most well-known. However, this is not the only type of SAD. Besides the more common fallonset type of SAD, where symptoms of depression occur in the late fall until the early winter months, there’s also the type of ‘’summer depression’’. This spring-onset type has symptoms starting in late spring or early summer.

the hormone that makes you feel tired. People with SAD can have a higher level of melatonin, explaining the fall-onset symptom of feeling sleepy and lacking energy throughout the day. Serotonin, a hormone that affects your mood, appetite, and sleep is also affected. Lower serotonin levels, caused by a lack of sunlight, are linked to feelings of depression. The lack of sunlight also impacts the body’s internal or biological clock, as mentioned before. Sunlight is used to time various important functions, such as waking up and going to sleep. When the lower light levels during winter disrupt the biological clock, symptoms of SAD may arise.

Whether people experience the fall-onset or spring-onset type of SAD, the symptoms remain partly the same. They can include a persistent low mood and a loss of interest in everyday activities. However, some symptoms are specific to only one type of SAD. People experiencing ‘’winter depression’’ can experience oversleeping, appetite changes, and a general feeling of tiredness and low energy, while ‘’summer depression’’ can cause insomnia, poor appetite, weight loss, and increased irritability. It’s unclear what exactly causes people to experience Seasonal Affective Disorder. One theory, however, arose from the fact that some cases appear to run in families. This suggests some people are more vulnerable to SAD as a result of their genes. Another theory links SAD to reduced exposure to sunlight during the shorter days in the fall and the winter, which could explain the fall-onset type of SAD. Following this theory, the lack of sunlight during shorter days has an impact on the hypothalamus. This is the part of the brain that affects the production of melatonin, for example, which is