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Welcome back friends, if you didn't know, I live in the state of Washington and come about February, I get so tired of Washington weather that I have to get out of here and find some sunshine somewhere. One of the reasons that this is true for me is that I suffer from winter blues. Now, if you tend to feel down or lethargic or more tired in the wintertime, it could be that you also suffer from winter blues. This is different than seasonal affective disorder, which you may have heard of. And today we're going to talk about both. Do you have it? How would you know if you had it? What can you do about it? And is it the same as depression? I'm going to answer all your questions today. And probably some questions you didn't know you should be asking. So let's go.

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Welcome back to the no nonsense wellness podcast, the place for women who are trying to do all the things and stay healthy, sane and actually enjoy life in the process. Hey, I'm Tara, a trained therapist, a life coach, a nutrition coach and a fitness instructor. And I'm on a mission to help you take back control of your mind health and life. Each week, I'll be cutting through the nonsense and getting real with you. I'll bring you the insight and information you need to take control of your weight and help find food freedom. And finally break free from the thoughts that are sabotaging you and holding you back. You, my friend are powerful, and the world needs you to start showing up in a bigger way. It's time to get unstuck and start moving forward. So let's pop in those earbuds, tie up those shoes, let's walk and talk

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I get the winter blues. Yep, it's true. And if you live above the 45th parallel like

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I do here in Washington state, there is a good chance that it's affecting you to or at least someone you love. I struggled for years before I realized that this is what was going on for me every winter. And now I have some strategies for combating it. Strategy number one is just acknowledging that it's real, that it's happening. It's not just in my head, I'm not a crazy person every winter, there is physiologically things happening in my body. And then number two are all the things that I do to combat this every year. So I'm going to share both of those things with you, we're going to talk about what is seasonal affective disorder, what is winter blues and how they compare, and how you might know if you're dealing with one of those two things, and then what to do about it. So you can solve this problem for yourself, too. Alright, so the first thing we're going to talk about is seasonal affective disorder. And I really want to draw a distinction here, between sad as they call it very appropriately, seasonal affective disorder and what we generally term as winter blues. 

So seasonal affective disorder is a major depression diagnosis with a specifier that it's happening seasonally. So generally, generally, in the wintertime, that is much different than winter blues, most of us would call it fall into the kind of winter blues category. When the winter time comes, we're just kind of in a funk. And we'll talk about that in a sec. But I want to tell you exactly what seasonal affective disorder looks like. So that you know that if this is you, then you'll know that you need to take a slightly different route that what I'm going to talk about today. So major depression obviously looks like a depressed mood. But it also looks like feelings of hopelessness. And that's a real important distinction. We all might feel hopeless or overwhelmed at times. But I'm talking about the hopelessness that keeps you like in bed like you can't even get out of bed, your body hurts, you can't move right. That's what I'm talking about. When I'm talking about feelings of hopelessness here, lack of energy fatigue, you want to stay in bed all day, you don't want to get out or you physically feel like you can't get out. These are major depressive symptoms, that's different than the winter blues that we're going to talk about in a sec. You might also experience difficulty concentrating changes in sleep or appetite, loss of pleasure or even loss of wanting to do things that might bring you pleasure or thoughts of death or suicide. So these are really important distinctions that I want to draw between seasonal affective disorder and winter blues. So if you are suffering from symptoms like that major depressive symptoms within that special specified timeframe of the season, then you might have seasonal affective disorder. So all the things that we're going to talk about today will be helpful, but you are also going to want it to make sure that you add in that extra step of seeking professional help. So go to the therapist. Go to even to a psychiatrist, perhaps medication is a route that you might need to be taking. Everything we'll talk about today will be helpful if you have seasonal affective disorder. But I really want to make sure you hear me when I say that you need the extra layer of going and talking to a professional about this. 

Okay. So let's talk about then winter blues. So again, being really clear and drawing a distinction, we are not talking about a depressive disorder here, we are simply talking when we say winter blues, that those kind of depressive symptoms, but to a much lesser degree. So when the days start to get shorter, and it's darker, and you're just feeling more tired and more, like just not quite right. And you're kind of in a funk. And like for me personally, I tend to crave more carbs, my diet kinda is not as great as it might be at other times of the year. I want to sleep more I want to stay in bed more, I probably generally put on a little bit of weight in the winter time. I just it's like for me this feeling of like, I just am a bear who needs to hibernate, like, I don't want to do stuff. I just want to stay cozy and Hibernate. If you can relate to those things, then we're talking about winter blues. So it's something that I personally have dealt with for really a long time. I've lived in the Northwest my entire life. So it took me a long time to realize that this is what was going on for me every winter. There's like this epiphany moment, right? Where you're like, oh my gosh, wait a second. Not everybody feels like this in the winter. Not everybody puts on weight in the winter. Not everybody feels like they want to stay in bed and eat french fries. Chocolate all day, every day, the entire winter. Oh, that's not normal. Oh, okay, we should probably deal with this. Yeah, I am sad to say that it took me a very long time to figure this out. So if that's you, don't feel bad about yourself. 

So here in places like Washington, so again, anything that's like, the further you get away from the equator, the more likely it is that you're going to start suffering from winter blues symptoms. So up here in Washington, I'm above the 45th parallel, so Washington, northern Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Northern Michigan, Wisconsin, all of those states and of course, Canada, Alaska, anything above those kind of northern Canada border states in the United States, you're going to be the ones most at risk for seasonal affective disorder, but also just winter blues, as because right, the days are shorter up here, we don't get as much sunshine. And that really has a profound effect on our bodies physiologically, so you're gonna find less people in places like Florida and Southern California and Arizona, that are suffering from winter blues, it's definitely going to be us up here in the cold, dark north. Great. So here's some things that happen to your body, why you are feeling these sort of winter blues. 

One of the things going on is you have lower serotonin levels. So your serotonin is that hormone in your brain that feel good hormone serotonin is what makes you feel good. I want to do a little thought experiment with you imagine yourself lying on a beach, and you can feel the rays of the sun penetrating your skin. It feels warm, and you feel peaceful and happy. What's happening as the sun is literally creating a chemical reaction in your body to make you feel some kind of way, right? It's making you feel peaceful and calm and happy. In the shorter days of winter, we have less sunshine, which means less serotonin. So there is a physiological reason why you are feeling less happy, less peaceful, less energized, you have less sunshine, therefore you have less serotonin. 

Another thing that's happening for us in the winter time, is our circadian rhythm is getting disrupted. There's so much fascinating science coming out about circadian rhythm, more and more studies coming out. And it's just showing over and over again how in tune our bodies are with the rhythms of nature. So throughout the day, your body has a rhythm, like a sleep wake cycle, right? But even throughout the year, your body has a rhythm that is sort of in tune with the seasons. Unfortunately, what we're always doing as humans is sort of trying to force this we're always working against our own rhythms. We're always trying to control everything. I talk about this a lot in our Healthy Mind Healthy Body program about eating when you're hungry and not eating when you're not hungry. A lot of us try to you know, force ourselves onto these diets of you have to eat this many calories every day, whether you're hungry or not. Right? We're trying to force all of these things instead of just like going with the flow of our natural rhythms and when We live in these darker northern states and countries, we're always trying to go against our own rhythms. So for example, you go to bed well after it's dark, and you often probably wake up well before it's light that is fighting against your own sleep wake cycle, your own circadian rhythm. What studies are showing now is that your circadian rhythm is in charge of a lot of your hormonal systems in your body. So your circadian rhythm is regulating your appetite, it's regulating your metabolism through that sleep wake cycle. So if your rhythms are off and out of whack, your hormones are going to be out of whack, you're going to feel hungry, when you're not actually hungry, you're going to eat the wrong things, you're going to have craving towards certain foods that aren't necessarily what you need. And a lot of it we're finding now is because your circadian rhythms are out of whack, your metabolism will probably slow down. And that's kind of why you're in a funk during the winter, right, your energy is feeling lower, that all has to do with your circadian rhythm. 

The other thing that's happening is changes in your melatonin levels. So imagine like here in Washington, the days are shorter, and the nights are longer. So I'm releasing just naturally more melatonin, that's going to make me more tired during the day. So I have to have some way to combat that. And kind of get those back to to where they're supposed to be. So that sounding like you are you want to stay in bed longer and you feel like you have less energy during the day, then you might have winter blues, also. So I first recognize this in myself, because my doctor just asked me a real poignant question, compare how you feel in the summertime to how you feel in the wintertime. In the summertime, I feel amazing, I feel energized. I want to do all the activities, I want to be outside all the time. I want to do all the things. I also find that I sleep better in the summertime, I am more energized during the day in the summertime, and I eat better in the summertime. For example, in the summertime, a big gorgeous salad for lunch and dinner sounds amazing. I would love to have a big gorgeous salad. In the wintertime, a salad just sounds cold. It just sounds cold and I don't want it. What I would prefer is maybe a soup. But if I'm being totally honest, what I prefer in the wintertime is probably like a big basket of French fries. Like give me all the carbs. You know why? Because that also will raise my serotonin levels. I'm looking for artificial diet ways. I have cravings for things like chocolate and carbs that are going to artificially raise my serotonin levels. It makes me feel good. Why? Because I'm not getting it from the Sun the way I'm naturally supposed to be raising those serotonin levels, you're seeing the connections here. So if you can relate to that, you feel really good in the summertime, but you feel really crappy in the wintertime. Then we're talking about winter blues, my friend. 

So what are we going to do about this? So if if all of these things that I have said so far, you're like, oh, man, that's totally me. Oh, crap. I didn't realize. But that is totally me. I feel really good in the summer. And I feel really sloth like and hibernating Bear in the winter. Okay, here's how we start combating this. And I'll tell you, there is nothing that I have found that makes me feel as good in the winter as I do in the summer, except being in sunshine. Like being outside in a warm sunny place is literally the only thing that does it. So I definitely have friends who have left the state of Washington and move to someplace Sunny, because they couldn't deal with their winter blues anymore, or really more accurately, just didn't want to deal with it anymore. They just wanted to go someplace Sunny, where it just wasn't an issue. So that's not the question. You know, moving to a sunnier place might be something that you can consider in your life. If like me, it's not something you can consider you're kind of here and you're going to stay here. Here are some things that at least can help you deal with this. So number one, you want to go outside. Now, we have a lot of crappy weather here in Washington, but it doesn't matter. rain, shine, clouds, sunshine, it doesn't matter. You have to get outside every single day. One of the best things that you can do for your health. In fact, if anyone asked me ever, what is the number one thing you would tell people in order to get healthier, it's this go outside and take a walk, not a speed walk, not a jog, not a run a calm, walk outside every day, do that one thing and it will make a world of difference for you. What you're trying to do is get as much natural sunlight as possible during the day. So you want your skin exposed to sunlight. You want your eyes to be exposed to natural sunlight. I'm not talking about like, don't look at the sun obviously, but just being out in the sunlight with your eyes open and not necessarily sunglasses on the whole time. You want to be exposed to as much sunlight during the day as you can, because now you can boost those serotonin levels in your brain so that you will start to feel a little bit better, you might not feel as good as you would if you were laying on the beach, but you want to get as much of that natural sunlight serotonin going as possible. 

Other thing, which is, which goes along with that is exercise. So moving your body again, taking that walk out side is going to be key, not only are you boosting serotonin by being outside, now you're also boosting serotonin. By moving your body, I always draw the distinction between movement and exercise. So movement is taking that walk outside exercise is kind of that prescribed workout time that you're doing maybe a couple two to four times a week. So you're gonna want to add that in if you don't do it already, exercise is really good for regulating your circadian rhythm. You already know this to be true on a day that you get more movement and more exercise you sleep better at night, you already know that's true. So let's capitalize on that. Let's help regulate our circadian rhythm through movement and exercise. 

Speaking of sleeping better at night, that's the other thing that you're going to want to focus on. So the third thing you're really going to want to work on is sleep, you need to get on a sleep schedule. And so I am telling you just straight up, you're probably going to need to go to bed earlier, stop staying up so late in the dark with all the artificial light, you are messing with your circadian rhythm. The more we fight against our natural sleep wake rhythm, the worse off we're going to be. So just accept that you have one go to bed earlier. So think about this. If you could go to bed and wake up at any time that you chose, like if you just let your body naturally do what it wanted to do, what time would you be going to bed? And what time would you be getting up? Start there, right? If you are eight o'clock and you're feeling like wow, I'm feeling kind of just done. Instead of going and sitting on the couch and eating and having a drink and stimulating yourself again. So you're out. Now you're awake for three more hours. Instead of that shutter down, turn the TV off, put on your blue light blocking glasses, go read a book and keep yourself calm so that you could actually be asleep by nine o'clock, we force ourselves to stay up later than our body body naturally wants to now think about the morning time. If you let your body just sleep and wake up and it's natural time, what time would it normally just naturally want to wake up, you're probably have your alarm set for like 5am because you're like, oh my power hour in the morning. And it goes through all these things, right? What if you let your body just do what it wanted to do. Personally, my body likes to sleep from about nine or 10 at night to six or seven in the morning. That's kind of my windows, if just left to its own devices, that's where it goes. And so I allow that to happen. I don't artificially get myself up at Oh, dark 30. So I can pound out a workout and get my affirmations written and read my personal development blah, blah. I don't ascribe to that. I ascribe to the My body doesn't want to get up till 630. So it doesn't.

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Okay, now I know that's not realistic for everyone, you sometimes you have to get up, you got to get the kids out. You got to get to work, whatever. But I'm saying get as close to that as you humanly possibly can get as close to your body's natural rhythm as your life will allow. Got me on that. 

Okay, the other thing you're going to think about for dealing with winter blues is working on your diet. The science is really clear about this. There is no argument about this. This is just the reality, your gut health determines your brain health, there is no question anymore, that these two things are connected. So if your brain health is telling you that you're tired and you're depressed and you're not feeling it, you need to check in with your gut health because those messages are likely coming from your gut. So if you clean up your gut health with a healthy diet, and that is one of the things that I hope you do, then you are also cleaning up your brain health. Also, you should know that about 90% of your serotonin is actually made in your gut. So if your gut health sucks, then your brain health will suck and you will be more tired and you will be less happy. Those two things are intricately related. So you have to address your gut health. How do you do that? Well, there's a lot of ways but mostly it just has to do with what food you're putting in your mouth. So you're we're talking about ditching the processed sugars, the kind of refined sugar so like white bread and pasta and processed foods and fast foods, all those things that just are those hypoglycemic kits, right? Those kind of fast carb foods. Obviously, we're talking about eating more vegetables, more slow digesting carbs, healthy meats, if me as part of your diet, there's real basic things that we are probably not doing to address our gut health. So it is definitely something that you need to address. 

Okay, the next thing you're going to want to focus on is your vitamin D level. So if you have never had your vitamin D levels checked by your doctor, you're going to want to go into your doctor and have them checked. Depending on what those results say, you are then going to want to supplement vitamin D, especially if you live above the 45th parallel, almost everyone who lives above the 45th parallel has deficient vitamin D levels. So you're going to want to get those checked, I generally don't ever tell someone to supplement with something until your levels are checked so that you know exactly how much to supplement with. So make sure you get it checked first, and then you're likely going to find that you will need to supplement vitamin D. Why? Because we just don't get enough sunlight. Right, that's what's happening. Vitamin D comes from the sun and we are not getting enough sunlight in the wintertime. Just as a quick side note, if you do supplement with vitamin D, you want to make sure you're taking that with a fat, Vitamin D is fat soluble, that means you it requires fats in order for your body to absorb it. So personally, I take a vitamin D that has coconut oil in it in the same little pill, so that I know that I am absorbing the vitamin D. 

Okay, the other thing that you're going to think about supplementing and talking to your doctor about Remember, I am not a doctor, and I'm not your doctor, you want to get your Omega three levels checked. And you might want to consider supplementing omega threes. So there's a huge correlation between people diagnosed with depression and low Omega three levels when their blood was tested. So it's a super simple fix, you can just eat foods higher in Omega three. So think about like your good fatty fishes, or you can supplement with omega threes. But I again, I'm not going to recommend that you supplement anything until you get your levels checked, you want to do that first. And then consider that there is a large correlation between those diagnosed with depression and low omega threes. 

And the last thing that we're going to talk about four ways to combat this kind of seasonal winter blues is light therapy. So I've been doing light therapy for the last few years. And it has created a noticeable difference. For me, there's several advantages to light therapy. But it's all the things that we've talked about. Light Therapy is helping you get your circadian rhythms on point, it's helping you sleep better at night, it's helping you have more energy during the day, it's helping you raise those serotonin levels, all those things that the sunlight is doing for you that we're not getting enough of naturally, the light therapy is a sort of a supplement, it is a supplement that you don't ingest, it's a supplement that you're exposing yourself to every day in the morning for 30 minutes, I shine my little light, it's like the size of a cell phone, and I shine it on my face for 30 minutes while I'm like getting ready or doing whatever I'm doing making lunches or making breakfast. And it's been super helpful. Different light therapies come in blue light or white light, the science on white light is pretty well established, the science on blue light is still kind of coming out. So for me, I would stick to the white light because it's just more established in the science for now. But there is some studies that are showing blue light is also really effective. But remember, blue light is the thing that you don't want to have at night because it keeps you awake. And blue light can be harmful to your eyes. So overexposure of blue light is harmful. That's why they say like put on your blue light blocking glasses, you know, the orange ones. I do wear blue light blocking glasses at night in order to prepare me for sleep, right? Because I'm trying to manage those circadian rhythms. So I expose myself to the white light therapy in the morning. And then at night, I'm using my blue blocking glasses so that I am blocking light coming from the artificial light in my house, the TV, the computer, the phone, whatever. I'm blocking that and I am sort of trying to manage my circadian rhythm in that way. Does that make sense by my light exposure. If you have questions about light therapy, I'm happy to tell you the brand of the little light box that I use it I've had it for like three or four years now. Still just trucking along works great. I just plug it in to charge it up and use it every morning for 30 minutes. There's tons of different companies, what you're really going to want to do is make sure that you're buying something from a reputable company because any company can make a box with a light in it. Okay, but you need to make sure that the company that you're buying from has has been well studied so that the wavelengths of light they're coming from that light box are the appropriate wavelengths of light to cause the appropriate effect in your circadian rhythm and serotonin levels, right. So I could hand you a box with a light in it and be like here shining this on your face? No, no, no, you need to make sure that you're not just buying some crappy thing off Amazon, you know, make sure that you are really buying from a well studied reputable company. So again, if you want to know the brand that I studied and that I ended up purchasing from, I'm happy to share that with you. I don't have any affiliation with them, or I don't get any kickbacks from them in any way. It's just a product that I use that I like, but I've been using it for a few years and it really has made a noticeable difference for me. So I highly recommend that you look into light therapy if you think that might be something that's right for you. 

Okay, there you have it friends, I hope that that shed some light haha, pun intended on your possible struggles with winter blues. Again, if you think you might have seasonal affective disorder, you can try all these things. But you definitely need to go talk to a professional about that diagnosis and about treatment for that specifically, if you think you just have winter blues, try some of these things talked about talk to your doctor about getting your omega and vitamin D levels checked. Think about exercise, sunlight, diet, sleep cycles, circadian rhythm, serotonin levels, gut health, light therapy, all of these things could be really useful for you to use really good tools for you to use throughout the winter, so that you just feel better in the wintertime. Because if you feel better, you're more likely to eat better, you're more likely to live better, you're more likely to love better. And that is what I want for you. If you have any questions about anything we talked about today, or you want some clarification, or you want to know how this works for you. Or maybe this is what you have or don't have. pop into the Facebook group. The link is in the show notes. And if you're on the newsletter, email list, it's always linked in an email newsletter. Get into that Facebook group, start asking all the questions. I'm there I am happy to answer. I'm happy to chat with you. And if you have a question, it's highly likely that someone else does too. So ask them over in that group. And I will see you over there. Okay, until

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we talk again, my friends your friends, thanks so much for being here. If you found value in today's episode, will you do me a favor and head over to iTunes? Find the no nonsense wellness podcast and subscribe and leave me a review. It would mean the world to me and it helps other people find the show. And I'd love to connect with you more. So find me on Instagram I'm at Tara Faulmann. Take a screenshot of this episode and share it in your stories and tag me. I'll see you over there.