Ask HN: How do you navigate Seasonal Affective Disorder? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you navigate Seasonal Affective Disorder?

86 pointsmeken109 comments

Now that the sun is setting earlier with daylight savings time, I’m finding that I struggle with the increased hours of darkness in the evenings.

I’m finding hanging out in well-lit areas with people and music in the evenings are good to counteract this (mall, cafe, gym, book store).

Do you do anything to offset fewer hours of daylight?

View on HN

Live in West Norway. 60 degrees north. Atrocious climate. 245 rainy days each year, and on average 8.5 feet (yes) of rainfall. Average time of direct sunlight per month November-February inclusive is 45 hours. Per month.

Starting in mid-October and ending early March, I make sure to stand in direct sunlight, with the light hitting my face, for at least 10 minutes on all the days when weather permits. This entails unscheduled breaks from work, as such periods might only last a few minutes. Often combined with a walk outside. (There will often be weeks when the sun is not visible at all).

In fact, I took such a break while writing this comment, as it's the only sunlight I'm likely to see today. It was attenuated by clouds, but was very pleasant during the ~4 minutes it lasted. Had to stand up from my office chair, as otherwise neighboring houses would occlude it. I swear I'm not making this up, or even overstating the regularity with which it happens. I consider myself prone to seasonal depression, but maybe it's just the climate.

On days when I don't get my dose of sunlight, I use a daylight lamp that I sit in front of for at least 20 minutes. Often as much as an hour.

This alleviates the worst winter depression. When I feel it coming on, I feel markedly more awake after getting some more light. Also make sure to take care of myself and listen to my needs, more so than usual. Enough sleep, enough relaxation, enough socialization, enough solidude. Have been doing this routine for about a decade, and it works well.

Do you suspect you get a lot of psychological benefits from these habits, or something more than vitamin D supplements would provide?

https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/vitamin-d-myths-debunked

Well, separating placebo effects from real physiological effects and tracing the latter to the source isn't something I've put much thought into. This feels like it works, and that's good enough for me. But there might be something to what you're pointing at, yes.

The seasonal depression itself feels pretty distinct. I've been "normal" depressed before, and this is more like a "turned down the dimmer switch on the consciousness" combined with the regular suspects like lower initiative, less joy from fun things, muted feelings and so on. And my subjective experience is it responds well to light and general self-care, to a greater degree than the "standard" variety does. But who knows!

I’m from Michigan and I developed the same coping mechanism. The benefits were profound, immediate, and lasted 12-48 hours. I found it to be significantly more beneficial than vitamin D supplements. I could replicate some degree of the benefit from a halogen lamp which supposedly has a coating on the glass that blocks the UV, so it’s probably not just Vitamin D.

I’m sure vitamin D had some role in it though.

But it needs to be an extremely bright light, and broad spectrum. LEDs / fluorescents couldn’t replicate the effects of “facing the sun”, only extremely high wattage halogens.

It kind of worked for me on cloudy days depending on the degree of overcast occlusion but I would drop ANYTHING I was doing whenever the sun was shining enough to create crisp shadows.

This became a ritual of my “personal religion”.

Came here to link that source myself, so I'll just emphasize an important part:

>Is it best to get your vitamin D from the sun? Definitely not!

—David J. Leffell, MD, Yale Medicine dermatologist and chief of Dermatologic Surgery

That whole section is worth reading. Light may be useful in a Circadian context, but from strictly a Vitamin D point of view you're better off with a diet rich in Vitamin D, or supplementation.

Unsurprisingly wild-caught salmon and pasture-raised chicken eggs yield higher Vitamin D content, but supplementation also works. If you're vegan and deprived of sunlight, then supplementation might your only viable option.

"On days when I don't get my dose of sunlight, I use a daylight lamp that I sit in front of for at least 20 minutes. Often as much as an hour."

Does the sunlight work better than the lamp, or do you just prefer it for some other reason?

No idea; the effect seems similar but I do prefer the real sunlight for some reason. The lamp has the advantage of being easier from a time-management perspective though; I don't actually have to stop working and so on to use it.

But I don't think that attitude is conductive to point B; taking extra care with work-life balance, getting enough exercise and decompression and so on, so I have a low threshold of just dropping what I'm doing and taking a break in the daylight :)

Sun, even on a cloudy day gives more light measured in lumens than even strongest lamps. Windows filter a lot, so being outside is important. You can use Lux Light Meter app to measure light intensity.

Went outside to compare app results: Not too bright living room - 10lux

Brightly lit kitchen - 400 lux.

Outside (it's 15:45 in Norway, already getting dark), cloudy late autumn day/early evening - 50lux (which doesn't really prove my point :/)

From memory: Sunny day, direct sunlight - 40k lux Cloudy summer day - 10k lux.

A window filters 50-80%

You see that even on a cloudy day you get as much as sitting 20cm from a SAD lamp.

With 10k lux you need approximately 30min exposure before 9 o'clock to keep circadian rhythm from drifting.

I love your spirit and also like the insights you’ve shared!

Yet, I’m afraid it’s not really an option for most us (including OP I guess) to move to West Norway.

I don't think they were suggesting that OP move to West Norway, but saying that they did.

Hmm. I got the impression they were… by saying ”Live in West Norway.”

You don't move to West Norway to combat long dark winter days, you move away from there. He's just explaining his routine that he needs to have to cope with the days in West Norway.

"[I] live in West Norway."

The rest of the paragraph explains exactly why living in West Norway would be an unhelpful move.

I wouldn't recommend it for seasonal depression specifically, all else being equal!

We've got easy access to some wicked and lonely nature, though, so it's not a big hassle to arrange an interesting lifestyle that makes up for it.

I didn’t read it as an imperative but more like a pronoun dropped sentence.

Had to check: your typical rainfall is about the same as Sydneys rainfall this year with the year long La Nina system. That is nuts.

It wasn't on purpose, but strangely enough I've found working from home has helped with the winter blues that I got every year in London.

The part of winter that crushed me the most was the excruciating commute in the cold in the morning, and the dark + cold in the afternoon when going home. When working from home, I no longer have to do that commute so I find it a lot easier to get through the winter.

I moved out this year after finishing uni and for the first time ever I’m not completely dreading winter, and this comment contributes. I live in the Pacific Northwest and the worst part of every day of winter was scraping ice and snow off my crappy old minivan that sat outside over night and had barely-functioning heating that didn’t kick on until I’d made it to school.

In retrospect, I’m amazed I made it through high school without snapping, what with such mornings and going home when it was already completely dark out. Teenagers are a different breed.

This answer isn't particularly helpful for a lot of people, but I live in ski towns for the winters.

It's fairly frequent that I'll be skiing in full sun above the clouds, which is an excellent source of Vitimin D. When coupled with endorphine release from exercise it's basically impossible to be anything but ecstatic on that day.

That said, the principal to combat SAD, in my experience, has been vitamin D and exercise. Try to maximize your exposure/intake of those (in whatever way is possible to you) and you'll feel good :)

I literally just spoke with someone who mentioned that skiing during the winter helps her get over the doldrums for the exact same reasons you mention

I'm in northern UK and find the dark really hellish when it kicks in every November. My solution this year is to go and spend three months in Australia, baking in the sun instead of shivering in the rain. Realise this isn't the solution you're looking for but this year I just need an actual break from the SAD-induced pallor and desire to hibernate, and the chance to take a break has come up so I'm taking it. I feel like it'll benefit my health no end, having lived in Aus in the past.

I cannot suggest enough that everyone should get a high lux light. I'm in the north midwest of the US, where there's little sun, it's cold which makes being outside much more difficult, and even when I am it's cloudy.

Last year was another fall when I could feel myself getting more and more tired and lack of energy and I couldn't figure out why. Christmas came around and my mom got our family high lux lights and literally the first time I tried it I could feel a difference. The tiredness was zapped away instantly. You can feel your body's reaction to the lux.

Pretty much whenever I'm sitting at a desk I have it on. The one I have has the ability to change the intensity, so sometimes I move it down from the max if I can feel overly bright. I plan on getting another one soon to have on the other side of my desk.

I don't have a brand to suggest, but doing test searches shows there are many different kinds. Thinking about price, they're so beneficial that from the benefits I get from it, I'd legit pay over $1k for one. Life in the dark cold winter is so much better. I hope everyone reading this gives one a try at least.

I grabbed some high temperature, high-CRI LEDs from http://waveformlighting.com 2 years ago and they have helped a lot. I love them because the CRI make the colors in my house look fantastic.

I put some strips around the window in my office, and plugged a bunch of A19 bulbs into a string patio lightbulb strip in my living room. Many of the bulb lights burned out quickly though, I think because they have cheap power supplies and were interfering with each other? Kinda stinks.

At the end of the day though I wish I had lights that met 3 conditions:

• Give off high CRI, full spectrum, high temperature light

• Contain simple electronics controlled by a dimmer rather than wifi-enabled

• Gradually turn on and off with the sunrise/sunset

Is there anything in the market right now for that?

I too am looking for extremely high CRI bulbs, preferably warm, 1600-2200K. Or adjust temperature. If anyone knows how to select these, please post.

CRI didn’t end up being the common consumer metric I hoped it would be. I have to rely on supplementing efficient LED lighting with inefficient halogen lights to be able to do color-sensitive activities like cooking food / monitoring skin health / some DIY electronics work. Also high CRI just contributes to overall quality of life / well-being across most activities.

Interesting that OP had good experiences with Waveform lights, I've been looking at those but haven't bothered yet due to the price.

My holy grail is both very high CRI (well, more accurately a spectrum that matches noon daylight) and also possibility to "dim" into the deep reds and near-infrared mimicking a dimmed-down incandescent bulb or a dying fire. But given the cost of deep-red LEDs, I don't think we're getting those cheaply anytime soon.

> At the end of the day though I wish I had lights that met 3 conditions: • Give off high CRI, full spectrum, high temperature light • Contain simple electronics controlled by a dimmer rather than wifi-enabled • Gradually turn on and off with the sunrise/sunset Is there anything in the market right now for that?

There are high lumen, high CRI, 5k color temp ‘highbay’ (used for warehouse lighting) fixtures available in the commercial market.

Example, puts out 40-60k lumens at 5k color temp and 90CRI: https://cree.widen.net/s/nmxpvrvfdw/the-edge-high-output-hig...

That fixture is 0-10v dimming capable, you could pair it with a photocell, room controller, and dimmer from a commercial lighting controls line to handle the automatic raise/lower and manual dimming.

These are ‘available’ in a sense, if you can find an electrical distributor to open an account you can buy these, but it isn’t as easy as just going to Home Depot.

The downside is, it’s probably $400-500 for the Cree highbay, and another $500 for a photocell, room controller, and dimmer. Then you need to wire it all up, and program the controls.

Good lighting is more valuable than art!

But also my time is probably more valuable than it'd take me to figure all this stuff out.

The sun and my waveforms will have to hold me over until something better hits the market :)

I moved from Michigan to Texas and my SAD nearly disappeared, through I still have some circadian issues when the sun rises too late for me to automatically wake up at an appropriate time for work/life. Or if it’s overcast for >3 days straight.

When I lived in Michigan the best help was:

- Getting an insanely bright halogen lamp in the center of my room. Bright enough to mimic the sun. This was not a normal “available in stores” 70-100W halogen, probably closer to 200-400W. Sometimes I would stand right under it, about 12” from the bulb, staring into it with my eyelids closed for 2-5 minutes.

- Embracing the cold and enjoying it. This meant not wearing a jacket sometimes and just going out in a t-shirt for 5-30 minutes, even if it was 20 degrees F outside. Finding outdoor activities which I truly enjoy and developing them into my life. Focusing on thriving rather than surviving.

- Where I lived was overcast most days, especially in the winter. We could go a whole week without the sun being visible. I made a rule to drop anything I was doing and go out and stare into the sun (with eyelids closed) anytime the sun was shining. No emergency was too important to skip this.

- Moving to even snowier areas. Being forced to shovel your driveway 1-2x every day is a great way to get the outdoor exercise needed to love the winter.

I lived in the Yukon (60 deg north) for 4 years and learned a few tricks from the locals.

- Go outside every day at lunchtime and get sun on your face. Even if it's cold, raining or whatever, it's very important to get sunlight on your face.

- Get a grow lamp if you feel really bad

- Take Vitamin D suppliments

Just to add to this: it’s even more important to spend some time outside in daylight if it’s cloudy that day and there’s no direct sunlight.

(If feasible) Wake up earlier to avoid sleeping through the morning sunlight.

In New York this means waking up around 6 or 6:30am (sunrise: 6:36am)

If you’re waking up after sunrise, shift your sleep schedule if possible so you’re awake during as many daylight hours as possible.

Wow, I really do forget how far south the US is! I'm in Rotterdam working 9-5 and I'm already traveling to and from work in the dark. I have to go outside on my breaks to catch any at all.

Sun lamp, Vitamin D etc. all help. As you mentioned, hanging out in brightly lit areas where there are people around also help.

For me one component of SAD is isolation. When I was living in big northern cities where there were people out on the streets all the time and stuff to do, I was never affected by SAD. Deep winter? No problem.

Now that I live in a suburb in a region of introverts, I feel SAD in spades. I’m an introvert but that’s a bit different from being a loner — I need people around me even if I don’t interact with them. So I go into the office instead of WFH. No many people there so I chat with the janitors and admin staff. Even this little bit of human interaction makes a difference for me.

Your emotional well being apart from the weather matters and will either compound SAD or attenuate it.

This isn't for everyone, but if you attain sufficiently severe depression due to work/relationships/existential issues during the summer months, you will not notice the effects of varying seasonal illumination. Do have to be careful for obvious reasons though. If you are new to this, you probably should try micro-dosing on depression inducing activities during the summer to see if this is a good fit.

I moved to a hotter place in the southern hemisphere, where even in winter the sunshine blazes almost every day.

Before that in the UK, as another poster suggests, I made sure to get out for a walk in the sunshine every day in the early afternoon. Get some sun on my face every single day.

Aye, moving somewhere brighter -- also from the UK -- completely dealt with it for me. Getting a dog also helps a lot. I'm required by a sacred and ancient inter-species oath to be out of the house for a minimum amount of time every day.

Totally get that these two solutions may not be practical for OP, but it's helped me a load.

Standard mental health stuff also applies. Any form of exercise and keeping an eye on alcohol/whatever poison intake will help.

Same here. I emigrated from the UK to a tropical country. It made a big difference to my personal well-being. I left behind all the routine coughs and colds I’d get. Before, I’d struggle with fitness because I would pick up running in the spring, then drop it this time of year when the clocks change and lose all forward momentum. It’s just a miserable feeling, travelling to work in the cold, wet, dark mornings, then travelling home at the end of the day in the cold, wet, dark evenings for months on end.

Where

Perth, Western Australia. It has about double the hours of sunshine per year compared to my old home, Southampton in the UK.

I still 'feel' winter, but not so much and not so deeply.

After moving from New York to Berlin, the impact of SAD hit me hard.

So, my short answer is: I am absolutely in love with my Luminette 3[^1]. I use it every day in the morning.

In my opinion, even though it's "just a piece of plastic with a few LEDs" (it is), I believe it's actually underpriced at 230€ because of its supreme UX compared to all other effective options.[^2]

[^1]: https://www.myluminette.com/

[^2]: https://publish.obsidian.md/alexisrondeau/%E2%AD%90%EF%B8%8F...

Infrared!!!! (scientifically proven)

Everyone know about UV, vitamin D and blue light to help your circadian rhythm.

But very few people know that we need infrared to keep inflammation in check. Our mitochondria use infrared light to create melatonin that remove oxidative stress from normal metabolic respiration. The melatonin we know from the brain is merely the backup plan for the night.

We have create an environment completely void of infrared (IR blocking windows, living inside, led light) and we get a lot of inflammation that trigger autoimmune disease, depression, etc.

I think that one reason why it feel so good to snuggle up to a fireplace in the winter (way better than just the heat)

This research has been done on human and mice, replicated, etc. I think there is no money to be made by the pharma (in fact a lot of money to be lost) if this was widespread knowledge.

I bought a cheap infrared heat dish at costco and healed a terrible eczema i have every winter for 20 years in a few days.

I implore everyone who has an autoimmune disease or depression to try it out. For sure the sun is better, but this can help in the middle of winter.

https://www.google.com/search?q=medcram+infrared

Do you have citations for those claims apart from videos made by a doctor ? It certainly sounds very interesting although sunbed fans should be most healthy people on earth in such case.

There is research papers he talk about in his video.

I didn’t look the papers myself (use his summary)

Update: https://www.melatonin-research.net/index.php/MR/article/view...

"I think there is no money to be made by the pharma (in fact a lot of money to be lost) if this was widespread knowledge."

You could say the same about using ordinary light therapy to treat seasonal affective disorder... but that's widely known.

Yeah, you are right. A bit conspiratorial.

I think it’s a big discovery an should get much more visibility.

Autoimmune diseases and depression are in constant progression in our modern world.

The light therapy probably took a lot of time to get from scientifically know to widely know.

I'm no window expert but I can feel infrared heat through my windows and I have pretty standard windows so I doubt most windows block infrared light.

some get through, but they more and more put filter to keep the heat in that also block (some?) of the infrared from getting in.

ah, infrared is a huge spectrum. They specifically talk about near infrared (as in near visible light) My space heater is not the "recommended" things but it emit the whole spectrum (heating coil) and even a bit of visible red ligth.

This sounds relevant to my interests. How big/strong heat dish did you use? And for how long at a time?

That thing: https://www.costco.ca/presto-heatdish-plus-tilt-parabolic-he...

It’s 1000W but usually used it at 50%

I used it 30-60 min a day for about a week to clear all of my eczema, but I could feel a huge difference after one or two days.

It’s not the optimum things (not designed for FIR) but it did the job nicely and was available.

My wife and I both get depressive around winter. I'm not sure that it is bad enough to qualify as SAD per se, but it sucks, and I always approach winter with a little bit of apprehension.

If I had my druthers I would have 2 weeks of heavy snow around Christmas and then back to spring, alas, the universe has not yet conformed to my will.

Anyway, I read this article a while back about stringing up a bunch of extra lights and how the extra light seems to ease the winter blues. I may try it out this year. Maybe worth a shot?

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hC2NFsuf5anuGadFm/how-to-bui...

I'm unsurprised that so many comments so far relate to the UK - I became acutely aware of how bad this was for me in 2019, but have definitely suffered the effects since before that.

Vitamin D and bright lights give a bit of short-term placebo benefit, but I haven't been able to detect any longer term uplift.

Even in the good weather months (... OK, weeks) we have, I spend time wishing I was elsewhere for the usual political/social/economic reasons, but in the winter I double down on trawling emigration blogs looking for a way out.

35 year old here in the UK and I’ve finally had enough of the weather so spend much of my time doing the same. We moved from the north to the midlands a few years a go and that helped a bit but it’s no longer cutting it sadly.

I can work anywhere but my spouse can’t - so at this point we are just working out how to make it work on potentially just one income. The joke has become “how poor are we willing to be to get away from the rain” at this point.

Oh and visa’s aren’t easy either. If only there was some simple way we could move to a European country under some kind of free movement of people act - what a world that would be.

I've lived all over the UK and concluded that while the exact conditions vary a bit, it is just background noise against the generally foul climate.

Malta is about the best option I've been able to come up with - no language issues and still in the EMEA region for work purposes. Switzerland would probably be a better fit for me in terms of both climate and society, but they like foreigners even less than we do and the language situation is intimidating.

I agree, it’s just variations on a fairly miserable theme in the UK.

We love the Algarve in Portugal so that’s our primary focus - Portuguese is challenging to learn due to pronunciation but we are getting there.

I recently took off the big velvet curtains we had put over all the windows in the summer. What a huge change in my mood! We had created ourselves a cave we were living in as we pursued energy efficiency. Now I’m seeing the importance of natural light and windows in a house. To be honest our energy usage was exactly the same as last year for this month, when we didn’t have the curtains. I suspect a lot of free and nice heat comes in through the windows in the daytime. What spurred the change was a google photo memory from a year ago and I saw how different the house was with the beautiful old windows shining light through.

There is light during the day in winter it just doesn’t last as long, so important to get what you can. I may explore building some led lights for when the sun goes down. UFO lights on Amazon are quite inexpensive now and very efficient. Heat they generate indoors in winter works to heat the house as well and depending on your gas prices might not be that bad compared to your gas furnace or could even be cheaper so it is like free strong lighting.

https://www.pickhvac.com/calculator/heating-annual-cost/

A good calculator here. A reminder that LED lighting is ~100% efficient just like an electric space heater, as all heat generated is trapped in and heats your house. Of course things like heat pumps can reach over 100% efficiency (up to 300%!).

I moved to sunny California because of this having started out in Seattle which is known for being cloudy and rainy a lot. My mood has been way better overall and I find that spending a bit of time in the sun each day makes me feel as right as rain. I would go so far as to say my life is a lot better because of this as it prevented some self loathing behavior or unnecessarily prolonged melancholy sans medication.

Probably accurate to say I'm solar powered.

One year back in my hometown the weather was so perfect for a year it kind of got me down.

It was just perfectly sunny and clear for what felt like 320 days.

Weird.

I would’ve loved to see some cold gloomy days but I hardly did.

Yah I don't understand how all the factors come together and my hindsight is probably even wrong as I met new people and worked out more and a lot of good things happened and opportunities etc. But I do know that getting some sun for sure helps me feel better, not being broke, having a good social life and getting some good exercise in is all positive on the mood.

If your SAD is severe enough that you need to move, I'd recommend looking at the mean hours of sunshine for places you're considering moving. Wikipedia has this for many cities under "Climate".

If you're in the US, many of the "middle western" states have significant sunshine. Oklahoma, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Texas are surprisingly sunny.

I moved to London from Auckland, NZ and really struggled for the first winter with the stark dearth of light. Tried all sorts of things: sad lamp, mindfulness, exercise, but mostly just felt miserable until March. The next year I had started taking vitamin d and mostly felt fine through the winter. I was shocked at the difference, but there’s lots of evidence around.

Vit D here, 80ug, double the dose I take in summer.

Live in Norway 300km from northern polar circle.

From what I've understood from Huberman Lab podcast, sun affects mood mainly in two ways : 1. Vit D production, 2. Circadian Rhythm timing control.

1. First one can be supplemented. I use 80ug, as 40ug that I use in summer doesn't cut it. Found this dose trough experimenting. Too much feels like having overdosed on coffee. Too little and I don't have energy to do stuff unless I really must do it.

2. Circadian Rhythm - recommend listening to Huberman's episodes on Sleep (around 4 eps), Dopamine and motivation, and Depression. Not getting enough light in the morning makes the circadian rhythm drift, which messes your sleep, which is your daily psychotherapy. To help prevent it, you can exercise in the morning. I'm planning to buy a light therapy light on Black Friday and use it during morning 'Sun Salutations' (yoga exercise). A breakfast and warm shower in the morning can also help stop the drift.

Another thing is lights control. Phillips Hue lights can be scheduled to glow dimmer past 18:00 (I'm assuming you sleep 22 to 5:30). At night just two very dim lamps. Bathroom lamp at my place is very bright, so if I have to shower past 19, I shower with lights off and avoid hot showers in the evening.

The TV I have has 4 screen brightness &color tone settings. I've toned down brightness on all of them and one is very dark (and red tinted) for usage past 18 or 19.

Not saying that this is what will help you, but hope you can find something working for you.

P.S. If I don't want to get up early on the weekends, I at least make sure I go out for a walk before 9 o'clock. Even if hangover will put me back in bed, the inner clock got the message - at 22 we need to sleep again.

Well, this is a good reminder that it is time for me to dig out my light-therapy panel that I bathe in over breakfast during the dark months. Also go for walks over lunch break on sunny days. My SAD is mild, you may need more aggressive therapy. BTW - consider having your thyroid function checked. Some family members have that issue, and symptoms can be similar.

I live in Seattle, having moved from California. The thing that helped me more than anything was playing soccer outdoors year round. Rain or snow. Several times a week. The exercise more than anything helped me get over the dark and the grey. The fact that it’s a team sport and 10+ other people are counting on me to show up helps keep me accountable.

Reminds me about the DIY Perks "Artificial sun". Is something like that for sale as a product? I think it definitely can help.

https://youtu.be/6bqBsHSwPgw

SAD is one of those things where I've read articles and research from what I think are at least semi trustworthy sources both swearing that it is a real thing and that it is not a real thing.

Anecdotally it seems like a scam to try and sell you overpriced LED lights, but the more you google the more you find some people swear it affects them, even though I've never felt the difference. This together with the fact that I was born and grew up in a place with ~3050 average annual sunlight hours per year, as well as lived in places with ~1500 for the past 5 years without any perceived difference in mood.

Nobody says (well, I’m sure somebody does, but anyway…) that everybody is affected by SAD equally or at all. Your data point is just as relevant as single datapoints tend to be.

My routine has been: * Vitamin D * Philips Wake Up Lamp for the mornings * Home-assistant controlling Trådfri lights with Flux so that the color temp changes throughout the day. Ie daylight style light in the mid day and then getting more orange in the evening * Old but still functional Philips Day Light therapy lamp next to me when working so that I get the 30-120 minutes of that as well during the work hours * Oh and getting out and do some walking/biking/whatever. It's still super important even though you don't get to see the sun

Sometimes I drift from typical wake patterns. Unfortunately, my sleep only seems to move clockwise, otherwise I get headaches and malaise if I try to adjust back. As an extreme but oddly satisfying antidote, I sometimes take a home-based "circadian journey" along the lines of xkcd's comic about Taipei and Honolulu timezone-based housemates, scheduling or dodging meetings accordingly, advancing 1.25 hrs each day or so for a while.

The "journey" allows me to arrange to wake at dawn for a while when daylight is scarce.

I made a little tool. Tell it your last wake time. CJ generates a fresh iCal calendar journey with a sampling of xkcd-esque national time zone flags along the way. You re-add the .ical as a new calendar and erase the calendar or events until it starts to match your real sleep. https://observablehq.com/@thadk/circadian

I've used a Philips lamp designed for SAD. Starting my day by waking before sunrise and spending ≈15 minutes with the lamp to one side, I found my energy, alertness, and mood improved.

Years before it seemed to bother me more than now. I find myself just using a lamp more often

Part of it's likely that I'm now in Texas, we have two seasons.

Summer being the main one, roughly 95% of the year. Rain or just cold enough to freeze for the other 5%

I grew up in Appalachia and there... it was more bothersome but I also kept busier, so it didn't impact me that much then either.

I guess the takeaway is, stay busy and be mindful of warmth -- both in temperature and light. People can help with the environment too

I leave task manager open while the computer is "idle" to see spikes in the Wi-Fi network throughput graph so I can rest assured that at least my lone machine activity is being automatically "seen" by the telemetry-harvesting crawler code lovingly hand-crafted&looped by fellow citizens across the globe who are polite and ambitious when they deliver a quarterly measurement of each other's usage metrics.

Get outside and move your body.

I've lived 10+ years in what most would call an "extreme environment" (arctic circle, often at or below -40 ambient air temp for weeks, very isolated) with few ill-effects.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only inadequate equipment (clothing).

Getting outside, if only for a 30 minute walk substantially increases my mood. We also supplement vit d, but in my personal experience, outdoor exercise is my main inhibitor.

Yoga, running or walking in the forrest for 2 hours daily, chooping wood, vitamine D, good sleep, good, healthy food.

Also reading books and some recreational programming.

The best thing you can do is get yourself a Seasonal Affective Disorder lamp and use it while you work on the computer, an hour or two daily in the mornings. If you dont wanna spend too much money on it, get yourself a few very powerful floodlights. The lights have to emit at least 10K lumens on 1 meter distance, the floodlights are way more powerful than the SAD lamps anyway.

Last fall my psychiatrist recommended staring at a full spectrum light for 20 minutes a day (the one I used is called HappyLight and is made by Verilux)

I was shocked at what a difference it made. Here in nyc we had a stretch of overcast days for about two weeks last month and I took it out and used it. Bam! I felt more energetic, lively, and enthusiastic all over again.

Having lived in places with annual hours of sunshine in the range of 1600-3000 my take is that it's the wind that gets you.

Coincidentally the least sunny place I lived in was also the most windy, making the apparent temperature so much lower and almost guaranteeing getting a cold in spring, when the high day temperature made people let their guard down.

I recently had a CoeLux artificial skylight installed, it’s awesome. No matter how ugly the weather feels outside, it’s always a bright beautiful day inside.

Definitely worth considering if you have high enough ceilings to accommodate it. https://www.coelux.com/

I am a software developer who works in his basement in WA state. Not a lot of natural light during the winters.

* Force myself to exercise. This is by far has the largest impact on my well being. (team sports makes that easier) * Take 10,000 IU of vitamin D a week * Try to get outside for walks in the late morning or early afternoon

well, i feel like shit for a few months ...

I moved to Maimi. Here even the rain is happy. Also, homes are affordable (compared to west coast prices).

What did your house in Miami cost and what year did you purchase it? Affordable means very different things to different people.

Affordable compared to the prices paid by my friends on the west coast, who struggled to find single family homes for less than $1M. I paid less than half that in 2021 and my monthly mortgage payment is about half of my rent when I lived in a 2br apartment in San Francisco.

Prices in my area are up 10-15% on Zillow since then. Hopefully I can find a Greater Fool to sell to before the city disappears beneath the rising seas.

Maimi - where people go to get maimed :)

Europe's answer to that is south of Spain, no wonder why I see cars with Swedish, Norwegian, or even Icelandic (!) licence plates here. As of today 6 Nov, the thermometer shows 28C (82F), and the beaches are packed. You can buy a nice beach villa with its own pool for around 300k$/€. Super safe too, forgot a bluetooth speaker in plain sight in my car with rolled down windows - for a few weeks. Conviently they just passed a digital nomad law with which you can come here long-term and pay 15% income tax.

It’s funny you say that; one of my cousins in Miami wants to move there after finishing university and getting a good tech job. He already has Spanish citizenship too.

> Super safe too

Yeah, except for the occasional car bomb…

Unfortunately, due to government policy during the Franco years, the south of Spain continues to consistently attract the worst kinds of people.

Even if most days are peaceful, you can never know if today is the day some shit kicks off between the drug cartels and the restaurant you’re eating at gets shot up.

And in the areas that don’t entirely depend on the drug trade? There’s nothing at all.

> Yeah, except for the occasional car bomb… What?

> Even if most days are peaceful, you can never know if today is the day some shit kicks off between the drug cartels and the restaurant you’re eating at gets shot up.

The only area I know it's pretty problematic and have a lot of mafia acts involved are Marbella, specially Puerto Banús, where a lot of rich mobster do their "business". Outside that, and outside the few slum districts in some cities, there isn't places where you can say things like that could happen.

I was diagnosed with Dysthymia and ADHD. One thing I've been noticing since last few years is that my situation gets a lot worse in winter season (India). Winters have always been depressing. Is that a thing? Or am I making things up?

It's a thing. That's what SAD is about. Winter depression can exist on top of regular depression etc...

I installed a couple of LED "corn lights", each supposedly equivalent to a 750 watt incandescent, I believe it was.

I just got them recently, so I haven't had time to really make an evaluation. We'll see at the end of the winter.

I focus on regular vigorous exercise, minimizing processed food consumption, and avoiding alcohol entirely. These are things I try to do year round, but extra emphasis helps me during the fall and winter.

Get daylight-spectrum bulbs and a sunrise alarm clock.

This is the most scientifically-validated answer. Full-spectrum lighting has been shown to reduce the effects of SAD. I keep a normal lamp with a full-spectrum bulb at my desk and turn it on for meetings during the day. It is enough for me to eliminate SAD.

Vitamin D3. Get tested and take it. Has helped me for almost 20 years with blood results to support efficacy.

Go hike in the rain--with a head lamp. I survived my time in the PNW because of this one rule.

Use the weekends to be outdoors

Find excuses to travel to warmer climes at least a few times over the winter.

Has anyone seen research on how these bright lamps can hurt eyesight

No worries, close eyelids if you therapy in tens of cm from lamp, eyelids filter out most red and near infraredm sun like spectrum.

I find that masturbating helps significantly with this.

If I haven't had my morning wank, it ruins my whole day. If I neglect to enjoy my evening wank, I can't sleep.

The calming effect of fucking one's own hand should not be underestimated.

Get into astrophotography or winter sports

Magnesium Byglycinate + Zinc

Magnesium helps me sleep soundly trough the whole night. Forgot to take it yesterday and today woke up in early morning and couldn't fall back to sleep.

I watch ice hockey.

Go outside?

Bourbon.

I live in the south and if anything I'm glad that the fucking summer is finally over. I had SAD in spring because of my allergies and because I know that the heat is coming though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com