For the Sad or Odd, winter can be a Mess

…………….Frozen landscapes, limited sunshine = winter blues.. —sBinCh/Creative Commons

If you’re feeling blue on these cold, dark winter days, you’re not alone.

By now, most people are familiar with Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD, a syndrome that suggests we have a vestigial desire to hibernate like the bears. SAD people feel anxious, have difficulty concentrating and long to sleep not eight or 10 hours, but all day and half the night. Most of us can’t afford to do that, even though it makes some therapeutic sense — isn’t it more snug under those covers than anywhere out in the cold, cruel world?

Scientists tell us that the “winter blues” are caused by a reduction of sunlight during the season’s shorter days. It’s simple biology — a lack of sunlight disrupts brain chemicals, resulting in a reduction of serotonin and an increase in melatonin, compounds that help regulate our cycles of sleeping and waking.

The classic therapy for SAD involves special high-intensity lamps that imitate the effects of sunlight. Sitting in front of one of these helps 60 to 80 percent of sufferers feel better, if not truly HAPPY (Hopeful, Active, Peppy, Perky and Yawnless). Other recommended therapies include increased amounts of B-complex vitamins, eliminating caffeine and boosting levels of exercise, especially outside activities like walking.

This brings me to a less well-known malady that deserves greater attention from researchers and medical specialists: Outdoor Deficiency Disorder, or ODD. This occurs when temperatures plunge to Arctic levels, wind chills dip into the minus numbers and no one in their right mind ventures outside for more than a few minutes at a time.

ODD strikes hardest those folks who have a natural preference for spending time out in real air — people who find three things wrong with the normal workday routine of (1) sitting, (2) inside, (3) all day. Victims are not so much depressed and sleepy as antsy and frustrated. They tend to spend more time than their bosses would like staring out the window on any moderately decent day asking, “Why am I here?” Unless delusional, they know why — they need the paycheck.

It’s hard enough to squeeze in a little outside action during Eastern Standard Time, when it can be dark as you set out in the morning and dark before you get home. (This often brings on a separate malady called Mole Ecosystem Simulation Syndrome, or MESS.) When it’s viciously cold with a knife-sharp wind and you know in your heart you’re courting frostbite and hypothermia, getting outside begins to seem like another foolish longing, akin to yearning to win the lottery without actually buying tickets.

It can be hard to get around outside. — AndyRobertsPhotos/CC

When I spent a winter in Vermont, natives were fond of saying, “There is no bad weath-ah, only the wrong clothing.” They may have had a point, because I can recall starry, starry nights of 20 below or so when I tramped dizzily through a settlement of handmade houses called Lost Nation, eyes on the glories of the Milky Way.

These were the days before fleece. I had on two pair of wool socks, felt boot liners, my Canadian-made moose skin mukluks, silk tights, thermal long johns, flannel-lined jeans, a silk undershirt, long-sleeved thermal turtleneck, wool sweater, down vest, down parka, felt hat, wool scarf, silk gloves and hefty leather mittens. I wasn’t really cold, but I wasn’t really moving very fast either, dressed like the Michelin man. And it took the better part of half an hour to suit up and disembark from my cold-weather wardrobe.

The pity is, I don’t have any of that stuff anymore, living down here in an allegedly more temperate climate. In my New Jersey winter gear, it isn’t long before my eyes start to tear and I begin to lose sensation in my extremities. For all intents and purposes, I can spend little time outdoors these bitter days, and often feel ODD as a result.

Oh, to be skulking around the garden, walking in the woods, basking in the fresh air and sunshine — and feeling no subzero wind chill pain. Maybe someday soon we’ll experience the traditional January thaw? Or have a sustained heat wave with readings in the lower 40s?

There actually is a definitive treatment for SAD and ODD victims, tired of huddling in the dark and cold. It doesn’t involve 10,000-lumen lamps or enough gear from Patagonia to fill a steamer trunk. It would be a slim little plane ticket south to some equatorial clime where the trade winds blow and the sun shines with delicious warmth. Where birds are singing, flowers are blooming and the landscape is lush, green and well-oxygenated.

We ODDs would get EVEN (Energized, Vigorous, Elated and Non-aggressive) in a trice were we to find ourselves in a little subtropical resort. The only thing we need do to avoid relapse is to hang out on some balmy beach until spring comes to the northern latitudes. Of course, short of retirement, we have as much a chance of doing that as winning the lottery. How SAD is that?