Does it work for you - you do not feel depressed in the darkest months of the year? I don’t want to get out of bed - have to force myself. But as soon as the sun starts shining through the bedroom windows in Spring, I leap out of bed, throwing back the bedclothes!
I’m sure vit D doesn’t come shining through the bedroom window early in the morning, so maybe it’s the brightness of the sun. I worked in an architectural office for many years under bright fluorescent light and always felt energised during the day, winter and summer.
There’s a known condition appropriately called SAD (Seasonally Affective Disorder) which can affect people in the winter. Its thought to be caused by a lack of enough sunlight, but exactly how is not known, and vitamin D levels may be just part of the issue. Diet and exercise levels can also be a factor. You can get broad spectrum sun lamps (light boxes) designed to make up for the lack of sunshine.
Whilst I am sure it helps a bit, there are a few scientists who are studying and say natural sunlight is far better as it stimulates a metabolic pathway through our eyes and skin that dosing with tablets etc cannot.
My body doesn’t retain Vit D well so my levels are always in the basement. I have high dose vit D all the time and seems to make no difference to mood or energy (or which I have none…)
Don’t think it’s that. It’s the darkness outside the bedroom window that keeps me from wanting to get up. When the sun’s around I feel just fine.
Once I’m up and out of bed on dark mornings I come to life by the time the kettle’s boiled and the cats have been fed. I’ll see what the doctor says when I see him about vitamin D.
What I’m asking is - has anyone really felt, point to for real, the beneficial effects of vitamin D during the winter period.
I’m with @JaneJones on this one - no matter how much sunlight exposure I get, I don’t absorb Vitamin D from it. Since my Vitamin D levels were found to be off-the-scale low when I started breaking bones, I need it in combination with calcium in order to strengthen the bones. Funnily enough, the liquid stuff gets absorbed and the powder stuff doesn’t…
In answer to @Bonzocat 's original question, it doesn’t improve my mood all that noticeably, but replacing my lightbulbs with less “soft” light spectrum has helped. There are really good daylight spectrum lightbuibs which you can use as normal in the house rather than a glaring lamp you sit in front of…
Found a pyschiatry paper (bright versus dim ambient light affects subjective well-being) where the first sentence of the abstract says “Light falling on the retina is converted into an electrical signal which stimulates serotonin synthesis”. But it’s an old paper dated 2015!
This is bright light versus dim ambient light – no mention of sunlight.
Chocolate raises my feeling of wellbeing, my serotonin levels, so maybe bright light in the morning raises my serotonin levels, which leaps me out of bed!
I know that bright light surrounding me, or just simply looking out the window on a bright sunny day, raises my mood. I’m sure sunlight enhances mood by biochemicel means, but my feeling at the moment is simply that early morning sunlight flooding through the bedroom window is enough to make me ‘feel happy’ and am energised by it.
I woke between 6am/7 am and could just pick out a faint red glow above the treetops this morning, enough to get me out of bed by 7.30am. The sun didn’t shine through the windows until 8.30am. Not so bad. But the morning light is dimming and slowing down to darker mornings to come.
Reminds me of the days back in London where all house lights would be on, had to be on, while getting ready to go to work. In those day you got used to it, or it didn’t matter, because you were young.
I’m sure sunlight, or just light, ‘on the eye balls’ is key. But hating artificiality makes it difficult to consider this for example. Might consider giving it a try though. There are some positive recommendations by users.
. Light especially red end of the spectrum regulates the sleep and awake hormones melotonin and melonin so very important.
