January 27th, 2011 by AnnMacDonald in Better Health Network, Health Tips
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This picture shows the view from my office window in Boston: Dull, dreary, and depressing — at least on overcast days like today. Lack of light is one of the reasons that people feel mentally foggy.
One of the bloggers I follow, Rachel Zimmerman of WBUR’s CommonHealth blog, recently wrote that she’s been drinking three times as much coffee as usual. In addition to imbibing more caffeine, I’ve been trying to boost my spirits and alertness with mid-day runs to the snack machine (not the best strategy, in case you’re wondering).
At this time of year, many people aren’t just foggy and sad — they’ve got SAD, or seasonal affective disorder. About half a million Americans — women more often than men — are diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder each year. Many others experience at least some of the symptoms, which include loss of pleasure and energy, inability to concentrate, feelings of worthlessness, and an uncontrollable urge to eat sugar and high-carbohydrate foods (in my case, chocolate chip cookies).
Bright white light therapy remains a mainstay of treatment for seasonal affective disorder. That’s because the light acts on cells in the retina, the tissue located at the back of the eye that sends visual information to the brain. The hypothalamus, which helps control the sleep-wake cycle, is one part of the brain that receives this information. During the winter months, when people tend to stay indoors more, days are shorter, and the weather becomes overcast, our exposure to natural light diminishes. That disrupts the sleep-wake cycle, as well as other circadian rhythms. The result can be symptoms of seasonal affective disorder. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
December 26th, 2010 by Elaine Schattner, M.D. in Better Health Network, News, Opinion, Research
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This evening, when I finished cleaning up the kitchen after our family dinner, I glanced at the current issue of the Economist. The cover features this headline: the Joy of Growing Old (or why life begins at 46). It’s a light read, as this so-influential magazine goes, but nice to contemplate if you’re, say, 50 years old and wondering about the future.
The article’s thesis is this: Although as people move towards old age they lose things they treasure — vitality, mental sharpness and looks — they also gain what people spend their lives pursuing: Happiness.
Fig. 1 (above): “A snapshot of the age distribution of psychological well-being in the United States,” Stone, et al: PNAS, May 2010 (y-axis: “WB” stands for well-being.)
Young adults are generally cheerful, according to the Economist’s mysterious author or authors. Things go downhill until midlife, and then they pick up again. There’s a long discussion in the article on possible reasons for the U-shaped curve of self-reported well-being. Most plausible among the explanations offered, which might be kind of sad except that in reality (as opposed to ideals) I think it’s generally a good thing, is the “death of ambition, birth of acceptance.” The concept is explained: “Maybe people come to accept their strengths and weaknesses, give up hoping to become chief executive or have a picture shown in the royal Academy…” And this yields contentedness. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*
December 22nd, 2010 by Lucy Hornstein, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Opinion, True Stories
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The most moving speaker at the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) convention I went to in Denver a few months ago was a doctor with Stage 4 cancer who had survived well past all expectations for his disease. While talking about achieving happiness through balance in life, he pulled out of his wallet a card made for him by his daughter, a preschool teacher.
“This is the C card,” he told us. “It says: ‘I have cancer. I can do whatever I want.’”
What a great idea, I thought. As much as it resonated with me, though, I couldn’t help but feel there was more to it than that.
Recently I was comforting a dear friend who had lost her mother. Remembering this handout from the AAFP, I held her close and said: “You’re a mourner now. You can do whatever you want.” I might as well said: “You have the M card.”
There’s this crotchety old guy in his eighties whom I’ve known for years. He does whatever he wants. I don’t think he actually carries a card in his wallet that says: “This is the O card. I am old. I can do whatever I want,” but he might as well. He is indeed old, and so he is entitled. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Dinosaur*
December 22nd, 2010 by DrRob in Better Health Network, Opinion, True Stories
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“I need you to do me a favor,” my nurse asked me at the end of our day on Friday.
“Sure,” I answered. “What do you want?”
“Please have a better week next week,” she said with a pained expression. “I don’t think I can handle another one like this week.”
It was a bad week. There was cancer, there was anxiety, there were family fights, there were very sick children. It’s not that it’s unusual to see tough things (I am a doctor), but the grouping of them had all of us trudging home drained of energy. Spent.
I think this is one of the toughest thing about being a doctor (and nurse, by my nurse’s question): The spending of emotional reserves. I’m not physically active at work, yet I come home tired. I don’t have to be busy to feel drained. It’s not the patients’ fault that I feel tired. They are coming to me to get the service I offer to them, and I think I do that job well. The real problem is in me. The real problem is that I care. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*
November 25th, 2010 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, True Stories
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Here is my column in [the November 21st] Greenville News:
This Thanksgiving we will have 32 guests at the table. Rather, at the tables we scatter about the dining room…and living room…and kitchen. At our house, food is practically a sacrament. And obviously Thanksgiving is the high holiday of American eating. So we will be honoring the tradition by feeding everyone as much as we can.
Because the guests are all beloved to us, we will also have a variety of foods, in a variety of presentations. For instance, there will be fresh cranberries for organic purists, as well as a maroon gelatinous mass of cranberries for those who feel that cranberries indeed spring from aluminum. The turkeys will be divided perfectly among dark and light meat lovers. And for the carb-loving, there will be sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and potatoes soft, but cut into chunks. (In deference to the texture-challenged.)
We will have assorted dressings, casseroles and vegetables. And more types of sweets than any of us really need. All of it because we love one another, friends, family, young and old. And we want everyone to have something that they love. The sheer pleasure of eating is one (but not the only) reason that we love the holiday so much.
I think we also love it for a few other reasons. For instance, we (and I mean all Americans) love it because it slows us down, just a bit, before the Christmas madness sets in. Yes, the day after Thanksgiving it’s “game on.” But on Turkey Thursday we stop, if only because we are too full to move. So much of our lives involve rushing, hurrying, competing. Thanksgiving is a food-stuffed, sleep-inducing speed bump in the frantic activity of the season.
We also love it because it is tangible. Today so much is virtual. So much of our lives are borne on the airwaves, across cell-towers or satellites. Our pleasures are so often intangible, insubstantial — distant sounds and images on movies, television shows, or the Internet. Even our work is often virtual. Thanksgiving is a time when we can touch and taste, listen and embrace. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
