Saturday, January 3, 2009

Seasonal Affective Disorder, Serotonin and Weight

The Christmas trees are coming down, holiday gifts put away and the stark realization is that every morning is dark and cold, no more time off. 1/2 days at work or holiday festivities to look forward to. What we have in front of us are many weeks of work waking up to no sun.

Many of us feel a definite mood change during this time of year. "Seasonal Affective Disorder" (also referred to as "SAD") is a seasonal depression syndrome and it is widely thought that serotonin imbalance is responsible for much of this. The neurotransmitter, serotonin,is manufactured in the brain from the amino acid tryptophan. Sunlight, when it hits the retina of the eye, causes an increased production of serotonin. Thereforte, during the darker months, less serotonin is made leading to depression symptoms and carbohydrate cravings.

How to combat this? Ensure adequate lighting in the house and consider increasing the dosage of Serotonin-Plus to three times a day. Many of our patients tell us that by increasing the serotonin dosage, they are able to thwart the effects of the decreased natural production of serotonin.

1 comment:

Susanne said...

Picked up a copy of Womans World yesterday. Great article...and all this time I thought the medical people who were in these magazines were "quacks". They always seem to have the miracle plan for losing weight. Being part of your SP "diet" and lifestyle change program I can say...it is for REAL!
But like anything else, you only get out of it what you put in.
Too bad there wasn't a picture of Dr. P in the article also. He does practice what he preaches.