The SAD Episode

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and it's a Stuff You Should Know,

hold down to start the new year.

Chuck's still wearing his novelty 2026 glasses that he got sponsored by Nivea, that I believe

what you're saying was Ryan C. Chris himself handed him to you while you were at Times Square,

right?

No, not handed.

He put them on my face.

Whoa, is it because you guys are co-workers?

Yeah, he's with I Heart, didn't he?

Yeah, but I think like half of the U.S. is a co-worker of his guest so many jobs.

Yeah, you're probably right.

Well, if you have a guest listening audience, this is our first recording of the new year.

Yes.

I'm probably going to be a little rusty.

Can I just give a quick shout out to a couple of things?

Yeah, please, too.

Great.

Well, Josh knows all this stuff because we communicate outside of work, believe it or

not, because we're fans.

But I went to New York City, Emily and I do our little Broadway weekend in New York over

Christmas every year, and this year I just want to say thanks to a couple of people, most

notably Natasha Hodgson of Operation Mint's Meat Fame, because she is in the show and put

together the show and stuff you should know, and she's been in magazines as people alerted

as giving stuff you should know credit as our episode inspiring that show and was kind

enough to give us a couple of tickets to go see it and it was fantastic.

I highly recommend it.

I know.

I was loathe to miss it.

That sucked.

She could have been there, but it's still playing, so maybe you can check it out.

Yeah.

I was especially upset when you said that she gave you, she came out in the audience in

the middle of the show and gave you like a bouquet of roses.

No, no, no.

And the audience lifted you up on their shoulders.

No, that didn't happen.

Also went to Barston Trolley as I like to do before Broadway.

Yeah.

Barston Trolley is where I go before Broadway shows.

Well, what is it?

It's a bar, but it's sort of a, I mean, you can just make reservations a week out.

I think I've mentioned this before, it's sort of a secret place in that it doesn't have

a sign or it's not widely publicized, but you know, seven days out from when you want

to go, you can call them up.

They specialize in getting people in and out of their pre and post Broadway.

And you know, sometimes you can see Broadway performers there on the down low.

Nice.

I would have no idea.

They want to be sitting nice to me and I wouldn't even know.

Well, you might, if it's, if it's a famous, you know, like Brian Cranston was sitting

there.

He was?

No.

But he could be.

I saw what years ago, I saw Dexter in there.

What's his name?

Dexter's good enough.

Yeah.

This year, I saw the lady from Lost, although I don't think she's on Broadway.

She was in there.

But all this to say, big thanks to Jason, who helps take care of Barston Trolley and

Joe's on Broadway.

He came over on his night off just to say hi and was just a total sweetheart of a guy.

What a trip.

And then finally, I want to thank Santa, Santa Claus in the radio city musical show.

I surprised Emily by going to the Christmas show this year for the first time.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, remember Santa wrote it.

Santa wrote in.

And although he was not in the performance, we went to Santa Adam was very kind to send

a Christmas video to Ruby.

Have you been to the show?

No.

I'm just some pumpkin who stays at home all the time apparently.

Dude, you and me have to go to the radio city music or a Christmas spectacular.

It is one of the delights of my life.

The Rockets was one of the most impressive, most amazing live shows of any kind of ever

seen.

They were incredible.

Wow.

Okay.

I'll go.

Yeah.

You love, you guys love your Christmas cheer and it really, you can't even the biggest

Grinchy curmudgeon wouldn't help but get in the mood even at the 10 a.m. show.

But the Rockets were amazing and Santa said that he turned them on to our listener mail

and the Rockets episode and some of the now current Rockets are listening.

Oh, cool.

So a shout out to you, Rockets, keep, keep on kicking.

Hello, Rockets.

We did a whole show on the Rockets, didn't we?

We did.

Yeah.

That was amazing, Chuck.

You were sick.

You were sick over the holidays.

It felt terrible.

Yeah.

It really stunk.

I got this cold that apparently there's like a two week cold going around.

Oh, no.

That one.

And it was just like every day I would add a new symptom and it was, I could do stuff

during the day but I was just sick the whole time.

It was so sorry.

It was rough.

Yeah.

Some thanks for that.

I appreciate it.

But we still had a great Christmas.

That was how to open presents.

So she opened presents on Christmas morning.

She was so happy.

Pause her teeth.

Quated both.

Okay.

Yeah, she's a pro.

She knows what she's doing.

She got some new rabbit treats so she laid on her back and rolled on those and she had

a great Christmas morning.

That's wonderful.

It was a good Christmas after all.

We hung out with friends on Christmas Eve and our friends were all in Braden and their

kids, Elliot and Bear.

I know.

We got to hang out with you.

Yeah, you do.

You've met them plenty times.

We got to hang out with little kids on Christmas Eve and man, that will put you in the

Christmas spirit when you don't have kids of your own.

Yeah.

How old are those kids?

They're like eight and six.

I think so.

That's fun.

Fry mage.

Yeah.

Right in the zone.

Yeah.

So thank you, though, for your sympathy over my sicknesses.

Yeah.

I felt bad.

One thing I don't have, Chuck, which I am really happy I don't have because it's awful

is sad.

No sads for you?

I don't have sad.

Do you have sad?

No.

I don't have sad.

We're talking about seasonal, effective disorder and just right off the bat we should point

out because I was about to say occasionally I get the winter blues.

This is not that.

This is a real, it's legitimate depression and comorbid with stuff like bipolar disorder

and we're going to talk all about it, but it's not just, I don't know, I get a little

blue in the winter sometimes when it's gloomy.

No, but it's tied to that.

Yes.

It's just it seems to be an extreme version of that, but you're right, it's not, it's

nothing light.

It's classified.

I believe in the DSM is a major depressive disorder with a seasonal pattern.

I think that's the clinical name for seasonal effective disorder.

And there are people out there.

I think something like five percent of people, I don't, I believe that's an American

statistic.

Get the like real deals, seasonal, effective disorder where they have major depressive

symptoms during the winter months.

But something like 10 percent or maybe even higher than that in the United States, people

get what's called sub-syndromal seasonal, effective disorder.

So where you don't have it where it can be considered major depression, but it's definitely

worse than the holiday blues and the weird thing about this, although it's not so weird

once we explain it, it is seasonal.

It's tied to winter and it seems that or summer, which I, that one's just mind blowing

to me.

Yeah, we'll get to that.

Yeah.

It seems like they have it figured out, they have this, they have it explained.

So this is one of my favorite episodes where it's like, here's how the human body works.

Here's what's messed up with this when we're talking about this tada, I love episodes

like that.

Not a lot of mystery, big thanks to Livia for getting the new year off to a great start

with another banger.

Yeah.

Here, here.

Yeah, we should say that this is something that hasn't been officially, I mean, it's obviously

been around since, you know, time began because as we'll see, it's tied to seasons and especially

light and how much light you're getting.

So that's always been a thing.

But it hasn't been officially diagnosed as a thing for that long.

It was in 1984 when there was a paper by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, the

particularly guy named Norman Rosenthaw got together and they discussed these, almost

30, I have the feeling one dropped out because there were 29 patients.

Most of them had bipolar disorder and they all had what we now know is as sad.

Yeah.

That 30th one, when they, like one week in, they're like, how do you feel and they're like

fine and they're like, you're cut, you can get out of here.

Yeah.

So yeah, bipolar disorders will see like really kind of ties into this.

It seems to be like also seasonal in some weird way too.

But pretty quickly after that 1984 paper, the DSM went all in three, three years later,

the DSM3R as we all know are scenes for revised or rocking.

That came out in 1987.

And it was like, now it was a diagnosis, but it was used as a modifier as we saw a major

depressive disorder with the seasonal pattern.

Yeah.

So it wasn't its own thing.

It was just a subtype essentially of an existing depressive disorder that's kind of how they

first had it.

Yeah.

And you know, because it's seasonal, the most common kind of sad that we think about, like

we mentioned, it is very serious thing and it starts off in the fall, maybe early winter

and it kind of depends on where you are as we'll see.

Although not always intuitively, there's a third act reveal that might surprise some people.

It generally subsides in the spring.

But I did mention that odd spring and summer variety, that has not been studied much.

It's very, very limited.

About 0.5% of the population has this opposite pattern, but it is a diagnosable mood

disruption.

It just happens in the spring and summer and it's tied more to sort of like oppressive

heat and maybe unsurprisingly, some of the things they recommend for that, which again,

we're going to cover a little more later, stuff like maybe stay inside, dim the lights,

that kind of thing.

Yeah.

And the thing that gets me about the summer version, that much rare one, is that the symptoms

are almost, in some cases, opposite the symptoms of winter.

So usually when you first start getting sad, it's around young adulthood, ages 18 to

30, I think.

And most people who get it, get it most years, but you don't necessarily have it every

year.

Women are four times likelier than men to have it.

And if you have an existing mood disorder, you're much likelier to suffer from seasonal

effective disorder because it's almost like it takes your existing mood disorder.

They bipolar too and just builds on it.

There's an extra like environmental point to it that really kind of kicks it in the

high gear.

Yeah.

And that four times more common in women, that's really substantial and we'll get into

that.

It seems to be tied to estrogen, but we'll dig into that a little bit more in a bit.

But having family members, they think there's some genetic component to it.

If you have relatives that have depression or any kind of mental health disorder, it's

obviously, it doesn't mean you will, but that could mean you might.

I guess that's the way doctors say it.

Yeah.

You might.

God.

And not surprisingly, you're more likely to develop sad if you live in places away from

the equator, far north or south where there's going to be less sunlight or maybe in places

like Seattle, where there's just more gray days than others.

Yeah, I was surprised.

I couldn't find the other eight, the first eight, but Seattle was the ninth most affected

city with seasonal effective disorder.

I would have thought it'd be higher than that.

It could not find the first eight.

So I'm like, does this list really exist?

Or was this just like a post intelligence or made up article?

And do they do they tie in things like or do they list things like took to coma?

Like neighboring, neighboring towns.

Does that count as a different place, I wonder?

That's a great question.

What about Tacoma?

Well, I just wondered, Tacoma is very lovely, but maybe Seattle might be a little more

lively.

Yeah, no, I can't see that.

No, no, everybody knows about Tacoma.

Okay.

Okay.

It's been a long time since we picked out a particular city.

Oh, I don't want to put Tacoma on our sites.

Okay.

We want.

Because you know, you can't spell, you can't spell CTAC without TAC.

That's right.

So what happens when you experience sad, seasonal effect of disorder?

I mean, most people can kind of come up with this idea of like what depression symptoms

seem like, but there's specific ones that emerge with seasonal effect of disorder.

Yeah.

I think, you know, generally what you will see, like with most depression, listlessness,

obviously sadness, interest in activities that you might normally like, you don't like

as much, you may have hard time concentrating, suicidal thoughts.

If it gets really bad, hopelessness, maybe guilt sometimes, and then some physical symptoms,

like just a weight, like in your limbs sometimes.

Yeah, like a lethargy, a fatigue.

And those, yeah, that's kind of common among depression in general, but winter sad has

some extra symptoms like oversleeping or just sleeping too much or more than you normally

would.

Craming carbs, overeating, weight gain, and then that fatigue, the low energy, and tiredness.

And all of those things too, create like a feedback loop where, you know, if you're depressed

and you start gaining weight and that kind of thing bothers you, you're going to be even

more depressed because you just started gaining weight in which case, if you're an emotional

eater, you might go eat more carbs and gain more weight and they're, you know, it just

kind of goes on.

So that's one of the difficult things about it is it's not just like, I'm depressed.

I'm depressed and now everything is set up because of this winter season for me to just

keep getting more and more depressed while winter is going on.

Yeah.

And if you're sitting there thinking like, oh man, like in the winter time, I tend to

sleep later and I tend to eat and maybe drink a little more and gain some weight and

I'm a little more tired.

Those are also, that's why sad is such a sort of a unique thing because that also just

describes a lot of people in the winter.

But there is a difference and, you know, we're going to be pointing out those differences.

You mentioned summer was unusual because the summer sad because it's very much opposite

and that goes for the symptoms as well because instead of sleeping in, you might have trouble

sleeping instead of eating too much, you might have a low appetite, you might lose weight,

you might be anxious and agitated and irritable.

Headaches is another one for summer sad.

Yeah, it's like winter sad you go inward and are kind of closed off and with summer

sad you go outward but it's not in any, like that doesn't mean you're just more sociable.

It means like you're more aggro potentially than you would be with like winter sad.

But yeah, it is, they're just kind of opposites and yet they tie into like you are saying

how people already are, like you go out more in the summertime.

You stay in more in the winter time so that what seems to be the case with seasonal effective

disorder is that it is a hyper or hypoverion of a normal human biological imperative that

we have learned as a society to try to ignore and for some people ignoring it is not really

an option because it's so pronounced.

Yeah, and inescapable.

Yeah.

So, there are basically four things and like I said, if you feel like, oh man, I kind of

feel those things in the winter too, listen to these four things because this is when you

should see a medical professional as if one, if these feelings persist for days and days

in a row, it's not like, oh, I just had a couple of rough days when it was like really

rainy and cold.

If you're sleeping appetite patterns, like really change is the second one.

If you're coping with drugs and alcohol, that's a big red flag.

And then the fourth one, if you feel hopeless or suicidal for sure and I think as far as

diagnosis goes, you have to, I think it has to be for at least two years in a row, even

though you did say you don't necessarily have it all years, you at least have to have

it two years in a row at some point.

Yeah.

And because it is essentially, if you look at the winter sad and summer sad, they're basically

two ends of a spectrum, mania and depression.

And people with bipolar two are definitely more susceptible to sad and they might experience

both types of seasonal, although again, just statistically speaking, they're much more

likely to just experience the winter sad.

Yeah, for sure.

And if you do see a professional, they're probably going to ask you a lot of questions.

You might even fill out an official questionnaire.

There's no like blood test or brain scan or anything like, you know, other types of depression,

that's the case as well.

You might get, they might rule things out.

They might do like a thyroid screening or, you know, some other things just to make sure

it's not something like physical going on.

Right.

So that's sad, everybody.

And I think we should talk about where this whole thing comes from.

They think after a break, our first break of 2026, let's make it a big one.

You still got it.

You still got it.

All right.

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You pull in, stay in your car, check something off your to-do list, no waiting room, no pressure,

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Oil changes include tire pressure checks and fluid top-offs, and the friendly staff explain

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All right.

Kind of like we were talking, it's kind of hard to diagnose this as far as when you should

go to a doctor because a lot of people are just like this in the winter and you're also

sort of fighting, I think you kind of hinted at it, like a natural human intuition in a

lot of ways because if you go back in time to the time where tuk tuk was roaming the

earth in the winter, they slowed down and they conserved energy because food was around

and it was cold, so they bunker down and there are some interesting theories around that,

right?

Yeah, they think it's possible that Neanderthals had like a real type of hibernation period

in the winter, not like a bear necessarily, but something more pronounced than humans

and that interbreeding with Neanderthals may have produced seasonal effect of disorder

in some people.

Yeah, pretty cool.

When Homo sapiens started hugging and kissing Neanderthals?

That's right.

What was it?

Quest for fire.

Oh man, there was some realizations in that movie.

It was a, I mean, what an interesting movie though, you know?

Yeah, Ron Pearlman.

Yeah, he really, he's a good caveman.

By the way, did a minute ago, did I say bunker down?

Mm-hmm.

I meant to say hunker down, is bunker down even a thing?

I feel like it should be more than hunker down, it makes more sense.

Okay.

I didn't even know.

I heard you and made like I grasped that you said bunker down, right?

But it's so natural that it didn't even seem wrong.

Yeah, and our Georgia Bulldogs, what they say for them is hunker down.

You hear me dogs.

I'm going to start saying bunker down and everyone's going to pick them like a CIA plant

or something.

They're right.

A narc.

Yeah.

Oh, I can't talk about the dogs right now.

I know.

Very disappointing.

What a heartbreaker.

Yeah.

So you said something like that people back in Tuk Tuk's age definitely slowed down in

the winter time, right?

Yeah.

Or your body just changes.

And that's still the case with humans.

We have not evolved out of that.

And there's been studies, there was a 2015 study that found that the Cimane and Bolivia

and the San people in Namibia, who are in no way, shape, perform related ones in South

America, ones in Africa, they both sleep longer in the winter.

And less in the summer.

And you might say like, well, duh, we all do that.

That's exactly the point.

There's some sort of biological mechanism.

There's some sort of, like I said, imperative where you without conscious thought and kind

of without a choice, you slow down in the winter time and you speed up more in the summertime.

That's just what our bodies do.

And because of this natural thing, it can go haywire, just like any other natural thing

in humans.

And when it does, that produces seasonal effect of disorder.

And they think they've got the mechanism to the whole thing down.

Yeah.

That's kind of evidence in this German study from 2023.

They did a study and caveat all this was it was a study already of people that had sleeping

issues with disturbed sleeping patterns.

So it was kind of, you know, it wasn't just the general population.

And interestingly, they found that even if they were living in a place where it was mostly

artificial light, even then by season, their sleep cycles would vary.

So it's not just like, yeah, if you live out away from all the, you know, out in the

boonies away from industrialization and your circadian rhythms are really dictated by

natural light, that would make sense.

They found that that that took place even when you were just living a regular, well lit

life.

Yeah, even when you lived in a windowless, brutalist department of Munich, that's right.

You wear a black turtleneck all year round, man.

And then another kind of thing, like you said, that was a small study and it was of people

who already had a sleep disorder, yet it backs up what everybody kind of anecdotally

already knows, right?

Sleep more in the season or you're more tired in the winter season.

Another thing that's anecdotal but is backed up by study is that your appetite changes,

right?

Yeah.

Some of it's cultural where like, you know, Christmas cookies are around, you're going

to eat them.

Oh yeah.

And Christmas cookies aren't around in March, say, maybe some maniac makes like St. Patrick's

Day cookies, but way more people make Christmas cookies than St. Patrick's Day

cookies.

So there are reasons that your appetite does increase just because there's more delicious

stuff around, but we've also found that just by being in colder temperatures, being exposed

to colder temperatures over periods of time, hormone levels change in our bodies and we crave

more calories because as we digest them, we produce more heat and that keeps us warm.

We don't need bare skins anymore.

Yeah, that's right.

We need buck-eye balls and Emily's aunt comes to town every Christmas now and all of

her mom and her aunt and her sister and Ruby, they all have a night making Christmas cookies.

Nice.

Oh, dude, I did better this year than usual.

I somehow managed to only put on five pounds.

Hey, that's not bad for Christmas.

From Thanksgiving to January 4th.

Yeah, that's great.

That's not bad because usually that number is more like 12.

And I've found that that temporary sort of gain goes off a little quicker, too.

Yeah, it's certainly what you get back to reason, you know?

Yeah, that's the key is getting back to reason faster than just not putting it off for

the rest of the month of January.

That's what I think.

And the buck-eye balls are gone and those old fashions really slow down after Christmas.

Man, those buck-eye balls.

I made my mom's Christmas cookies.

My mom's recipe, the one that I grew up with as a kid that had confounded me for years

because I couldn't get it quite right.

It was always too flowery.

Okay.

And in the last few years, I've learned enough about baking that I kind of figured it out

on my own and I nailed it finally.

Nice.

Yeah.

I was going to have some of those.

It took, I'll make you some.

It took Christmas, though.

Oh, yes, for sure.

Yeah.

Not saying that.

That's interesting.

I don't do it.

But you've got me these cookie cutters that are all like kind of, they're like sentimental

between us, like different shapes and one of them is broccoli.

So I have broccoli-shaped cookie cutters and I hate broccoli.

So it's so good.

Oh, I love that.

That's fun.

Yeah.

I don't have any.

Oh, yeah.

We were talking about how appetite changes.

That's right.

Here's one thing, though.

You might think you've probably heard that like, you know, suicide spike around the

holidays because it can be such a tough time of the year for people.

That is actually not true.

In fact, they happen the least in December.

They're more common in the summertime.

Of course, in Australia, that's reversed because of where they are on how their seasons

run.

So we're talking about the, you know, our hemispheres perspective, obviously.

Right.

But I found that interesting and it's good to correct the record because I think everyone

always hears that.

That's probably good in a way because any time you're raising awareness on something

like that, that's a good thing, but that's not true that they spike over the holidays.

No, I feel like we've talked about that before and they think that maybe like just by people

reaching out more during the holidays, you have a greater social calendar, typically just

the holiday spirit can get to people.

But then also there's some other explanations for why it might be more common in the spring

or summer months, like you might just have more energy to actually complete suicide.

Right.

Another one that I thought was just horrible is that you, there are autoimmune conditions

like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis that are linked to seasonal allergies and that people

who have those are, this is overlooked population of people with a higher suicide risk and that

would account for it because your lupus is probably flaring up way more in the spring

and summer than it is in the winter months.

Yeah, for sure.

And we've kind of hinted around about the length of day and we're going to talk a lot about

that over the next little bit, but it's intuitive and it's correct that the more intense that

seasonal changes as far as that length of day goes, the more likely you're going to have

sad.

I believe it was a meta-analysis from South Korea just last year in 2025.

They studied 24 studies with 30,000 total participants, so pretty robust.

And for each one degree of increase in latitude, sad rose by 0.2% and just the winter blues

by 0.32%.

So one degree increase in latitude is obviously a little less daylight.

It's like Jimmy Buffett said changes in latitude, changes in attitude.

Never thought about that.

That's what he was talking about with seasonal affective disorder in that song.

Yeah, he changed the title though because when you title things like Cheeseburger and

Paradise, you can't title something that's seasonal affective disorder.

Well, it was originally that song was titled Major Depressive Disorder with the Seasonal

Pattern.

Right.

So, yeah, I think he was wise to change it as well.

So let's talk about it.

You want to get into some of the causes I've been teasing this the basically the entire

episode.

And I'm really kind of jazzed about this part.

Yeah.

I mean, here's where it gets sciency because our old friends obviously serotonin and melatonin

show up, right?

Yes.

So, just as a refresher serotonin is responsible for things like mood, sleep, cognition, a bunch

of other stuff.

But as far as seasonal affective disorder goes, those are the important things that serotonin

does, right?

Yeah.

What's really cool, I didn't actually realize this, sunlight hitting your retina actually

triggers production of serotonin.

It increases the production of serotonin, right?

Yeah.

So, therefore, when we're exposed to less sunlight, there's a lower angle of the sun.

You just don't get as much sun physically in the winter months.

That means that your serotonin levels are actually less in winter than they are in

the brighter spring and summer months.

That's just a fact.

It happens to everybody.

But in most people, your serotonin transporter gene starts producing less serotonin transporter,

the stuff that goes in and gets the serotonin out of the synapse, right?

That's right.

Which means that there's less serotonin, but there's also less transporters removing

the serotonin that's there.

So you keep about the same level of, say, mood that you would have in the summer months

because your body is adjusting.

What they found, just amazingly, is that there are two things that are screwed up with

the serotonin and the serotonin transporter that seem to be one of the major causes of

seasonal effectiveness disorder.

So, spill it.

You're on a roll.

Okay.

So people with seasonal, who get seasonal effective disorder, they have enough serotonin

all year to keep them from being depressed, right?

But just like everybody else, when they are exposed to less light, their serotonin goes

down.

But the thing that seems to give them seasonal effective disorder is that their serotonin

transporters don't also go down.

So like everybody else, they have lower serotonin during the winter, but they have the same

amount of serotonin transporters.

So there's less serotonin, and proportionately speaking, there's more serotonin transporters

removing the serotonin, keeping it from working, which pushes them from non-depress to depressive

symptoms, all because they're exposed to less light during the winter time.

Yeah.

And, you know, I mentioned women have it four times as often as men do, and it was tied

to estrogen, and it looks like variations in estrogen levels can interact with those

changes in serotonin, and basically make it worse.

And that probably is the explanation why women get it more, and you know, parimenopause

and menopause affect all that as well, which are, that's an episode we need to do for sure.

Yeah.

And also, you know, we mentioned there's a genetic element, right?

So it looks like that people, this is generally speaking, who have at least one short allele

in that serotonin transporter gene promoter region, I know that's a lot of words everybody.

The TL-DL is too long to listen, is that right?

Yeah, nice.

Is that, there's a genetic component.

So if you have that short allele, you're going to be more vulnerable to developing just

regular depression, to any kind of like, you know, life events or stresses like that

or just depression period, but that short allele is also associated with those higher

cert levels, the SCRT levels in the winter, and that's where your increased level of

SAT is going to come on.

Yeah.

So that's serotonin.

That's a big, big factor in producing seasonal affective disorders, as well as just

any kind of major impression, right?

Yeah.

The melatonin is next, and that just kind of broadly speaking as far as we're concerned

is the one that, you know, kind of makes you sleepy.

Yeah.

Which, I mean, you can make you sleepy, you can make you lethargic, you can make you

not want to go out, and all of this stuff, remember, there's a positive feedback loop here

with the depressive symptoms that come on with seasonal affective disorder, the behavior

they produce feeding back into becoming more and more depressed, melatonin keeps you

from wanting to do stuff because that's the way our bodies are set up to respond during

the winter.

It all has to do with the circadian rhythm, which is everybody knows, most people know,

governs your sleep and wake cycle, right?

Yeah.

It also has to do with digestion, it has to do with body temperature, and all sorts of

other hormones.

I didn't know this, but apparently it has to do with the release of cortisol, which we

think of cortisol typically as a stress hormone full stop, and it is, but it also is a hormone

that causes us to do more stuff, to produce more energy.

So when the circadian rhythm is not quite functioning correctly, it doesn't just make

us sleepy, it actually makes us less energetic as well.

And the whole thing, the whole circadian rhythm is controlled by a little part of the hypothalamus

called the superchiasmatic nucleus, or the SCN.

Nice work on that one.

I've practiced a couple of times.

Yeah, the SCN, and this is where we can throw a little German in there.

It relies on site gibbers or time gibbers, and these are just clues from the world around

us, telling you what's going on, and mainly what we're talking about here is light.

Sunlight, again, hitting those retinas, it travels to the SCN, and then that signals

the pineal gland to release or produce that melatonin.

So the more light you have, the less melatonin you have, that's why you're not supposed to

be looking at your cell phone or avoid like really bright lights before you try and get

some sleep.

But the TLDL here is, it just means our bodies make more melatonin in the winter time

than the summertime.

So you're going to be sleeping longer and probably a little more lethargic.

Yeah, exactly.

So serotonin plus melatonin, being messed with, it happens to everybody, but most people's

bodies respond in a way that that regulates it and keeps it from becoming depression.

Some people do not have that same way to regulate it, and that's who has seasonal effective

disorder.

Yeah, and I thought this is really interesting.

So we just said that if you experience sad, then you're going to have a greater than

average increase in melatonin in the winter than your average person.

But this is really interesting.

We talked about sunlight coming through your retinas, and that's the pathway that it initially

travels.

Maybe a little on your skin, but mainly through your retinas, they found that your retinas

actually react less to light in the winter compared to the summer.

You're right, Chuck, that is really interesting.

Thank you, Josh.

And I guess before we break, we should talk about the third little thing after serotonin

melatonin, which are social and environmental factors.

If you have sad, when fall rolls around, you start to get that dread, you're going to

have a negative emotional response to winter.

It's not the cause of it, but that's part of that feedback loop that you were talking

about.

You're like, oh man, the days are going to get shorter if you live in the Pacific Northwest

or other places where it rains a lot, and it's just more gray days that time of year.

You start to have that dread and that just feeds everything.

Yep.

It just makes it worse.

And then the whole thing is that feedback loop.

Chuck, I'm going to do it again.

I think we should take a message break.

All right.

We'll finish up with sad right after this.

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All right, so we talked several times about sad being a form of major depression, which

means that it is highly treatable, actually, thanks to our friend, the selective serotonin

reuptake inhibitor, SSRI, or antidepressants, apparently well butrin works really well

to treat sad, but basically any SSRI is going to work.

One thing that stuck out to me, I believe that if you have seasonal effective disorder,

but you're not, you don't have bipolar, you don't have major depressive disorder, it's

just seasonal.

I guess they suggest that you take SSRIs, you ramp up in say like the fall before it becomes

winter and then you wean off as springtime comes around.

So they would have you on SSRIs but not year round because you wouldn't need them year

round.

I thought that was fascinating because that can be risky.

If you don't do it right, it can be really risky.

Yeah, and you know, one of the things after that they suggest with all of these treatments

is that you start before it hits like, you know, and depending on where you live, like

when fall starts rolling around, maybe you start some of these therapies to see if you

can head it off at the pass, like in the old west.

Yeah.

But CBT is another thing that they suggest, like all cognitive behavioral therapy.

That's basically folk, you know, trying to get you to change the way you're thinking

about a thing.

Right.

It might be a group therapy a couple of times a week over a couple of months maybe.

But specifically in this case, it's like, let's, let's try and get those negative thoughts

about the upcoming season or the season that is upon you with positive ones.

And maybe do things like, hey, I know this is a thing for me.

So I'm going to, I'm going to plan some things specifically for this winter that I know that

I will enjoy.

Yeah.

Like CBT seeks to break that feedback loop up.

Right.

So at least you're not getting worse and worse because of all the other cascading effects

it has.

Yeah, for sure.

One of the other ones, like as that 1984 study right off the bat, came identified a really

great treatment for seasonal affected disorder that's non-pharmaceutical that you can do

at home.

As a matter of fact, you can do it at the library.

I saw that the libraries in Northern Ireland rent out light boxes.

It's called bright light therapy.

It uses very intense white light.

Don't worry.

There's a protective UV cover.

So you're not blasting your face.

You're not going to get a tan from it essentially.

But your retinas are going to pick up on that white light.

And so serotonin is going to increase.

Your melatonin is going to not be so high.

And it can actually treat, especially moderate, forms of seasonal affected disorder.

Yeah.

For sure.

The idea is you put this light on.

You don't just sit there and stare at it.

You just kind of maybe do it in the morning, 15 minutes to an hour, maybe 45 minutes or

so.

Cast it upon your face.

This goes.

This has had money.

This goes all the way back actually to the 1700s.

It was an Italian physician named Vincenzo Ciara Rugi who way back then said, hey, if you're

depressed, I think sunlight would help.

So it's been a thing for a long time.

But now, obviously, they still say get out in the sun if you can, but in a lot of places

where there's limited light in the winter or just great days like we were talking about.

This is where the BLT that bright light therapy comes in play.

I saw they also make little hats, little bisers that just shine down on your face at

all times.

Nice.

Like collective soul set.

Yeah.

I don't think you're supposed to, I think it's supposed to be limited still though.

You're not supposed to have that light on you at all times because it can, it can disrupt

your sleep and cause eye strain and fatigue and stuff like that.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You don't want to overdo it for sure.

And I think it's different for each person how much you actually need.

But it does work.

I know firsthand it works because you may use to get what I guess you would call sub-syndromal

seasonal effective disorder.

She definitely didn't have major depression, but it was like she was impacted noticeably

and she found out about light boxes and got one and it helped her a lot.

That's cool.

Yeah.

I have friends that use these things just for not even seasonal just for, you know, regular

depression.

They say it helps them out.

A dawn stimulation is another thing and it's kind of the same idea, but it's like one

of those alarm clocks that slowly starts brightening your room over the course of like

30 minutes or so as you're waking up.

So again, tied into the circadian rhythm of rising with the sun's rise.

Do you remember that alarm clock from the 70s and 80s that like it would light up?

It had a picture of like, I think like a fence out in the old west and the sky would

go like dark blue.

It would change the color of the sky on the alarm clock picture depending on what time

of day it was.

You don't remember this?

No.

I think I've ever seen this.

They were amazing.

My oldest sister had one of those.

I would love one.

I don't know what happened today.

Probably broke.

My brother had one of those clocks, the alarm clocks that had like a rola decks that

would flip the numbers around like mechanical.

Oh neat.

Yeah, those were fun.

Yeah, the one I always had was like, oh man.

No, really?

Yeah, when I was a teenager, that's what I needed.

Or the two bells with a hammer.

I had one of those, too.

There was a period where I had the one that I wouldn't do it.

So I had to switch over to the two bells one.

Yeah, yeah, that'd be all I said a hard time waking up like that. Yeah. Yeah, have I I don't anymore

But yes, I used to when I was a teenager

Well, cuz I get emails from you like 5 30 in the morning

Like what the hell are you doing you farming? I've seen I've milk in the cows and emailing at the same time sometimes

Um, I have decided that getting up at 5 is way too early for me. So I'm doing six now. Hey, that's reasonable

It is seven sometimes if I'm feeling frisky

Yeah, a really late night before the night before. Yeah, I went to bed at 10

We should mention vitamin D speaking of cows because vitamin D deficiency does correlate with

More likelihood of having or developing sad

But they they haven't found any like good hard consistent evidence that vitamin D supplements can help a lot

Um, there there's one place remember you said that high latitudes

Yeah, higher the latitude the more negative the attitude

Right, the likely or you are to have seasonal effective disorder

That does not hold true at least in some parts some of the most extremely northern

Parts of the world in particulars the town called trums a Norway

That is very northern it might be the most northern most city in Norway. It's really high up there

suffice to say that they

They are absent from sunlight. I think two full months of out of the year. Oh, man

Like nothing nothing like the song comes out. I mean, I think it might get as much as it would get like before

Um sunrise on a normal day

And they go like that for two months and yet

The rates of seasonal effective disorder are much less than trums of that then you would expect

Yeah, it it seems to be because they've done just sort of studies and questionnaires

And people there

Agree with statements like I love the coziness of the winter months winter brings many wonderful seasonal changes

They don't agree with winter is boring when winter is limiting

So it seems to really be a lot about the attitude and you know, I think if you live there a lot of people probably don't just move there

It seems to be a place where you're usually from

Um, or maybe people do move to one of the most northern most cities in the world. I'm sure it happens

But generally if you have grown up in a place and that's the thing

Everyone knows that's the thing

And so there are probably many many events and traditions and activities that they do to thwart that and it seems to work because

they get into their

skiing they get into their winter hiking

They get into their cozy drinks and their warm blankets and their fireplaces and

It seems to be that they look forward to that stuff and it bears out by them not having a prevalence of sad there

It's kind of interesting. Yeah, and some people point to that as evidence

They say that there's no such thing as sad that just does not make sense if sad is this

Response to biological imperative that happens every year among people who are maladjusted for that

That imperative then that's just should not be the way in tramsa

And there was actually a study from 2016 from researchers at

Auburn Montgomery University of Auburn in Montgomery

And they studied CDC data and they found no seasonal variations

in depression symptoms and it was a massive

population that they studied

And I mean if if there is such a thing as seasonal effect of disorder

Then there should be an increase in the winter months and they didn't find it

That does not seem to be the consensus among the scientific community

As a matter of fact, I want to go click on the link in the scientific American article that we were checking out

It exploded

It was gone it couldn't find it. Oh wow. So it made me wonder if

They quietly retracted it or wow maybe it's just a broken link in ever can tell but

For the most part if you look up seasonal effect of disorder every reliable

Website in America like Johns Hopkins or Harvard Health or Cleveland Clinic

Mayo Clinic I could keep going

They are they are all all in on seasonal effect of disorder

I'm now I'm picturing just like a couple of scientists in a ditch being shuffled over with lime

So we just one thing before we stop it has nothing to do with Norway really but it reminded me I saw a

There's a good true crime

I don't know if it's a docky drama, but it's based on real life and it's Danish

That's called the investigation

It's so mellow the investigation. I love those

I love stories set in those parts of the world. I love Danish filmmaking and Norwegian filmmaking

You'll you'll look at it. It's like there's at least one episode where almost the entire time nothing happens

And they just showed nothing happening. It's it's but it's really good. It's really engrossing

So I would I would recommend it

Awesome

Chuck said awesome. That means he just triggered the first listener male of 2026 everybody

That's right. This is from Megan and Michigan. Hey guys. Thank you for the many years of engaging in interesting content

I first started listening in 2012 when I moved out of my home state and would download episodes onto CDs

Nice. Wow

Well, this will make you feel old too to pass the time on the long drives in my old cabin Cavalier

Wow, wow

They don't still make the Cavalier do they? I don't believe so no

I think they buried them with those Auburn and Montgomery

Well, 2012. I'm surprised she wasn't in a camera

Uh, I just listened to your dolls episode guys. I had to write in I have three kids and they have at times acted out scenarios with dolls and toys

That would have been very disturbing if I had not been prepared that it was very normal and healthy actually

The most recent example is when my five-year-old came into the house and told me that he and his three-year-old sister had made gravestones in the backyard

Because their twin baby dolls had died. Oh my

Even knowing it's normal. I do have to take a deep breath and remind myself that part of raising

emotionally healthy kids is letting the process through play

Still, I was a bit relieved the next day. They do a big party

The babies first birthday

So she skips out the part where they dug them up out of they

Exume them from the grade right

Thanks again for bringing so many topics and perspectives to light while somehow keeping things humorous and upbeat looking forward to learning more in

2026 that is Megan and Michigan nice Megan. Thank you for that. That was a great great email and god bless your kids for being awesome

For sure

If you want to be like Megan and tell us about your awesome kids, we love that kind of thing

You can send it off to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com

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