HUNKERING DOWN MIDWINTER

Greetings from my cave.

It’s nice and warm in here, if a bit confining. I have all I need, at least for the moment—food, drink, entertainment, husband, cats. I’m good in here until I’m forced to take out the garbage—and forage for cat food.

Outside, the third snow of this winter of our discontent covers the slopes of the mountain. It’s been well below freezing for more than a week (and don’t even ask about the wind chill factor), so the few inches that fell on Tuesday night haven’t yet begun to melt in the thin sunlight. This kind of winter wonderland would be situation normal in Wisconsin or Michigan or Maine. But here in North Carolina, well below the Mason-Dixon line, we just aren’t used to slogging through the snow to get to our ice-encrusted vehicles, or driving over the snowpack to reach the grocery store. 

In the south, as the rest of you probably know from watching the nightly TV news, we have two options when the winter weather turns bad: hunker down in our caves and wait until it warms up (my choice), or take our lives in our hands out on the slippery roads with our fellow citizens who don’t know how to drive in these conditions, resulting in massive pileups in three inches of snow. Even NASCAR great Dale Earnhardt, Jr. wrecked his car in North Carolina this week, in less snow than the residents of Montana see come down in an hour. The story was he was stopping to help someone else who had slid off the highway. No good deed goes unpunished.

But the weather is not the only reason to stay inside until spring. According to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, this year’s flu season is already shaping up to be “moderately severe,” though some states, like California and Texas, are suffering an unusually high number of cases. The more virulent H3N2 strain is widespread across the entire United States (except Hawaii), accompanied here and there by pockets of H1N1 and Influenza B. This year’s flu vaccine is said to be no better than a 30 percent match for the predominant strain, though vaccination will reduce the severity of the disease no matter what strain you catch.

As usual, young children, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems are most vulnerable to the deadly complications of flu (pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis). But the highly publicized flu deaths of a ten-year-old boy from New Jersey, a healthy young bodybuilder in Pennsylvania and a middle-aged marathoner/mother of three in California have captured the public’s attention. In all three cases, the victims had sought medical attention early, but succumbed anyway.

Between this very scary flu and a killer cold that has been sweeping through the Marshall community sickening people for weeks at a time, I’m afraid to leave my cave at all. And with the howling wind blowing snow into sparkling drifts outside my (double-glazed) windows, I just don’t see the need to do so. At least until the kibble runs out. Maybe in April.

Cheers, Donna

*Information for this post taken from "Questions and Answers About This Year's Flu Season," by Donald G. McNeil, Jr. The NY Times, January 18, 2018.  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/health/flu-season-facts.html

WAITING FOR THE SUN

Here we are, less than a week away from the longest night of the year, and I’m feeling the strain. Come back, sun! Don’t leave us here all alone in the dark forever!

It’s primal, this feeling of abandonment and loss as the Earth tilts and turns the face of the northern hemisphere away from Sol. Somewhere deep inside, my cavewoman-brain fears spring will never come again. I fight depression and a tendency to do nothing but eat and sleep. After all, bears hibernate, why not people?

I know I’m not the only one that does this. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a real thing, recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, not as a separate disorder, but as a type (or “specifier”) of depression. Studies have shown that a percentage of the population (ranging from 1.4 percent in Florida to 9.9 percent in Alaska) exhibit the classic symptoms of SAD—depression in the winter months, with problems of oversleeping, lethargy, and a craving for carbohydrates. A slightly higher percentage of people in the U.S. overall may suffer milder symptoms of SAD, which tend to clear up rapidly if they are exposed to sunnier weather. (Of course. Who wouldn’t feel better if offered a two-week vacation in Cancun in the dead of winter?)

I have my own remedies for the relatively mild symptoms of SAD that afflict me this time of year. I get out in the sunlight (what there is of it) for some time almost every day—walking with friends is my favorite activity, but I have been known to play in the snow. And I do my reading under a full-spectrum light. The lamp I use gives me all the wavelengths of full sunlight, and at least 10,000 lux (the equivalent of being outside on a bright spring day).

Then, too, my office is on the south side of my house, built to take advantage of passive solar heating in winter. My cats agree it’s the best place to be on a sunny day in the winter time. (Which should encourage me to work, wouldn’t you think?)

Light therapy (as in exposure to a full-spectrum lamp) has recently been shown to be useful as treatment not only for SAD, but for other forms of depression, according to an article in the December issue of the AARP Bulletin. Says Norman E. Rosenthal, clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical School in Washington, D.C., the light works by stimulating the retina, which signals the hypothalamus of the brain, which, among other things, boosts serotonin.

Other studies have used LED lights, worn as a headset, to treat Alzheimer’s patients. Michael Hamblin, principal investigator at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, reports that patients who wore the device for 12 weeks saw a dramatic improvement in their cognitive abilities, an improvement that diminished when they stopped wearing it. When they started wearing it again, they improved again. The scientists believe the light stimulates new cell growth and connections between neurons, a process called photobiomodulation. Though the experiment is in its early stages, they hope to expand its potential to the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, traumatic brain injury and other brain ailments.

So, until the sun begins its long journey back on December 21, remember that it is better to light a candle (or a whole bunch of them) than to curse the darkness. Let there be light!

Cheers, Donna

*Information for this post taken from "Bright New Remedies," by Christina Ianzito, AARP Bulletin, December, 2017.

 
Nolen-Hoeksema, Susan (2014). Abnormal Psychology (6th ed.). New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Education. p. 179. ISBN 978-1-259-06072-4.