Alfred Grixti

Alison Bezzina

Andrew Borg Cardona

Charlo' Bonnici

Fr Joe Borg

Ira Losco

Nikita Alamango

Students' View

Tanja Cilia

Shares

Bonds

Weather

Back Issues

Espresso News

Videos

Webcam

Books

Business

Careers

Classifieds

Life

i-Tech

Junior News

I live in a main road, so the option of having a lie in is pretty much unavailable. The people next door are also renovating or ….maybe reconstructing, would be a better word to fit the description of excessive and consistent thumping every day like clockwork at 7 a – bleeping - m in the morning. Feel my frustration?

So my day starts at 7:30am whether I like it or not, whether it’s a feast day or not, during the weekend, even if I’ve been on stage till 3am….. I still get to wake up at that unearthly hour. Regardless of how long my day’s going to be.

Yes, I’m having my little outburst, yes some of you have kids so they wake up even earlier, some of you work nightshifts, some of you have woken up at 7am every day of their lives till today etc….but I’m just having my little moan, about my little world, my little tantrum…..you’re free to join in if you so wish, nothing’s stopping you.

So I drag myself out of bed, defying the gravitational pull of my bladder, I walk briskly to the bathroom and begin my ritual. When I get back to my room, I look outside my huge glass windows, the greyness seeps in. The weather’s murky and a certain heavy weight falls on my eyes as they try to adjust. Many of us ‘love’ this weather, they think it’s very ‘London’, others omit the ‘London’ assimilation and start popping pills. Jokes apart, this time of year manifests one of the strangest, yet most common disorders to have come to our knowledge.

Seasonal Affective Disorder, otherwise known as S.A.D. is a type of depression that affects a person during the same season each year. Experts are still unsure what causes S.A.D, but they think it may be caused by lack of sunlight. Lack of light may upset your sleep-wake cycle, or circadian rhythms. Or it may cause problems with a brain chemical called serotonin that affects mood.

You’re probably thinking, great so this can’t affect me because I live in ‘sunny’ Malta…..well, we’re lucky enough not to match the sky high statistics of Nordic countries, where daylight is taken in on very little doses, in the Winter season. Iceland however, seems to be an exception. A study of more than 2000 people there, found the prevalence of seasonal affective disorder and seasonal changes in anxiety and depression to be unexpectedly low in both sexes. At first the researchers mentioned genetic differences as being responsible for this significant change, but an interesting finding from a following study, showed that the amount of fish consumed in the diet of an Icelandic person helped reduce the risk of S.A.D

How do you know when you’re suffering from S.A.D?

The symptoms are: Difficulty concentrating, Low energy and fatigue, Reduced interest in daily activities, especially social activities, Moodiness (depressed, sad, or unusually quiet), Increased appetite and Cravings for complex carbohydrate (such as pasta and bread), Weight gain, Increased sleep, Loss of interest in sex and Irritability. Whilst writing this I contacted one of my closest friends living in London and told him I was writing about S.A.D, with a hint of truth in his tone, he said “Fire away…ask me whatever you want about it, I’m suffering right now!”

In actual fact it is during this time of year that people suffer most from this disorder. Light therapy, cognitive-behavioural therapy and increasing your exercise will help prevent or cure the disorder. I’m not a firm believer in administering drugs, but then again neither am I a psychiatrist!

What I do know is prevention is better than cure. So, when you look at the gloomy weather outside and feel blue, make sure you’ve planned a long walk at some point during the day and that your cod’s baking in the oven!