Hearth To Hearth

by Donna Tavano

No Sun Makes Us SAD 

            This morning we gratefully received a long overdue pardon, albeit temporary, from the gray drearies which have toyed with our sanity all winter. If you think our abandonment by the sun doesn’t really affect us, just ask any police department or hospital; just as the full moon seduces the susceptible among us, so does the absence of sunlight.

            When the sun disappears for days (annoying because she’s really up there all the time, merely obscured by clouds) many of us become SAD --- that is, we become victims of Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Suddenly all we desire is a cuddle-fest with the Snuggli we got for Christmas and hibernation, single-handedly scarfing down entire casseroles of mac and cheese and whole pizzas.  We don’t care that our taxes are due and that we’re entitled to a refund.  We won’t see our friends.  We are depressed, we overeat and get fatter, we get drunk and we self-medicate with drugs.  SAD is worse in northern countries like Scandinavia, Canada and polar regions, climates with long, dark winters.  It is virtually nonexistent in tropical areas.  If you don’t believe this, remember, the powers-that-be once declared the world flat.

            Life depends on the sun.  Throughout history, the luminescent orb has set the cycle of life because of its role in growing crops in agrarian societies.  The massive stones of Stonehenge were actually a solar observatory of sorts.  The Aztecs developed a calendar and mathematics around their 24-ton Great Sun Stone, and Native Americans used the Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming as a monument to it.  Ra was Egypt’s highest god, and the sun starred in Roman religion as well as Hinduism and Buddhism, in Japan, and was prominent in the Incan culture.  The Greeks developed “heliotherapy” believing the sun’s powers to be healing and therapeutic.  Then there are the sun worshippers in our culture.  For decades, sun seekers camped outside on chaises and beach blankets, slathered in baby oil and Coppertone broiling themselves into bronze gods and goddesses. 

            Throughout history, the common man travailed outside under the blazing sun, tending crops and flocks.  It was only the nobility who escaped such labor, and thus pale skin became a status symbol equated with royalty.  In Rome they even used lead-based chalk to lighten their skin, and later arsenic, at their peril.  So now the demise of the Roman Empire and the British monarchy becomes clear: just a few bunches of sun-starved, crazy, white people.

            After the Industrial Revolution, when workers moved from the great outdoors to the sunless interiors of factories from dawn to dusk, those with lives of leisure began to sport tanned skin signifying they didn’t have to work like common laborers. The term “rednecks” referred to farmers whose tan was wherever their T-shirt wasn’t.  Bathing suits, which once covered the whole body, shrank from more revealing to nonexistent.  Self tanners came onto the scene with tanning beds.

            Now, with the depletion of the ozone layer, and ultra violet rays becoming the death rays of sci-fi fame, and with skin cancer endemic, we have to monitor our sun exposure.  However, we still need 15 to 20 minutes per day of sunscreenless, sunglassless sunlight, just to process vitamin D.  But what of us in the northern climes, getting pastier, chubbier and nuttier in winter.  Is there no hope?  Nay, nay, little sun starved one.  We are a nation of fixers.  We have behavior therapy, drug therapy, psychological therapy and light therapy!  It’s noninvasive, sometimes covered by insurance, and 85 percent effective.  The user is exposed to one to two hours of bright light daily (10 times brighter than ordinary domestic lighting.) The user sits two to three feet from a specially designed light box.  Said user can knit, read, or work in an office cubicle while undergoing this treatment.  Success occurs in three to four days.  The more lux --- up to 10,000 --- the less time under the lamp.  There is also a visor-type light you can wear on your head --- be prepared for coworkers giving you a wide berth and comments like “Don’t you need some tin foil for an antenna, buddy?”

            Today, like when the groundhog emerged in February, we had some sun.  All afternoon my dogs refused to budge from the small spot of warmth reflected on our dining rug.  Folks paid homage to the long lost rays, they flocked to the beach, puttered in their yards, and they went anywhere but inside the small dark prison of their homes.  Having just changed our clocks we know that hope and spring aren’t far behind.  But, just to be sure, I added more sun salutations to my yoga routine.  Never let it be said I didn’t do my part.

3/18/10