Navigating Daylight Saving Time Changes: Understanding the Impact on Sunlight, Mood, and Seasonal Affective Disorder

(KNSI) – With Daylight Saving Time shelved until next spring, we lost an hour of sunlight. Sunlight is important because it delivers vitamins and provides an overall mood boost. Not everyone handles winter days well. It is known as Seasonal Affective Disorder.

CentraCare sleep expert and psychologist Jennifer Miller says light therapy works best to brighten your spirits. “You can use this lightbox by you. You can put it off to the side so it’s kind of in your peripheral vision for about 20 to 30 minutes when you first wake up in the morning, and that sometimes can kind of trick your brain into going, ‘Oh, it actually is daytime.'”

In the summer, central Minnesota gets about 15 hours of daylight. By late December, that has dwindled to under nine. The shortest day of the year will be December 21st. The solstice officially occurs at 7:27 that night.

Miller says all of us are affected in some way by SAD. “How the symptoms look for people can vary. A lot of times, it can be very mild, and people just notice I don’t have good motivation, my sleep is crappy, my mood is crappy…I’m tired all the time.”

Miller says Seasonal Affective Disorder and seasonal stress from hosting family or completing holiday shopping can look similar. She says SAD lasts for about two months, usually from mid-November until mid-January. If it’s Christmas and Thanksgiving, that’s the problem, symptoms flare for a shorter period of time.

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