Research was my next step in writing this blog. As I did
some research I was very surprised to find out that studies show that the
weather actually has very little to do with your daily mood. I thought to myself
well okay there goes my whole blog, what am I going to do now? I went on
looking at some more websites and found that the amount of sunlight and
temperature do effect your mood. I found some interesting information that
explains a lot about why my mood changes when it does.
One research that I found showed that there was a great
connection between sunlight and tiredness. In his study, Denissen found that
the less sunlight people were exposed to, the more they showed signs of
depression-like symptoms. One example of what Denissen learned is that as the
days get shorter, some people may start to experience the feeling of fatigue
during the day. Another example that I can certainly relate to is having
trouble waking up when it is still dark outside. Naturally our bodies think it
is night time still, so our brain tells us to go back to sleep. This goes along
with the next point that I learned.
I learned that when we are not exposed to the sun, then we
may start to have depression like symptoms. This is true scientifically because
the amount of sunlight people are exposed to can have a tremendous impact on
mood because it affects the amount of vitamin D people absorb. Denissen found
that, “Vitamin D, which is produced in skin exposed to the hormone of sunlight,
has been found the change serotonin levels in the brain, which could account
for changes in mood.” So what is serotonin? Serotonin is a hormone that plays a
huge role in mood regulation. Depression-like symptoms correspond with low
levels of serotonin. The less you are exposed to the sun, the lower your
serotonin and Vitamin D levels will be. In conclusion Denissen realized that
“Lower levels of Vitamin D could be responsible for increases in negative
affect and tiredness”. This makes sense because when most people think of
bright sunny day they think happy. An example of when we would not be exposed
to the sunlight would be a stormy, yucky day and on stormy days we are usually
tired and have depression-like symptoms.
Because some people are more sensitive to weather changes
than others, they will have a different reaction. Someone who is prone to a low
mood on dark cold days are likely to experience a winter full of depression
when there’s a extended sequence of like-weather days. This behavior is called
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). One researcher described this disorder well,
“At the extreme along the continuum of seasonality is full-blown winter
seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a syndrome involving recurrent depressive
episodes during the fall and winter months with periods of remission in the
spring and summer”. The symptoms of SAD
are more common in women and are common at higher altitudes. Doctors will tell
patients who have SAD that they have the decision to decide what feelings they
have and that they can always turn them into positive thoughts.
This comes to my conclusion that the weather does affect
your mood, just more scientifically than we think.
