Dayvo
just passin' through
- Location
- 59° 50′ 5.55″ N, 10° 47′ 41.89″ E
ianrauk said:
I can assure you that it does exist
; and not in the mind!
Sunrise alarm clock
- Thread starter Pottsy
- Start date
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I can assure you that it does exist
; and not in the mind!
Crackle said:Mrs Crackle's got one of those light things. F$ck!n awful. I absolutely hate artificial light when I wake up, in fact I'm not keen on bright artificial lights at the best of times. Amazingly it broke not long after purchase
A friend of mine had a Lumie. It used to come on at random times of the night and drove her round the bend. So she got them to replace it, and the second one malfunctioned in a different way. It is now gathering dust.
Beating the winter blues - article on the independent today:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...tures/how-i-beat-the-winter-blues-967604.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...tures/how-i-beat-the-winter-blues-967604.html
Fnaar
Smutmaster General
- Location
- Thumberland
Would it fit on me handlebars?abchandler said:
abchandler
Senior Member
- Location
- Worcs, UK
Fnaar said:Would it fit on me handlebars?
No problem. Not sure how long a power lead you've got though?
Fnaar
Smutmaster General
- Location
- Thumberland
I could try and rig up some kind of dynamoabchandler said:
ColinJ
Puzzle game procrastinator!
- Location
- Todmorden - Yorks/Lancs border
I suffer from SAD and if it is all in the mind, then my mind is playing some very strange tricks on me...ianrauk said:
I do get very down in gloomy winters but mentally I'm perfectly okay if it is clear and bright no matter how cold it gets. It's a light thing, not a temperature thing. My mental state can go up and down very quickly, in proportion to the amount of sunlight I'm exposed to. That doesn't surprise me and I'm sure that many people feel the same way.
What I didn't realise was that the debilitating fatigue I tend to suffer from about this time of year was also light-related. I felt really weak every winter from about 1985 onwards but assumed it was post-viral fatigue after autumn/winter colds.
"Everybody feels a bit less energetic at that time of year", I hear you shout, but I'm not talking about 'a bit less energetic'. An example - I'm talking about me, a 6' 1", 13 stone man one August happily riding a 200 km audax with over 2,000 m of climbing (plus an extra 20 km to and from event HQ), but by November of that year I couldn't carry 2 bags of shopping back 200 m from the local market without stopping for rests every 50 m. I'm talking as tired as a really bad case of bonking (the non-sexy kind
). Absolutely bloody knackered, and for no apparent reason.Some time ago, Cycling Weekly had a feature on SAD and after reading that, I decided to give light therapy a go. I couldn't afford a light box, so I made one. I blasted myself with that for a couple of days, for about 4 hours a day and you know what... yes, I still felt knackered, and I developed a stinking headache too! Light box therapy was obviously a load of old bollocks and it certainly didn't work for me. So before anyone starts talking about the placebo effect - I didn't believe that it would work. However, having made the effort to build the box, I decided to persevere, but I couldn't take 4 hours a day so I cut down to an hour a day. The headaches subsided, and I got into the habit of switching the box on every day about noon. To my great surprise, my strength slowly started to return. Two weeks later I was back to normal. I've never heard of a placebo that works when you don't believe it will, and I have certainly never heard of one whose effect builds up slowly over a period of many days.
I repeated this pattern over several winters before realising that I ought to be using the box earlier in the year before my symptoms kick in. I started in September this year and my energy levels are almost what they would be in mid-summer.
If you said that SAD was all in the brain, I might agree with you. Saying it is in the mind implies that it is a mental illness and that isn't how I experience it. Light box use doesn't make me feel less fed up about gloomy Yorkshire winters, but it does let me get through them with enough energy to actually move.
velocidad
Veteran
- Location
- Between Hessle and Hull
that 'all in the mind' phrase really drives me potty! i've said it before and i'll say it again, we have a brain, we do not have a mind. the mind is not a thing, it is simply a descriptive term to help convey the way the brain functions to allow us to be consciously aware.
S.A.D is real enough, and is indicative of the way in which dynamic organisms are effected by their environment.
i think i read somewhere that it's not just the amount of light, but the type of light too, frequency, colour temp, that sort of thing. which may explain the limited benefit gained from homemade light boxes.
cheers, velocidad.
S.A.D is real enough, and is indicative of the way in which dynamic organisms are effected by their environment.
i think i read somewhere that it's not just the amount of light, but the type of light too, frequency, colour temp, that sort of thing. which may explain the limited benefit gained from homemade light boxes.
cheers, velocidad.
ArDee
Legendary Member
- Location
- North of Buntingford, Hetfordshire
cookiemonster said:I could do with one of those as well. I'm going to be here in Northern Finland until next Summer and it's already getting dark quickly. Dark by 6pm and not bright until 9am. I'm beginning to struggle in the mornings.
I spent a week or so in Kittilä, Northern Finland one winter. Used to get twilight about 10:30 and dark again by 14:00, you never know what time it is when you woke up in the morning, very disconcerting. So was the temperature all the time I was there; high - -8°C, low -35°C, bit chilly round the edges.
velocidad
Veteran
- Location
- Between Hessle and Hull
Crackle said:
exactly what i was saying! every ailment, illness, complaint or syndrome is physiological, we are physiological beings, it can not be another way.
you can imagine my anger, while suffering with C.F.S, when people would say "is it all in ya mind love"
cheers, velocidad.
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