How Moods Are Affected By The Sun :: essays research papers

How Moods Are Affected By The sunlightThesis The amount of sun people receive affects their witticism.A green adult female lies asleep on a cold, overcast winter morning. At 4 A.M., afaint incandescence radiates from a light incandescent lamp placed near her bed. The lightgradu ally gains intensity and covers until 6 A.M., when the woman awakes. Shehad just experienced a simulated dawn of a freshly day. After being treated withthis for several days, the womans annual winter slack slowly goes away.Does this mean that the slight sun you get the worse you feel, or perhaps the more(prenominal) you get the better your mood? It is very feasible that you whitethorn feel thisway as millions of people worldwide subscribe to experienced it first-hand. Thisphenomena is still sort of a mystery as galore(postnominal) researchers dont completelyunderstand why this happens. "It may be that certain individuals dumbfound inheritedvulner exponent that guinea pigs them to develop depr ession in the absence of imageto sufficient environmental light"1. Frederick A. control, the arctic explorer,provided a vivid verbal description of the effects of prolonged darkness on the humanpsyche "The pall of blackness which has overfallen the outer world has alsodescended upon the inner world of our souls," Cook wrote in his journal on May16, 1898, "Around our tables . . . . men argon sitting about sad and dejectedlost in dreams of melancholy. For design moments some try to break the spell byjokes, told perhaps for the fiftieth time. Others grind out a cheerful philosophybut all efforts to infuse bright hopes fail."2 Some believe that light affectsthe bodys ability to make serotonin, a neurotransmitter that helps inducefeelings of calm and well being. The eyes sensitivity may also play a part insun/mood relations. A study was done to a group of people in the winter andsummer. In the winter the many individuals experienced much more difficultyseeing dim light after sitting in the dark for a while.3 Another study done inVancouver shows that electric activity in the retinas when a bright light isshone, is significantly less in winter4.As much as 5% of Americans suffer from seasonal Affective disorder, also knownas wistful5. SAD is an illness in which the sufferers feel depressed, feellethargic, and they overeat . There is no known cause for this widespreadillness. Many researchers of SAD are speculating on the idea that SAD patientsmight have seasonal variations in their melatonin secretions. A study ofmelatonin patterns in SAD sufferers was done to determine if melatonin was a