Cabin fever a SAD state of affairs

It’s just starting to seep in through the windows now. It’s coming in under the door. You can pile as many logs as you can in the Vermont Castings, but heat cannot beat it. Part of it is the dark, which seems to come at about 2:30 in the afternoon now. Part of it is the cold, which will prohibit any more of those cookouts on the deck. And it’s not even December yet.

It, of course, is dreaded cabin fever.

Scientists who have nothing better to do in the winter than to study the phenomenon have labeled what we know as cabin fever to be “seasonal affective disorder” (appropriately SAD) in order to get more grants. Who is going to issue a $100,000 grant to study cabin fever? Far-ranging studies have attributed the problem to anything from brain chemicals to ions in the air and naturally, genetics. Blame it on your mother.

You think we have it bad? In Fairbanks, Alaska, less than four hours separate sunrise and sunset. That means it’s dark by lunch. You have to turn the headlights on to get the Happy Meal back to the office. But Alaskans are a hardy breed. They would not live there if they did not become acclimated to the gloomy conditions. One study found that

only about 9 percent of Fairbanks residents had SAD, or about the same percentage found in New Hampshire. Alaskans are just tougher than we are.

Theories abound on the subject.

It’s the “phase shift of the circadian rhythms” that makes cabin fever so painful, according to Alfred Lewy, M.D., and SAD researcher at the Oregon Health & Science University. For those without their Random House Dictionary available, the word pertains to rhythmic biological functions.

His antidote is to get as much activity as possible and the use of special lights.

“If you sit around the house and do nothing all day I suppose it could eat at you,” he says. “But there is always something for me to do, snow-machine, cut firewood … or just going into town and have a cup of coffee with friends at the cafe.”

Many seek something a little stronger than coffee. “There are people, though, that will have a ten-yard stare in a five-yard room. In lots of the smaller [Alaskan] villages, that does happen. Drinking is a big problem,” Lewy said.

No kidding.

It’s just genetics, according to SAD researcher Michael Terman, Ph.D., at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. Terman suggests that some people just may be more bothered by SAD than others. People with SAD may be predisposed genetically to clinical depression and light sensitivity. Blame your parents as you sit hunched in your cabin, surrounded by empty bottles of Allen’s coffee brandy.

Terman has been testing yet another new way to treat SAD. I love this. This therapy involves aiming a stream of negatively charged ions at a person sleeping on a “special conductive bedsheet.” I wonder if you can get those sheets at Wal-Mart. The discovery that high-density negative ions helped people with SAD came accidentally from a previous study. The air is full of negative ions in springtime, and not in the winter, but that doesn’t explain how ion therapy works. “We don’t yet have an answer to that question,” Terman admits. “But we’re now convinced that it’s real.”

The bedsheet theory probably deserves another $100,000 grant.

It’s the melatonin level in the brain, according to Tom Wehr, researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health. When the brain’s pineal gland starts pumping out melatonin, we get sleepy. During winter, animals secrete melatonin for longer periods than they do at other times of the year. Wehr discovered that SAD sufferers do as well. Researchers are testing a drug called propranalol, which they hope will improve SAD symptoms by curtailing melatonin flow in the morning hours. Less erudite SAD sufferers simply use two cups of coffee.

It’s the seratonin and dopamine levels in the brain, according to Raymond Lam, M.D., researcher at the University of British Columbia, Canada. “We know there are interactions between the serotonin system and the circadian system,” Lam says. Some anti-depressants such as Paxil and Prozac work for some SAD sufferers. But Lam says he prefers light therapy to anti-depressants, which he says “are probably more of a Band-Aid,” because they’re not specific to winter depression.

Forget the drugs. Forget the bright lights. Forget the negative ions and the “conductive sheets.” Pick up the phone. Make reservations for an oceanside Florida vacation.

Works every time.

Charge it.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.