Summary
Have you been feeling sleepy, burned out, or depressive in the last few months? You might have the Winter Blues or Seasonal Affective Disorder. In this episode, Josh Delgado talks to Adam Balan, Program Coordinator for Fitness and Health Promotion, Corby Anderson, Ergonomic Specialist and Wellness Consultant, and Julie Haluschak, Online Marketing Specialist at Centennial College, who’ve all had experience with the Winter Blues. Learn how to tell if you’re suffering from it, and what you can do to turn your mood back into sunshine.
Joshua Delgado: Welcome to this episode of the fit and healthy on-campus podcast. The podcast that gives you tips and resources on how to live fit and healthy on campus. I'm your host, Josh Delgado. Thanks for joining us today to discuss this week's topic, defeating the winter blues. We have some great guests with us today. I'm going to introduce you on my left first is Adam Balan. Adam is the program coordinator for the fitness and health promotion program here on campus. Thanks for joining us, Adam.
Adam Balan: Thank you. Happy to be here, Josh.
Joshua Delgado: Next is Corby Anderson. Corby Anderson is a ergonomics specialist and wellness consultant here on campus. Thanks for joining us.
Corby Anderson: Thank you so much.
Joshua Delgado: And last but definitely not least. We have Julie, who is a online marketing specialist with the college.
Julie Haluschak: Hi, thanks for having me.
Joshua Delgado: Thanks for being here. So we're going to get right into it. We want to know what the winter blues is exactly. Can one of you help me define it?
Adam Balan: I guess I can start and you can all fill in as you see fit. So I think the winter blues is maybe a less intensified variation of seasonal affective disorder. And from my understanding, there's no real consensus in literature, but it comes down to a delicate balance between dopamine and melatonin. So melatonin is a hormone that is released. It regulates our sleep cycles and circadian rhythms and it uses the sun to do that. So as we have less sun in a day, we tend to have a more melatonin and then we tend to sleep more and that might influence the general sleepiness or lethargic state that is accompanied by the condition. Yeah. From a chemical perspective, that might be one explanation.
Joshua Delgado: For sure. Do any of you want to add to that?
Julie Haluschak: I think it's something that affects only within a specific period of time. Like you can have anxiety or depression year round, but I think when it comes down to the end of the year, people get burnout. There's a lot of stuff happening, especially with family and friends. It tends to affect people a lot more without even realizing it.
Joshua Delgado: Right, for sure. Awesome. So that's sort of what it is in a nutshell and we'll break it down a little more. But what I want to do is ask you guys, how does one note if they're suffering from the winter blues?
Corby Anderson: Well, one of the first things we see a lot is oversleeping. You just have that general lethargy throughout the day. You go to bed at night, you're sleeping, you're not getting good restful sleep, waking up in the morning and it feels like you need about three, four, five, six cups of coffee just to get going.
Joshua Delgado: Right. We've all been there.
Corby Anderson: Absolutely.
Joshua Delgado: You want to add to that?
Adam Balan: Yeah, I think the winter blues are generally accompanied by a lack of motivation as well. It's cold outside. There's an excuse to stay in doors. The sun goes down earlier and in tying back into the melatonin piece that is linked to the disorder, whether it's the full SAD or the less intense winter blues, generally there's a lowered level of dopamine in the brain and dopamine is a hormone, or it's really a neural transmitter, but it's a neurotransmitter that controls neural pathways around movement and learning and new learning and motivation as well. So if you have less dopamine, you may be less motivated to get up and do things.
Joshua Delgado: For sure.
Julie Haluschak: For me, I didn't really know that I had it. Self-awareness is a huge piece of that puzzle. Until I really went to therapy and got an official diagnosis on what I had, I didn't realize that it was actually part of what was going on with me. So, being able to just recognize the things that Adam and Corby were talking about and then just kind of expanding into figuring out how your personality traits can affect it too. Because it's not a one size fits all, like you have anxiety, or you overeat, or you oversleep. It tends to be a lot more customized depending on cause and effect. So certain things that happened in your past, might actually affect you and you don't even know it, and you have a bad Christmas 10 years ago and it's still affecting you now.
Joshua Delgado: Right.
Corby Anderson: And another point onto that, I think you mentioned it as well, the appetite changes. So you might have a certain appetite leading in for the rest of the year and then all of a sudden you're getting into the winter months and you're starting to crave a whole bunch of carbs, or you just don't want to eat. So we find that weight fluctuations that you'll see is really prevalent around those winter months.
Joshua Delgado: For sure.
Julie Haluschak: Yeah. My mental health is definitely tied with my appetite. The second I get into one of those modes, I can't eat. Last winter I lost about 15 pounds, as a result.
Joshua Delgado: Wow.
Adam Balan: Everybody regulates their weight differently based on your genetics, but I can agree with Julie and say too, I'm an emotional eater. I grew up in an Italian and Ukrainian family and when things weren't going well, or even when they were, there was food on the table, right? So that also accompanies the winter blues, right? The holidays, there's more food around. Corby mentioned the cravings. But I wanted to make a point too on Julie's, I guess, not plight or plea, but talking about going to talk to your doctor, getting involved with a counselor, maybe if you need it. There might be some trauma that you've never even dusted off, especially if you're a younger adult, you might still feel stigmatized around this. As an exercise and health professional, I really would strongly encourage, and it's all over the media, don't just go on meds. You can do the work, diet, exercise, proper sleep, therapy. You can cure your anxious and depressive ailments in a much more healthy way than just going on medication. You may need medication at some point, but I don't think it should be the first step.
Julie Haluschak: My personal opinion is everybody should be in therapy. I think everybody has something wrong with them. It's a matter of how you're able to cope with it. And not everybody has the tools to do that. Doing therapy, going to a counselor, even talking to family or friends can give you a lot more resources than you expected. But it's that one self-awareness piece. But two, there isn't a problem having this, having anxiety, depression, that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you. Everybody has it. So being able to de-stigmatize it in that whole realm of it is a huge important part of it. Because if I don't want to go for help because I think people are going to make fun of me, or see me in a different way, that's a major barrier to it too.
Joshua Delgado: Absolutely. And we'll get into a little bit more about the resources such as counselling in a second. But I want you guys to help me paint the picture of who gets affected most by seasonal affective disorder or the winter blues. Who's the prime demographic?
Adam Balan: If we're tying it to sunlight, even though there is no real complete consensus from whether it's psychiatrists or whether it's neuroscientists, but if we're tying it to sunlight, what I've read is that it generally affects people who live a little further away from the equator. I pulled an interesting research study as I was doing some reading for this pod actually, and in 2010 14% of citizens in Oslo, Norway, were affected from seasonal, SAD. Why do I keep forgetting the name? Seasonal affective disorder. And that's just seasonal Affective disorder. If we minimize that down to the less intense winter blues, then I'm sure that number just explodes, right? Because it's the less intense version of SAD.
Joshua Delgado: And of course, we're giving it a general name. We're naming it winter blues or SAD, but of course that encompasses a whole list of symptoms, emotions, et cetera, et cetera.
Adam Balan: That's correct.
Joshua Delgado: Yeah, so for those who are affected by it, especially those on campus, staff, students, et cetera, what can someone do about it? What are some quick tips, some things that they can start doing today to help battle this?
Julie Haluschak: I think, first is being able to talk to people about it. We do have people on campus, counselors. I talked to my manager, actually. Him and his boss actually both had a conversation with me about it and gave me a whole lot of... Sorry, a whole bunch of resources from HR that I could go to. Mentioning stuff like meditation rooms and the prayer rooms. There's sleep pods, if you're having issues sleeping that I've personally used. For me also gym. The routine of going to the gym at lunch. I go with one of my coworkers. Being able to talk to her on the way to the gym about things that are happening have helped me quite a bit. Off campus, I use a lot of resources on my phone. There's Habit or Fabulous, which are two great habit trackers. For me it's helped, because it's a year long thing for me and if I don't build in those routines then I have a lot of difficulties in my regular day. So I do simple things like drink water, have a shower, make dinner, eat dinner. Because those are small things that you might think, why do you need a reminder for that? But I do, I really do. At the end of the day it's affecting me to the point where those basic things I just overlook. And sleep is a massive one that I overlook on a regular basis. So being able to have those resources. Also meditating, I use the Calm app or there's Headspace that helps me meditate. I have over a thousand day streak. They have sleep stories, so they help me sleep. But it's definitely helped me a lot in managing it. I'm definitely not one with the spirit world or anything like that, but for me it's definitely helped me pull out of those moments a lot faster and help them happen a lot frequently.
Joshua Delgado: Good stuff. So habit tracking, meditation, using apps. That really worked for you.
Julie Haluschak: Yes. Creating routines I think help a lot. It's the consistency of it. When your brain is very inconsistent, it helps you a lot.
Joshua Delgado: Agreed.
Corby Anderson: Yeah. I'm just adding onto that whole concept as you mentioned, is about tracking your eating and looking at some of your eating pitfalls that you may have. A lot of times during this time of year, you're trying to go for the quick carbs. You're trying to go for the sugary drink. You're just trying to get through it. Like I mentioned earlier, trying to get the coffee and the caffeine and all. So if you're starting to see those things, you got to look at, okay, well why is this happening? And then what can I substitute in between that? I know here on the campus, on each of the campuses with Aramark, there is a lot of, I guess, nutritional resources that we can go and definitely utilize. For instance, if you have more dietary restrictions, this is for both staff and students, you can go and ask them for more assistance and help.
Joshua Delgado: Okay, and how does that work?
Corby Anderson: Well, what you can do is you can contact Aramark directly and they'll definitely be able to assist you.
Joshua Delgado: Give suggestions.
Corby Anderson: Yeah, exactly.
Joshua Delgado: Good stuff. Good stuff.
Adam Balan: Yeah, I've got several pieces. Those were fantastic answers and I'll add too, but go a different direction. There's countless research studies in Psychiatry, which is a peer review journal that talks about just simply supplementing vitamin D, right? We don't. Vitamin D does so much inside of our body. It helps our cells regulate cholesterol and so many other different things, links to calcium, which pumps in and out of every cell every time we move or think. So that's an easy fix. Get out and get sunlight. These are quick fixes. It's harder when we're busy, with the stress of the travel, and the finals on campus and things like that. For students, I think, if it's related to some of the anxiety and depressive pieces and they maybe feel stigmatized, I think the best thing that students can do is just take the first step, which is the hardest step. And for me it's just come see your advisor or coordinator. I mean, I'm a program coordinator in our program. Josh is a faculty in our program as well. I visit our student first year classes every couple of weeks and just remind them about things. Hey, if you're stressed out, we have tutors. Hey, if you're falling behind, we can triage you to the right places. I don't think triage is the best word that I'll use with them, but that's essentially what it is. And then I think one important piece that we really haven't discussed yet around the fixes, even though it's a longer term fix, is you have to get elevated... you have to exercise, you've got to get elevated oxygen to the brain. There's this magic miracle grow like compound in our brains called brain derived neurotrophic factor. And outside of helping with neurogenesis and new thought processes, it can almost reverse the neural patterns around anxiety and depression. I mean, this is proven through literature. I didn't bring any studies to cite, but that happens when you exercise and you get more oxygen to the brain, right? When you exercise and get more oxygen to the brain, you have more dopamine and serotonin release. Those are our happy hormones. So that's another, I think it's an easy fix, but if you struggle with it, you just might need help. But again, you see an adviser, and if you're a student, in my case you come see me, a program coordinator, we can, we can help direct you to the right places to get the help that you need.
Joshua Delgado: Right? And exercising is free on campus. Almost everyone has access to the Athletic and Wellness Centre and has a free membership. And even if you don't have access to that, there are other resources that we'll talk about in a minute that people can use to get external fitness subsidies, for example. You also mentioned vitamin D supplementation. I do an annual physical exam with my doctor, and every time the blood work comes back and my vitamin D levels are low. And the doctor says, "Everyone's vitamin D levels are low in Canada." That's why they put it in your milk and other foods. And so we should all be taking vitamin D supplement. From my doctor, it's what he's saying.
Adam Balan: There are 45 essential nutrients that we need to be taking in every single day. And even though nutritional science is a pretty new science compared to like biomechanics or physiology, which are hundreds of years old or more. So there might be some disagreement on it, but there are 45 nutrients you have to take in every day, because your body cannot synthesize them, right? And vitamin D is one of those. So if we have less vitamin D, that's one of 45. Exercise and health professionals like Joshua and Corby, sorry, think about what else are people missing in their body that you can get from diet and sometimes blood work and Corby mentioned tracking your calories. These are the easiest things you can do. And Julie even spoke about being organized, right? Using your apps, food tracking apps. Yeah. We need to eat better, move more, get sunlight.
Joshua Delgado: Absolutely.
Corby Anderson: And I think one other thing to put on this, which is so important, socialize. Socialize. With SAD, a lot of times a lot of people want to just go inside themselves and they don't want to go and interact with other people. So that's such a huge thing is just socialize with other people and you'll be able to talk about some of your feelings and stuff. If not, sometimes it's just to move around. Grab someone, they'll get you to move, and if you can get a couple of movements that might change some behaviours inside.
Joshua Delgado: Agreed. And we see that a lot with students as well. Students who are looking for an outlet, and so they go to the gym, they start to move to help battle something like the winter blues, and then it becomes social. They make friends. If they're lucky enough, they also find another outlet like a varsity team in the facility, or an extramural or intramural sports team that they can play with. And that's a whole other outlet for them. It's not just physical activity, now it becomes a social thing and there's a whole load of benefits that come along with that too.
Adam Balan: There's a student subsidy for starting a new club, I believe too. Students can pitch an idea to start a brand new club. It doesn't have to be athletic or fitness based, right? That's another option on campus through the CCSI for social interaction too.
Joshua Delgado: Yeah. The student association has a lot of additional resources that students should look into, including student clubs and possible funding that student clubs can have access to. We've seen clubs like a meditation club, or physical activity related clubs. So people can get together. They have a great idea, they get funding towards it, and it becomes a whole other outlet for them, for sure.
Adam Balan: Right on.
Joshua Delgado: What other resources on campus are you guys familiar with that both staff and students can reach out to?
Corby Anderson: The one thing definitely as we're all mentioning about movement is there's walking routes that we have here at each one of the campuses, both internal, external. Literally you can go over to CCSI or you can go to any one of the other gyms at any one of the other campuses. And there, there's a little leaflet. It's kind of folded in four. You open it up and it has actually a mapped route to walk a kilometre, or a mile within the campus, or even outside the campuses.
Joshua Delgado: That's wonderful.
Corby Anderson: And it gives you some really good tips on how to start walking and what should I go with? And one of the big things we say, if you want to start something grab a friend, because that friend will hold you accountable to it and it gives you a conversation to have as you're walking.
Julie Haluschak: Yeah. If it wasn't for some of my coworkers I probably wouldn't be going to the gym. I definitely have the motivation because I have somebody there that's been my support system basically from day one, which has been good.
Joshua Delgado: Right. I go for walks around the campus and I run into some regulars. I wonder if they're using the walking routes.
Corby Anderson: I think many of them have found it first-
Joshua Delgado: That's great.
Corby Anderson: ... and then it was just from there, they're constantly going.
Joshua Delgado: I keep forgetting they exist. I do my own little route, but I should make a point to try all the routes. Because we're lucky enough at Centennial, at all campuses, to have really beautiful grounds to walk around.
Corby Anderson: Yeah, absolutely.
Joshua Delgado: What do you know about the Downsview Campus?
Corby Anderson: Yeah, I know. Downsview is one of our newest campuses, gorgeous campus. And what they do there is there's a huge recreational multi-sport facility, which is just outside there. And what they've done, for both staff and students, is you'll have access at certain times to the ice rink, to play soccer, or there's a ton of other resources around there. There's also a hoop dome there, and you can also go and play basketball at certain set hours. So you can just talk to one of the staff members there over at Downsview and they'll definitely be able to give you more information.
Joshua Delgado: Good stuff. Awesome. So thanks for sharing guys. Thank you for joining us for episode two, defeating the winter blues. Make sure to join us for next week's episode on the topic healthy eating on campus where we will be joined by special guest, Jordan Tam and Jane Skapinker.
Resources
Services at Centennial
- Centennial College Student Association Incorporated (CCSAI)
- Athletics and Wellness Centre (AWC)
- Morneau Shepell (Staff)
- Sleep Pods
- Prayer/Meditation Rooms