Seasonal Supplements: Three products that are meant to combat the effects of seasonal depression, tested out

After logging an average of 15 hours a day on my MacBook and being forced inside by the freezing-enough-to shut-down-Texas temperatures, I hadn’t seen the sun in weeks. I felt exhausted. Drained. Sluggish. Unmotivated.

I thrive on sunshine. I’m probably the only lifeguard who thinks sitting in a chair all day doing ‘nothing’ is worth it — because duh, free tanning session. Not to mention, sunglasses are my favorite accessory — I have at least 13 pairs.

So when the cold weather sets in and my skin is pale and cloudy gray weather is the norm, I find myself with less energy and less motivated to get stuff done — this year more than usual (thanks ‘rona).

As March arrived and the last stretch of winter began, I felt that I needed a little boost to stay motivated, so I decided to do a little research. What I found is that seasonal depression, also known as seasonal affective disorder affects many people, many of whom might not even know they have it. SAD is a type of depression associated with changes in the seasons. SAD often affects people in the fall or winter months and can have a significant effect on your mood and energy levels. 

As I read through the symptoms, I found myself mentally checking them off: low energy, stress, lack of motivation, oversleeping and sluggishness. 

Feeling relieved that I wasn’t the only one experiencing this, I decided to test out a few products to help me combat my seasonal depression.

I swear by my blackout curtains. They’re the secret to sleeping in on the weekends or getting in a good afternoon nap. But since I’m not required to log into Webex during my at-home days, my blackout curtains make it too tempting to just fall back asleep in the morning — leading to decreased energy throughout the day. So I decided my first order of business in combating SAD was to find a solution that would motivate me to get out of bed: the dawn simulator.

Dawn simulators are alarm clocks that mimic how the sun rises in the morning. Instead of waking you up with loud beeping, they produce light that gradually increases in intensity and regulates your circadian rhythm — the 24-hour internal clock in our brain that regulates cycles of alertness and sleepiness. You can find many different models, but the most effective ones use full-spectrum light, which is closest to natural sunlight.

I chose to use a dawn simulator app called Awake. It’s extremely simple to set up and use. The opening screen has a button for you to press that says “set sunrise.” Once you click it, you are able to set the alarm for when you want the ‘sun’ to ‘rise.’

So I did just that. But what I didn’t realize the first night that I tried dawn simulator was that you have to turn off your lock screen, so your phone doesn’t turn off, in order for the app to work. If your phone falls asleep, the app won’t wake you up in the morning, so you have to keep it on all night. I woke up the following morning in a panic because my alarm didn’t go off, and I was going to be late for my Webex class.

The second night, I made sure to turn off my lock screen and adjust the settings so that my phone wouldn’t fall asleep. But I made another critical mistake — I didn’t plug my phone in when I went to bed. I didn’t think it would be a big deal because my phone had been charging all day while I  was busy with homework. But when I woke up the next morning, my phone was at 22% — the app had eaten up almost 80% of my battery just sitting open all night. If I hadn’t been charging my phone all day, my phone would’ve died before it ever woke me up. 

Despite my mistake, I was pleasantly surprised by its effectiveness once I got it to work. My phone screen did gradually light up, allowing me to naturally wake up at the desired time. When I woke up, I actually felt more awake than I do on a typical day. I didn’t try to fall back asleep and instead got up and started my schoolwork earlier than I normally would. Because I got to work earlier, I was able cross everything off my to-do list, and felt a relief of stress and a sense of accomplishment that day. 

While the app did its job, it took a lot of effort to get the desired results — something that wasn’t mentioned in the app description.  I would recommend you invest in a real dawn simulator alarm clock or at least an app that doesn’t require you to leave your phone open all night.

Typically, the sun is humans’ main source of Vitamin D, but the cloudy Kansas skies cause me to skip out on that crucial nutrient. To fix this, the next product I tried was Vitamin D supplements. 

Vitamin D3 is the active form of Vitamin D the body produces when exposed to sunlight. A deficiency in Vitamin D can lead to a depressed mood. According to the U.S. Institute of Medicine, the recommended daily dose is about 2,000 IU (50 micrograms) per day. 

So I paid a visit to my local Walgreens in search of the “sunshine vitamin.” Luckily, the vitamins were in alphabetical order, so I was able to quickly find what I was looking for: D3. To satisfy my inner child, I purchased the gummy version of the supplements from Nature Made. They came in strawberry, peach and mango flavors with 90 gummies.

Breaking off the seal, I was excited because the supplements looked just like DOTS candy gumdrops, so fully I expected them to be soft and chewy. Much to my surprise, they were quite tough and hard to chew. It took me almost 30 seconds to get through the first gummy. However, their fruity flavor won me over on my second gummy, making the mango my favorite. They were sweet like candy, but not too sickly sweet.

As I continued to take the supplements throughout the week, I didn’t notice a significant change in my energy levels. I can say, however, that the Vitamin D supplements gave me something to look forward to every morning — I was excited and motivated to wake up and take them instead of rolling over and trying to fall back asleep. 

Google’s most recommended product for combating SAD was a light therapy box. Professionals recommend at least 30 minutes of exposure to a light therapy box every day if you experience symptoms of SAD. 

The light from a therapy box is brighter than that of a regular bulb because it simulates natural sunlight and comes in different wavelengths. Similar to dawn simulators, light therapy boxes emit light that mimics sunshine and helps to stimulate your body’s circadian rhythms and suppress the release of melatonin — a hormone that your brain produces in response to darkness to make you sleepy.

As someone who likes to regularly curl up like a cat and lay in the warm sun flowing in through my dining room windows, I was most excited for this product. However, I don’t have much extra room at my workspace to accommodate for a light therapy box, so instead I purchased a light therapy lightbulb from Amazon that did the same thing — and was much cheaper. 

The setup was quite simple. All I had to do was screw the lightbulb into an already existing lamp at my workspace and let it work its magic while I sat on Webex.

I will say that the natural light the lightbulb gave off was much more flattering on Webex than my regular lightbulb. My skin wasn’t discolored purple, and my raccoon eyes were less noticeable. 

Second, doctors claim that light therapy is most effective in the morning, so I tried to stick to that. But few times throughout the week, I turned it on in the evening to test this theory. I noticed that if I waited until the evening to do light therapy, I experienced trouble sleeping afterward. 

As the week went on, I wasn’t sure if the changes in my mood were from the lamp or from the actual sun, which had inconveniently decided to show its face during the one week that I didn’t need it. But I did find myself having more energy. When I had my lamp plugged in next to me, my eyes didn’t struggle to stay open while I was on Webex. Overall, I’m excited to keep using this product out again on future cloudy days.