In Episode 26: Join Jordan and Lex on an unintentionally musical journey through the world of Seasonal Affective Disorder and how it relates to ADHD. It's Daylight Savings Time, so buckle up and tune in for a trip back to the Education Station, and some seasonal depression hacks (spoiler: it's mostly potatoes).
Thanks for listening!
CW/TW: Mental health, ADHD, explicit language, loud noises, yelling, rambling, singing, mouth noises, coughing, garbled speech, brief mention of Harry Potter/terfs, implied cannibalism, mild bullying, dicussion of food & eating habits
Credits:
Cover art by: Krizia Perito
Theme: There Is A Dark Place
Socials:
Mental Health Resources:
thelovelandfoundation.org
opencounseling.com
Sources:
https://www.additudemag.com/seasonal-affective-disorder-adhd-comorbid-depression/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27423070/
https://www.nextstep4adhd.com/seasonal-affective-disorder-and-adhd-4-tips-to-fight-depression
In Episode 26: Join Jordan and Lex on an unintentionally musical journey through the world of Seasonal Affective Disorder and how it relates to ADHD. It's Daylight Savings Time, so buckle up and tune in for a trip back to the Education Station, and some seasonal depression hacks (spoiler: it's mostly potatoes).
Thanks for listening!
CW/TW: Mental health, ADHD, explicit language, loud noises, yelling, rambling, singing, mouth noises, coughing, garbled speech, brief mention of Harry Potter/terfs, implied cannibalism, mild bullying, dicussion of food & eating habits
Credits:
Cover art by: Krizia Perito
Theme: There Is A Dark Place
Socials:
Mental Health Resources:
thelovelandfoundation.org
opencounseling.com
Sources:
https://www.additudemag.com/seasonal-affective-disorder-adhd-comorbid-depression/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27423070/
https://www.nextstep4adhd.com/seasonal-affective-disorder-and-adhd-4-tips-to-fight-depression
There is a dog play, but I'm not going. No, no, no, no. Um, uh
Speaker 2:[inaudible]
Speaker 3:I was ready.[inaudible] deception.[inaudible] hi, I'm Jordan. And this is[inaudible]. Hello? I'm Lex. I think I started laughing before I got my full name out. It's one syllable, which is pretty par for the course, for me. I'd say welcome to the show. Lax. Yeah, I got ADHD. I heard this podcast about it and I'm here, baby. And Sheree is you were in the right place. Yeah. No other qualifications to be there, which is good because we have none. We have no, absolutely no qualifications. We don't even have driver's licenses. We're not even like people were just out in the ether. I'm 17. I just look old enough to go to bars. I'm completely illiterate. You're a little disrespectful. Did you see, okay. Did you see my tweet earlier? Yeah, I did. Everyone. Who's listening to this. Don't look at Lexus tweet from earlier. I'll just tell you all the story. You don't need to go look at my Twitter. I'll tell you. I was driving behind somebody. I live in Chicago. We live in Chicago. This is a podcast about ADHD. We live in Chicago. It's a place to be some might say the place to be some. I know who those people are. I don't know them. It's not us, but some people might. Yeah. And this is also a podcast about HD. It's called Orland park core. I'm Lexus shorten. We talk about ADHD, like 60% of the time, 60 to 70, somewhere in there. Maybe on your definition of talking about ADHD. Yeah. I'm like an educational manner. Probably bump that right down to like a 40 talking about our lives with ADHD or up to like 90. Yeah. I suppose like a sliding scale. Um, but we live in Chicago and it's a place where people live and it's a time and I was driving today. I'm on my way. Home from work. And the car in front of me had lots of bumper stickers. Like some, I'd say like 80% of which I agreed with. I thought you were going to say 80 bumper stickers. And I was like, what? No. I mean like they definitely had in like the 20 to 30 range, like yeah, no, a lot. Like definitely saw a lot, like at least two coexist stickers. And then one that's like the same sort of font idea, but this is a quality. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. They had both of those. There was an RBG, you know, you know, liberal things and don't get it twisted. This is not me being like, people on the left are so cringy. Cause like, no, if you think I'm conservative, honey. No, no, no. Um, this is the first episode you're listening to. This is not the case. Yeah. What I'll say one of the main things that can kind of point to where I lie on the political scale is if you go far enough left, you get your guns back. So we live in Chicago and I'm driving behind this person with all these bumper stickers. And I'm like, okay, that's a lot of bumper stickers, but at the same time, it's giving me something to do to pass the time because traffic is sometimes tedious, we'll say. And so I'm looking at this person with all of their very open-minded liberal protect the earth. Yeah. Very sort of. And she bumper stickers, crunchy granola, but not like as far as having, like, I don't know, say like, well circle one, like not that far left stickers. So like it's just right in that, right in that thing. Right. We're not quite pitching defunding. We're not here for like reparations quite yet. Yeah, yeah. No it's yeah know. Yeah. Let's still sweetened. I don't want to say you can't add sounds like you can't have sugar sweetener when you go far enough left and that's false also. You and your granola. Yeah. I don't know. We were angry at two very different things. I think. Um, we can talk about what granola did to hurt you in like a second. So I'm looking behind this car, right? I'm driving, looking at the purpose stickers and the driver's window slides down and all of a sudden, just a giant plastic bag of trash, not like a giant garbage bag, but like the big ones from target. Oh, just trash everywhere. God. They very intentionally stuck that bag out of the window with their arm and just like dropped it. Let it rip. Yeah. Just full on grip and rip it. Let me just litter everywhere. Big yanks for me on that one. Lacks. Yeah. So I don't really know what their deal was, but it did seem pretty accurate too, in terms of speaking metaphorically to our government right now. But how about granola? What did it do to you?
Speaker 4:I would like to apologize for my statements on granola earlier heat of the moment he didn't moment granola did not deserve that. I respect all types of granola and
Speaker 3:Granola friends
Speaker 4:Stopping funnier than me.
Speaker 3:Make me laugh too hard. Well, making myself laugh too hard, which is more yeah, but like we don't, but I
Speaker 4:Appreciate you trying to show the credit. This is
Speaker 3:Why this is, this is one of the many drawbacks I might have. If I start streaming some, I laugh at my own jokes and the things I say all the time. And I do not care if other people are not laughing with me.
Speaker 4:I remember like when we first moved in together, you were like, just so you know, like don't get offended. Don't let it hurt your feelings. I just don't laugh out loud that often.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Except for my piece of. My apologies for derailing the trail of granola. But uh, you were apologizing to granola, so that's where we're at. What's this episode about
Speaker 4:Depression. Oh,
Speaker 3:Okay. So we're like pretty off track. All right. Okay. All right.
Speaker 4:Actually, this is a very seasonally relevant episode. We're recording on the second, which is a Tuesday, but y'all will be hearing this episode on Monday, right after daylight savings. Yup. Yup. Yup. So we are actually talking about specifically seasonal depression. And the reason that we were talking about this, even though this is not technically a seasonal depression podcast, it's like 50% of seasonal depression podcast, because guess who has I do?
Speaker 3:It's like a hundred percent. Hey, we both, we both
Speaker 4:Have the light. That's true.
Speaker 3:You're just better at actively working against your seasonal depression. And I was on meds like depression meds before you were that's true.
Speaker 4:Yeah. No seasonal depression or seasonal affective disorder as it is officially known was like my first diagnosis. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. When I was in college, the fall of my junior year, which was the first year I moved away from home. So looked like it was great. Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of fun things about college. A lot of cool people, a lot of cool stuff. I was so sad. Yeah. So I went, I don't want to do that again. And when it started getting fall, my senior year, I said, I'm going to go find a therapist. And luckily all the therapists on campus were conveniently condensed into one room. So I just had to find the room. And then it was pretty easy to find a therapist from there on
Speaker 3:Out. What, how, why were they all in one room, one building. Oh yeah. One. You gathered them all in this they're all here. Just in time for the Sarah pero ceremony, a ceremony. I was trying to like therapy and ceremony, but it's like syrupy or thera, Moni. And like, so like anyways, so that's why I was like, we went to the same counseling services and they were never all in one room together. What did you do to the therapist at the university of Idaho? What did you do? What did you do to them? Nothing that couldn't be done. I promise. Okay. I'm going to say building, I'm going to say building. They were all in one building. That makes a lot more sense. But now I am. I think, you know, I do like this sort of dark side, Jordan. Who's apparently 17 therapists into a room. The therapist. Wrangler. Yeah. Just trot Mong out in the old west. Cause there ain't enough room in town for any therapist. Got to get them all in one room. That is not our official statement on therapists. Just to clarify, we both do like some good therapy, big fan, big, big fan, big fan now recognize it's not for everyone, but like for us. Great, good time. Yeah.
Speaker 4:We know that in this house we stand Margaret.
Speaker 3:Yes, of course we do. We always stand Margaret. But, but so you went, you summoned some therapists and they were all conveniently. Yeah. They all conveniently arrived in that pentagram that you'd created you, you know, made sure you had all your salt lined up. So none of them could get out and you found one crushed up. So loft, if you had crushed up Zoloft, you wouldn't have needed to go to the serum in the first place. Not to say that meds are a substitute for therapy. I'm just saying for the bit, okay. Couldn't even enjoy that bit. Cause I already knew I could already feel, it could already feel the criticism. So what'd you do then masochist, no sadist. That's when you do it to other people, I always get those confused. What a masochist likes to be hurt and likes to suffer a sadist likes to hurt others. And if you're so many and all the therapists into a pentagram to conduct a dark seasonal depression rituals, I'd go so far to say, is that that's sadism. Yeah. You're making other people suffer and probably enjoying it. I was not enjoying it. I was not enjoying anything at that point in my life. Very depressed. Okay. Listen, I know I live with you. Okay. You and I can't thank you enough for that same cheers, bro. I'll drink to that anyways. So tell me more. So I got diagnosed with seasonal
Speaker 4:And then I moved to Chicago and I went, well, I have seasonal depression and Chicago shirt can season.
Speaker 3:We sure do have seasoned. So
Speaker 4:I found another therapist. That's a pretty condensed version of that story. But all that to say, I found that I had seasonal depression. First. I found out that I had ADHD second and third, I found out that ADHD and seasonal affective disorder are actually co-morbid comorbid.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Cool. They occur together. A lot. People who have ADHD are three times as likely to have seasonal affective disorder. Yeah. So that's why we're talking about it today on the ADHD podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah. We did also do an episode on co-morbidities we sure did.
Speaker 4:You can go listen to that one.
Speaker 3:Very basic rudimentary, a bare bones sort of explanation.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah. If we haven't mentioned it yet, we're not doctors. We're not therapists. We're not mental health professionals.
Speaker 3:No, not in the host, not coaches, not influencers, nothing.
Speaker 4:We are not mental health or professional.
Speaker 3:So now Hey, you know why? Well like lots of reasons, but specifically I say the word probably too many times to be considered professional anything. You know what I mean? Like I did look at our cats today and I said, Hey O's. And it was 8:00 AM
Speaker 4:And it was accurate. I've met our cats. That was accurate. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But that's like the energy I bring, I walk out of my room at 8:00 AM in the morning and I'm like, I out. So like I wouldn't consider myself a professional person on any capacity, even though I have a master's degree, you sure do. Yeah. But it's an anthropology. So like let's just,
Speaker 4:That's studying
Speaker 3:People. Yeah. But not in a way that gives me any authority or smarts that make me more or less than any other person. But we do know how to use computers. And we do know how to draw from our own lived experiences.
Speaker 4:This is true, but you know, who is smart and scientific and professional, who that would be the national Institute of mental health, where I pulled this definition of seasonal affective disorder from all right folks, we are all a board, the train to the education station right now, buckle up, strap in whatever you need to do
Speaker 3:Anything off the trolley deals. We'll take some greedy little taking all of the candy off the trolley.
Speaker 4:That is a little rude. When you think about it, I never thought about
Speaker 3:It. Like I recognized where he is coming from. Oh yeah. Very dark place that I don't wish upon any human, but yeah. Hey buddy, you just took all of the candy and sweets and food from the rest of the train full of other people that you're about to go to school with for like seven
Speaker 4:Years. Oh, you're the candy stealing
Speaker 3:Freak. Yeah. And then they're going to be like
Speaker 4:The hell's wrong with you.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Like no wonder they all bully him so much. No, they all bully him so much. Cause the author who wrote him is a turf. So anyways, tell me about more of this education station stuff, because I am not going to be that Dick who buys all the candy on this trolley and I'm ready.
Speaker 4:All right. So official definition. So we're all starting from the same page here. Seasonal affective disorder is a type of depression characterized by it's for current seasonal pattern, uh, with symptoms lasting usually about four to five months out of
Speaker 3:The year. Yeah. I guess it's sort of dependent on where you live.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Well, and there is like seasonal depression or seasonal affective disorder we're going to use those interchangeably is generally I believe much more common in the winter, but there is a summer version as well. Some people get summer depression. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, and I'm also just thinking about like the way the planet experience is sunlight and seasons. That's also a good point. Yeah. So like if I look at somebody who lives near the equator, they probably have less months of seasonal depression in their little calendar of sadness.
Speaker 4:I wish that were me, but I moved to Chicago instead. Anyways. So the signs and symptoms of seasonal affective disorder would then include those associated with major depression and some specific symptoms differ for winter and summer pattern seasonal affective disorder. Uh, so those symptoms may include some of these might sound familiar if you've listened to our other episodes about ADHD symptoms, but uh, feeling depressed most of the day, nearly every day, feelings of guilt and hopelessness, losing interest in activities you once enjoyed experiencing changes in appetite or weight, having problems with sleep, feeling sluggish, feeling agitated, having low energy, feeling hopeless, feeling worthless, having difficulty concentrating oversleeping or problems sleeping in general overeating, particularly with a craving for carbohydrates and social withdrawal and increased sensitivity to rejection.
Speaker 3:Okay, cool. Yeah. That's the sad bummer list. A good, good thing. We both feel like that a lot. So, um, here's a question for ya. Oh great. Education station conductor. Yeah. What's the difference. And this is just for, you know, was for the audience because obviously I know obviously, but what's the difference between seasonal depression and regular depression? Cause they sound the same. So
Speaker 4:Same symptoms, different times and lengths of time they occur. Seasonal depression has, like I mentioned earlier, a seasonal pattern, whether it's summer or winter happening on the same part of the year, every year, whereas general garden variety run of the mill, you know, store-brand major depressive disorder is not bound to those sort of parameters.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean
Speaker 4:Gonna sneak up on you at any time of the year.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I guess a better question would be what is the reason for that?
Speaker 4:That's a great question. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Cause that's, I think that's what I'm asking. It's like, yes. The seasonal one is seasonal. Thank you.
Speaker 4:That is the question you asked
Speaker 3:Me. Well, but like what's the difference? And so the difference is what causes them. Yes.
Speaker 4:That is a good question. So both expressions of depression are due to chemical imbalances in the brain, um, Nash, Nash, you know, but uh, seasonal depression. And then this is something we'll learn later. They're still investigating the mechanisms involved here, but is largely due to, especially in winter depression, the lack of sunlight and the way that, that changes your circadian rhythms creates more melatonin in your brain and kind of throws you off. Yeah. Kind of messes up that whole sleep wake system. And it's a bad time. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'd imagine then that when it's in like summer, it's the opposite of like it's sunny for most of the day have fun and your brain is like, everything is a nightmare from Midsummer and I'm dying
Speaker 4:Probably. Yeah. I do not experience summer seasonal depression, but if somebody in the audience does let us know
Speaker 3:Yeah. As a, someone with major depressive disorder and seasonal affective disorder, I can say that summer depression. So,
Speaker 4:Oh, I've been depressed in the summer. I just depressed because of the stuff.
Speaker 3:No, I guess that's fair. But like you asked if there was anyone in the audience who gets depressed from like, like sometimes it's too much. I think for me anyways, when I'm feeling depressed in the summer, when I'm just generally the thing about summer that can sometimes be a little overwhelming and disheartening for me is like the pressure to go do things and be social and go outside and enjoy the nice weather while you can, especially in Chicago when it's like, we get like a month of nice weather. So there's that pressure. And then you just kind of get down on yourself and it kind of just builds up from there. But again, my seasonal affective disorder is also pretty tied to like late winter.
Speaker 4:That is what the resources from the national mental health association says is that by and large, the most difficult months for people who have it are January and February, that tracks and younger persons and people who are assigned female at birth are both at higher risk. Yeah. Well
Speaker 3:As someone who's under 30 and a fab bummer, I'm gonna go put me in a yellow room. That'll fix me up
Speaker 4:Please. Don't in crim. Yeah,
Speaker 3:We got, we got more pink panels up.
Speaker 4:Yeah. They're very cute. And very squishy, squishy. This is also the time that I just want to note for people who might not be as familiar with depression or seasonal affective disorder. Um, there is a difference between seasonal affective disorder and the like quote unquote, winter blues. Um, I mean there are a ton of studies out there on the effect of sunlight on people. Uh, and that is usually positive in a mental health context. Uh, so yes, the, the seasons changing are going to effect most people to some degree. There's also an amount of pressure and uh, emotional draw, emotional drain around, uh, winter holidays, a lot of things going on, but just like depression is a different thing from just being sad. So is seasonal depression, but the duke put a caveat on my caveat. Like we say, with ADHD, whether you have a diagnosis or not, if a tool that we are talking about works for you, you use it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Again, we're not experts. So like take the tips with a grain of salt, but take them. Yep. Yep. Well, thanks. Whenever you G you always bring like such good emotional gravitas. Like when you're talking about education station stuff and you're like, it's just like, you can really hear and feel the empathy. Right. And like, as someone who lives with you and loves you very much, it's like, yeah, you just always are like that. But then I'm like, well, we're making a podcast and this is like such a bummer down here. Like, okay, let's go back to being funny.
Speaker 4:I'm glad that, you
Speaker 3:Know, don't be depressed. You're so funny.
Speaker 4:And that's why I appreciate having you on the other side of the mic is may so that you can kind of bring us back to the not depressing zone. You can ask those questions that other people are asking while I'm just like, here's the thing I read. I did all this research. I read all these papers yesterday. I'm just going to quote it to you. Does that make sense? And it doesn't make any sense at all, but it does.
Speaker 3:Thank you for, yeah. I maintain now and forever that I was born in the wrong time, because I think ideally I would be a really good court. Jester was bounce ideas off me. Good or bad. I'm here. Ready to bring the mood.
Speaker 4:Amazing. I'm going to actually bring the mood back down though, if that's all right, because I have more, more science. Is that,
Speaker 3:I mean like science doesn't automatically bring it down. It's Trek tried to deliver it to me. Nice. You know what I mean? Give me a Mary Poppins sort of a spoonful of sugar with it. We talk about sad things in a really happy way. Like serial killers. Do you know? It's fine. Yeah,
Speaker 4:Absolutely. Yes.
Speaker 3:So there is no war in Boston. Say
Speaker 4:There was this study done in 2016,
Speaker 3:Great year banner year.
Speaker 4:Oh, okay. Yeah,
Speaker 3:I did that. I did that all on up to
Speaker 4:Preston piece, Carrie Fisher, but there was a paper put out in 2016 called ADHD, circadian rhythms and seasonality, uh, by when shank at all. And this is,
Speaker 3:And the other seasonal problems allergies. True. Well, that has nothing to do with the ADHD,
Speaker 4:Maybe
Speaker 3:ADHD. And I sneeze like 17 times a day. Somebody helped me. That's my research proposal.
Speaker 4:That's a symptom of ADHD.
Speaker 3:Okay. It is really irritating that sometimes people are just like, yeah. So I have this recurring dream that I murder my own mom. And that's because I have ADHD. No, no, no. I don't think so. Like not to Nazi Yakini yams know we aren't experts,
Speaker 4:But I'm also not an expert in dreaming about murdering my mom. So
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I, I would hope not, but also like just generally, like don't have to be an expert to know that, Hey, that's not connected at all. I was going to say
Speaker 4:Correlation does not imply causation, which is one of my favorite phrases. Uh, but there there's not even really quarterly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's just, I'm not saying somebody said this, but we've seen people say some. Yup. And so we like to keep relatively, I'm not going to say positive environment here, what a relatively, a relatively environment. Yep. Yep. It sure is. So this paper, yeah.
Speaker 4:Tell me more published in 2016 credit to when shank at all, this was one of the bigger studies done investigating. If there was a link between ADHD and seasonal depression, uh, if there were overlap in causes, what exactly the relationship was and the impact that ADHD could potentially have on experiencing seasonal, effective disorder and vice versa. And I'm referencing this paper because it's one of the most recent, it's also kind of a summary of a lot of research that came before it. So
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I mean, from the summary that you gave, that's the podcast episode today. So,
Speaker 4:And we will share a link to this in our show notes as always so that you can check it out if you would like to. They found a couple interesting things. One, as we mentioned earlier, people with ADHD are three times more likely to have clinically significant seasonal affective disorder. They also found that seasonal depressive symptoms are significantly increased in people with ADHD, independent of pre-existing depression or anxiety. Okay. Yup. And I thought this was super interesting. It's a little jargony. So bear with me. But they were looking at the relationship between ADHD and seasonal affective disorder, sort of the missing piece. There is delayed sleep phase disorder, which I know we've talked about a bit before we had our episode on sleep. It's very common in people with ADHD. And so they were looking at specifically how that delayed sleep phase element affects how people experience seasonal affective disorder. And they found an actual measurable number of like your symptoms get a specific amount, more intense for every like hour. You go to sleep later,
Speaker 3:Hey scientists, Hey scientists from this study, you're being real loud. You're being really rude. Shut up.
Speaker 4:Yeah. For those of you who care about the jargon, they were measuring seasonal symptoms with the GSS score, which measures seasonal change in symptoms. And they discovered that a sleep onset time that was one hour later resulted in an increase of 0.2, six points. And I believe it's a scale out of 24, but if you're doing that consistently, you know, for like your whole life, if you've had ADHD, teens, delayed sleep phase disorder that, uh, might end up being significant,
Speaker 3:I might have some buildup might need to deal with that later.
Speaker 4:That's a problem
Speaker 3:For some other time, I guess
Speaker 4:Some other 2:00 AM. Yup. Yup. So all that to say, there's still a fair amount of research to do. You know, because as we've talked about, we don't exactly know all of the mechanisms that cause and, or contribute to ADHD, but they did discover sort of a snake, eating its own tail relationship between these things where the delayed sleep phase can happen because of ADHD. And then you don't get enough sleep and that makes your ADHD symptoms worse. But also that delayed sleep phase can be exacerbated by, you know, that's a symptom. It can be exacerbated by doing. And then if you're waking up later, after daylight savings time, you're missing out on morning sun, that's going to lead to shorter exposure to sunlight in the day and then increased exposure to artificial light at night. If you're going to bed later, which continues the cycle of sleep disturbance, which we know is not great. Yeah. That's a real bummer. It is. Yeah. However,
Speaker 3:It makes me want to go to sleep. Like now it's like what? Like 9:00 PM.
Speaker 4:I'm like, okay, it's, it's nine 30. It's getting in late.
Speaker 3:I got to go roast my, my brain. Couldn't be worse tomorrow.
Speaker 4:We have some things we can do. It's not all that news.
Speaker 3:Okay. I don't know if a trust you has been burned so many times. I
Speaker 4:Know, I know me too. It will give me, give me the
Speaker 3:Good news then
Speaker 4:Doc. So
Speaker 3:There are not an actual to clarify one more time, just in case, like just in case you have like some random person who's like listening to in like halfway through the episode while you're listening and they're like, doc, these medical doctors just know
Speaker 4:Sure. Art. And also to clarify, I might be a doctor someday, like same. I will never be a medical doctor. That is not my path in life.
Speaker 3:No, I mean, that's fair. I'm just like, I'm not expecting you to never say never, you know, never know, but right now, absolutely.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no one major overlap in treatment is Welbutrin. If some of y'all are familiar for that, it is an antidepressant that is at least according to the first psychiatrist I had who kind of sucked, but the Welbutrin did work one of the most popular and effective for specifically seasonal affective disorder. It's uh, it works a little bit different than Zoloft or some of the other more popular antidepressants that doesn't have as much power and fighting anxiety usually is what I've been told by many psychiatrists,
Speaker 3:Zoloft, baby.
Speaker 4:Oh, it's good. It's good. I do also like Zoloft quite a bit and
Speaker 3:Keeps that anxiety
Speaker 4:Therapist that I summoned with it. Okay. Yeah. Anyways, so Wellbutrin antidepressant very popular for specifically seasonal affective disorder. It's an anti-depressant that is safe to under the recommendation and supervision supervisory station of a licensed mental health professional go on and off as your seasoned cycle. What supervised supervision.
Speaker 3:Okay. You might want to take that sentence again. Me go, you were on such a roll. You were so confident you're getting louder too. Like maybe some times when you're like really getting it. And I was like, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm about to, I'm about to tear, tear it all down
Speaker 4:Greer. It's possible to under the supervision and recommendation of a psychiatrist or a licensed mental health professional to go on and off as your seasonals require. It's also very common off-label use for adult ADHD. That was what I was prescribed before I was prescribed. Adderall worked great for the seasonal depression, for me, not so much for the ADHD, but if you have that overlap, it's been shown to be effective for both. So that's a good one. Personally, only speaking for myself and my own experiences, big fan of Welbutrin. They also actually do mention in the paper that I've basically been reading for the past half hour, that in terms of treatment, they say symptoms of ADHD, seasonal affective disorder and delayed sleep phase syndrome improve with therapy that they refer to as phase resetting that's in quotes. This is referring to, and more specific terms, bright light therapy, which is fairly common for seasonal effective disorder and sometimes evening melatonin administration as well. Aligns your cycles, I guess. So there's evidence that all three of those things work independently for ADHD is seasonal affective disorder. So two birds, one stone highly. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yep. We definitely have a few, a few happy lamps. We sure do. I love them. They're great.
Speaker 4:I'm like fan the one unfortunate thing I will say is that another big overlap in like HD and seasonal affective disorder treatment is the, uh, neuro-typical Karen trifecta of exercise and irregular sleep schedule and making yourself a daytime schedule. Maybe if they're on some diet there just to be safe,
Speaker 3:Nash, Nash, get your Peloton Peloton will cure seasonal depression. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Uh, well, here's the thing. I'm not going to say that those things don't work
Speaker 3:Well. They definitely have, they're scientifically proven to help boost endorphins and like that, which is great, but it doesn't work for everybody and not everybody can do that. Yeah. So, you know, so yeah,
Speaker 4:I guess I kind of wanted to touch on a little bit, like how do you do that with ADHD? Because it's hard enough to do when you like, just have depression, depression that makes it hard to find depression, but then when you also have ADHD, it adds a layer of CIT and getting all of those things done. I don't know I was going to share some of my experience if you want to share some of the things that you
Speaker 3:Yeah. Maybe we'll see how much time we got. Cause I feel like we've talked for a long time. So
Speaker 4:Fair amount of it's cut though. So my number one recommendation has been w manage your expectations. Like first and foremost, the one of the hardest things for me to do, but that's been really helpful is just let it be okay that you're not going to be as productive and that you're not going to be as on top of it and you're not going to be as social and you're not going to be all of that jazz. Yeah. Be
Speaker 3:Gentle to yourself
Speaker 4:Until tears.
Speaker 3:Like you wouldn't well, maybe you would. And I would suggest that you look at your behavior and choices in life, but you wouldn't normally most people wouldn't and shouldn't verbally abuse their friends when their friends are having a hard time. So why do we like verbally abuse ourselves? You know, like why don't we beat ourselves up so much? Yeah. You wouldn't do that to a friend or family member. And again, if you would, you might want,
Speaker 4:You shouldn't do that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess. Yeah. I mean, like, I don't wanna, I don't wanna like step on anyone's like worldviews or, you know, cultural sort of no, I'll let you know, like there's, there's certain things that I don't know. I know some, sometimes people like tease each other and that's just like the friendships they have. And so I got to, I don't want to[inaudible], but generally you should probably, you should be nice to yourself and you should be nice to other people. Kindness is really important and then include self kindness.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I think that's a great way of putting that a followup to that too. Like if that's really disappointing to you. Cause I know for me sometimes, especially with like Christmas, I'm like, well, but I don't want to miss out on those things. I don't want to drop the ball, set yourself a stretch goal, just like pull a Kickstarter and say like, it's going to be good enough if you can get through the season. But if you want to, and you can, yes. Finished knitting that hat and then you don't have to be disappointed if it doesn't come through. But
Speaker 3:Then it gives you a little bit of a like dopamine hit a goal, get a reward, maybe. So manage your expectations. Number two, I think along the lines of kindness, create a support system. Whether that's friends, family, mental health practitioners, a discord, anybody who you can be open with and also set good boundaries with and they can set good boundaries with you. Don't turn anyone into your therapist. Who's not your therapist, but, and family are important. Community is important. Yes. This is the podcast. Jordan says things really eloquently and pretty. And then I'd bring it home with that too long. Didn't read. I got you
Speaker 4:Very important summaries and accept, help from them. That is also okay to do. That was also a hard thing for me to accept and a lot of my life, but asking for help is good and okay. And accepting help is good. And okay. Yeah. And the last thing that I will say, and not a doctor, everyone has their own relationship with health and food, but for me personally, getting through seasonal depression, eat whatever the you want. Your body's probably going to say it's time for potatoes. It's time for mother potatoes then.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Like bodies, your body wants potatoes. Give your body those potatoes,
Speaker 4:Give your body
Speaker 3:Potato. Your body wants a pentagram full of therapists. Give your body the pentagram full of therapists. We stop at midnight.
Speaker 4:Your body's like these need a little Tabasco sauce on them. Little Tabasco sauce on them. I'm sure at some other point, we'll talk a lot more about ADHD and food, but that is my holiday advice is cooked diet culture and feeling bad about yourself, eat whatever you want.
Speaker 3:That's what I got. Okay. Awesome. My tips would be like, I would honestly genuinely encourage most people to at least look into whether or not you should get a happy lamp. Um, the fancy lamps that have like vitamin D or whatever. And um, I dunno, it's pretty nice. It's nice to start your day with just like a 15 to 30 minutes, sort of little sunset,
Speaker 4:A little happy, a little plan.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. Just soak up those rays for like a minute. Genuinely genuinely makes a difference, at least for me. And I know for you too. So that'd be like my main, my main suggestion is look into that at the very least. Oh yeah. Yeah. And they've got like, you know, it's such a, it's become a bit of a thing now, right. In like terms of like wellness and mental health awareness. Right. And so we've gotten to the point where like, it's not just like boring, like slab lights now. There's like cute ones to what they're cute. I think so. I feel like I, when I saw they're were like just they're pricier because they're cute. Not just like white slabs. Of course. It's not what I got. I'm in the white slab clubs there. Yeah. But it's a beautiful, wonderful white slab though. Um, so that would be like my main thing. And then everything you said is great to, you know, like just be nice to yourself, be nice to other people, be gentle and patient with everybody in everything, including yourself, you know, and let's all do our best to get through the winters. You know? Like there's a reason that it's called the bleak Midwinter. Like that Christmas song does slap. Oh yeah. No, of course. It's just, it wasn't written for nothing. And I know you, you mentioned there is a very distinct difference between major depressive disorder, seasonal affective disorder and just having like the winter blues or whatever. Right. So there's a difference between all three of those things. But regardless of whether you have any sort of official or unofficial diagnosis or not like everyone deserves kindness. Yeah. Everyone deserves kindness. Everyone deserves potatoes. If you want them, you know, everyone, everyone's pretty deserving of, you know, basic human necessities, I'd say, so take care of yourselves, take care of each other, grow some taters, send them. I mean, and that's something that we've been doing as a species for millennia is finding ways to get through winter, like 100%. There's a reason that so much of what we understand about the world and how it functions and how time passes is seasonal. There's a whole reason. There's a lot of reasons for that. There's a lot of reasons and it's not a coincidence that pretty much every culture follows seasonal patterns. And also not a coincidence that most holidays and festivals and celebrations in the winter are all focused on staying warm, staying fed and staying alive, whitened food. So, you know, we're not bringing anything new to the table, but we're bringing crowd favorites. This is just the green bean casserole, a podcast. It's a really bold claim. I stand by it. I stand by it, green bean casseroles, like one of my favorite foods. I know this, but all right, well, you know, I love you. I love this podcast and I love making it, but it's not my favorite podcast by any means. And I stand by that and I feel very okay with that choice. Sustained. I'll allow it. Thank you. Thank you. But speaking of seasons, yes. I'd like to, if I may interrupt, uh, get us off this soul train here because we have arrived at the dopamine trampoline. Nice. This is a place where we talk about things that have been giving us dopamine, whether that be a hyper fixation or just something that's, you know, really butter in our biscuits. That's just how it goes. Uh, we talk about things like one time I talked about shrooms for like an hour. It was a lot, there's a lot to talk about with shooting. Yeah. One time Jordan talked about hot air balloons and I'm still not over it. It was really cute and a wonderful, you know, they're so good. And it just makes me so happy that you like hot air balloon so much, you know, I'm like, Hey, that's my best friend. And they may not have like, you know, everything going on. They may have seasonal affective disorder, but they sure do love hot air balloons. I was trying to put that on my, like I was trying to say that. And I was like, this sounds really bad. I'm like, I'm about to be really mean. She may have no other redeeming qualities. She may be the antichrist, but between the pentagrams. And now that Halloween was just this past weekend and this is one of the first years that I have not been like at the drop of midnight on Halloween, like immediately like, alright, it's Christmas. Like first time in a while where I've been LinkedIn, I kind of want to kind of want to stay in the skeleton onesy. You know, I kind of, I kind of want to keep just watching all the scary TV shows you can. I'm not going to stop you. I mean, our Christmas tree will go up the day after Friendsgiving. Once people leave, depending on how much mind's been opened. Well, but will the angel at the top be a little moth man? Maybe, probably, probably here's hoping. But that said, can I take you to the dopamine trampoline, please do awesome. Because speaking of seasons, my dopamine trampoline this week is the lunar cycle. Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about the moon lately. I think about the moon all the time. Let's be real. I love the moon. Tell me more. It's my wife. Tell me it's it's my wife, the moon. The moon is my wife, uh, as the moon is so cool. I mean, I touched on this, right? Like people have always had a really big fascination and love of the moon and the sun and how they affect or how people may have thought they effected seasonal change. And the moon is like one of the first things that humans learned how to tell time by right. Like people think, or our archeologists think that the first lunar calendar can be dated back to like 30 or 40,000 years ago or something. Whoa. Yeah. No, like in the caves in Europe, like those ones in France, then they love to talk about yeah. You know, the ones. Yeah. So in those caves, there are, uh, lunar calendars. I like, I didn't know that that's really cool. Yeah, no, like straight up, just you can see like the moon phase circles and like they have found it on like smaller objects, like handheld things so that it's like people had had a little wash calendar thing that helped you understand what time you needed to be. Where based on like what size of the moon was. And you know, now we know that the moon has all these different slivers looks different every night because it's orbiting around the earth and the earth is orbiting around the sun. And so the light hits the moon at different angles, depending on where it's orbiting around the earth. And so I sometimes you can't see it at all. And other times it's like a whole big circle and that's not what I'm here to talk about. Cause like, while Astro science and everything is like cool and neat, like y'all, don't need me to tell you how the moon works. Um, my thing is that I think it's just so cool that as a species, we have pretty much across the board, looked to this orb in the sky. And whether people came to the conclusion that it was a God or monster or some sort of other planets or anything like that, like it, it is something that is intrinsically tied to life on earth. Like the moon is necessary to the way that things function currently and the, the, the general giant ecosystem that is our planet. So, yeah. Well, and that's the other thing too, right? Is that there is no scientific proof linking certain things to the moon, like the archaic term loony to like refer to someone as like going, you know, off their rocker, crazy whatever sort of word you want to use or not want to use. Like that comes from the idea that like the moon would make people go mad and moon Luna Latin. So like, you know, the whole deal, which a lot of y'all who listen to this podcast probably already knew that too. So there's all that. But the, the moon has always had like a very deep effect on people, whether they believe a more mystical sort of thing to be at work, or if it's just the scientific recognition of what the moon does for our planet. Um, I just think it's interesting that as a species, we just love that. We just look at the moon. We're like, yeah, I love that. Like, there's so much artwork, so many, like the amount of like moon phase, art tattoos, everything like people love the moon. And like, it's not, it's not ever going to get old, like at least while we're alive, still gonna be there. So like nice. Um, but also really cool that there was this giant orb in the sky and people were like, Hey, that's changing shapes over time. Let's keep track of that. Let's use this. And like, you're beautiful. And I'm curious about you like the mix of art and romance, but like science and curiosity. So cool. It's like that survival, like that base survival mixed with like that highest deepest art like that, the highest deepest craving for connection, right. That people have as like, it's just very cool to me. So I've just been thinking about the moon a lot and you know, I like the moon. I like moon things always have, I like being outside at night, like the moon I've been able to see the moon. It's fun to yell at the moon. This is true. Not in a mean way, you know, just in a like, like wolves, I get it
Speaker 4:Like holler. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Like what did I say?
Speaker 3:Listening? Yeah. Like a Wolf, Hey, Hey, look at this. I'm going to hell. I'm going to hell right now. And I'm like, you know, that sounds like a good idea. That looks cathartic as. Yeah. You know? Um, yeah. So that's it. I like, I guess the lunar cycle and the history of it, I think is interesting. And that most cultures have been using the moon to track time for a long, long time. And also just like, cool. Giant rock. That's attached itself to us like a natural. It's a natural satellite. Dave Matthews wrote a whole song about satellites. Everyone is always with me until I mentioned Dave, no one is ever with me beyond that. It's okay. I walk this road alone.
Speaker 4:I respect your journey and wish you safe travels.
Speaker 3:[inaudible]
Speaker 4:Oh man. Now there's like, there's like a song that was popular in like the 2000 teens. That's also about satellites.
Speaker 3:It's another song about satellites and the 20 teens from Twilight. That's why?
Speaker 4:Oh, I was talking about apparently a full third satellite song. Oh, I can't remember the lyrics. Cause like Cecelia and going satellite.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that one. Yeah. Like pop rock, like very, very, um, all American rejects sort of sound right? No, wait that's Jack's mannequin. Isn't it?
Speaker 4:No, it's not. We might be thinking of different songs. Cause it's, it's it's a little bit more, it's a little bit more like pop Rocky. I'm not good at music genres. I call her sweeper,
Speaker 3:But that's okay. I still love you. Thank you.
Speaker 4:I appreciate that. That's not a deal breaker for us,
Speaker 3:For our friendship and roommates. Hey, you're bad at music genres. I'm moving out. Excuse
Speaker 4:You. That's hyper pop.
Speaker 3:Don't look at me in my psych rock son ever again. Okay. Sorry. What's your, what's your dopamine trampoline. Oh man. Now that I've
Speaker 4:No, that was like such a like lovely, heartfelt, full humanity DT that now all mine.
Speaker 3:Okay. But here's the thing. You talked about the sad for like the first half of this episode and it's science stuff. So I think you're owed some like tomfoolery, you know, I think you're owed some fuckery.
Speaker 4:All right. Well, I, I do happen to know that you also like my current DT because you made them Lexis blessed our entire house by going through a like tortillas and cinnamon sugar, just like frying up flour tortillas in butter and then covering it instead of in sugar. And they're so good.
Speaker 3:Low, low budget.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Or elephant ears. You call it.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, yeah. No, I, I think what I, what I very problematically said was the poor man's elephant here. That's what I said. I'm pretty sure. I said, oh yeah, I know. Probably. Yeah, no that's
Speaker 4:Oh, this is how poor people do it. This is how we do it. Cause we're broke his. I
Speaker 3:Looked at what the minimum salary was
Speaker 4:To
Speaker 3:No, to be eligible for health insurance. And it's like the minimum it's like, do you make$56,000 or less? And I was like, yeah, definitely less. Definitely. If I don't qualify, I'll be very upset. That would be absurd. So yeah. That's fair. Anyway, so yeah, I believe I called it a poor man's elephant ear and I guess I'll stand by it.
Speaker 4:They are amazing whatever you call them. I think we have this both in common was like a childhood snack, but I had not had them in years. My dad and I used to like chop up apples and put them in a bag and put them in the microwave to like soften them and then put them on top. And it was just like, buh-bye poor, quick cheap apple pie. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Roll it up a little apple pie burrito.
Speaker 4:Now. Now we're getting closer to churros shape wise anyways. Sure. Shape wise and cinnamon content. There's there's a complexity to churros. I will never claim to understand.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no. I mean, I'm not saying that's why I originally called it the poor man's elephant ear because you know what an elephant ear is just a S just a giant round slab of dough. It's deep fried and covered in whatever you want to put on it. Very similar to fry bread. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Anyways, Lex has been making them okay.
Speaker 3:I was like, this isn't my DT. What do I do? Just silent. Okay.
Speaker 4:Anyways, Lex has been making those a lot and has been kind enough to also make some for me whenever they do. And they just, they smack so much. They just hit way harder than they should be able to.
Speaker 3:The powerful combo. It is carb with butter, fried butter, sugar, and sugar and cinnamon. It's amazing. Really infallible combo. We should
Speaker 4:End this podcast and go,
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, sure. I see why you chose this as your DT. Now I see sneaky, sneaky. How they do that. Oh yes. You see this. You're all seeing this. It's not
Speaker 4:Just me.
Speaker 3:Oh, hold myself in contempt of the callers or whatever.
Speaker 4:And who's been going, oh, this podcast is taking so long to record like this whole time. So for me, for trying to get us out of here, I said,
Speaker 3:Excuse you,
Speaker 4:I'm going to sound like a real. If I have to edit that part out. All right. Let's, let's take it home. This has been or learned Parker from wholehearted production.
Speaker 3:The company, you can find us on Spotify, apple podcasts, and most other places. Cool. People listen to,
Speaker 4:I guess, special, thanks to Cretia Pareto for our wonderful cover art. You can find her at pedal hop. That's P E T a L H O P on Instagram, Twitter and Etsy.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And thank you as well to Tom Rosenthal for our intro and outro song, there is a dark place off of the album. Keep a private room behind the shop.
Speaker 4:You can follow us on the social millions we are at or learn park on Twitter. You're at we, our WPC on Instagram and on our website@arewpc.com.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And if you're looking for links to those, as well as links to transcripts and our sources for this episode, you can find all of that in the episode description.
Speaker 4:Sure. Cam, if you enjoy this podcast, we hope you do. If you paid it this far and would like to hear more now is a great time to hit that, follow that plus, sign that, subscribe any of those buttons, press them now, please, please, Please follow we follow
Speaker 3:And money please. Now it's time to ask for money. If we, cause we do have a[inaudible] and you can find a link to that on our Twitter, our website and our Instagram and our, uh, link
Speaker 4:Tree, I think.
Speaker 3:And then also, you know, if you, if you aren't able to financially support us, which like I get, we're all, we're all going through it. Then might I recommend making some poor man's elephant ears. And while you're making set elephant ears, tell your you the nearest person about this podcast. It's my challenge to you
Speaker 4:Look to your left. Who was the first person you see, tell him, say Orland park. He has a podcast. Not a request to you right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I was going to say, that'd be bold. Move. Look, someone or learn par core. It's like the weirdest get good. You throw at someone it's like no context. Very strange.
Speaker 4:Maybe that should be our next like guerrilla marketing technique is
Speaker 3:It's like jumping, just jumping in front of people. It
Speaker 4:Sounds like so much effort though. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, we don't like that here. So we probably won't do that. But if y'all want to do that Godspeed,
Speaker 4:Knock yourself out. Hopefully I don't literally anyways, I'm Jordan, this has been oiler and park. We'll see you in two weeks.
Speaker 3:All right.[inaudible]
Speaker 5:Uh,