There are a few supplements I particularly like when the mood of the season begins to change toward the quiet and internal. As winter approaches the days are shorter and the sunshine less intense. Everything starts to get ready for lean times and dormancy. The days are gray and the nights are cold.
We are expected to stay busy consumers when the natural rhythm loudly booms, “Quiet Time.”Parties with lots of sweets can be frantic times with way too many leftovers, as most of us don’t eat so much in cold weather. Except we are expected to! Weight gain and worry go hand in hand — they even keep us busy.
Staying active in the cold times is very important. Weight loss is natural during the winter if you stay active outdoors. The cold actually facilitates weight loss but not if you are eating the rich sweet things instead of simpler winter fare. Think about it: For example, cabbage, turnips and oatmeal are low-calorie foods yet are good energy producers. Sitting in the house eating chips, cakes and breads without being active in the fresh air is a sure-fire way of gaining weight and being out of rhythm with the season.
Being out of rhythm with the season easily sets up emotional disturbances, especially the blue mood or feeling gray. Loss of daylight and sunshine can add to this as well by depleting our production of Vitamin D. Foods such as common sugar, alcohol and certain carbohydrates found in refined bakery goods all add to blue mood, weight gain and to being a grouch — or a grinch.
Halloween gets us ready for change as our gardens and life around us go dormant. At Thanksgiving give thanks to the people and alive things that make up your family instead of consumer wealth or lots of fattening foods. At Christmas celebrate the promise and the hope of life as it is. Give simple things with meaning. Real gifts aren’t necessarily something you’ve gone online to get. Celebrate alive things, not material things. Why kill a tree for Christmas? Resurrection does come every Spring.
Even if you are taking an antidepressant supplementing with B-Complex, B-12 methyl cobalamine and with Vitamin D helps most people inexpensively get by with minimal blue mood. If more is needed and you are not on a prescribed antidepressant then supplementing with L-5HTP daily is a very good thing
