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From: gnome@olivee.UUCP (Gary Traveis)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: The Black Dog
Message-ID: <491@olivee.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 28-Feb-86 21:46:14 EST
Article-I.D.: olivee.491
Posted: Fri Feb 28 21:46:14 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 3-Mar-86 23:58:17 EST
References: <1204@lll-crg.ARpA>, <635@frog.UUCP> <614@hounx.UUCP>
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, Ca
Lines: 24

> STella Calvert talks about the mid-winter blues.
> 
> On the PBS series, _The Brain_, a case history was presented about
> a middle aged woman who suffered from mid-winter depression.  Her
> doctors theorized that her slowdown was triggered by the same
> process that governs hibernation (or maybe estivation).  They set
> up the sunlight machine in the woman's house.  Each morning, she
> took a dose of extra daylight.  The treatment worked.  It seems
> we are still chained to our evolutionary past.  Vestiges of the
> old animal brain still govern much of our daily lives.  Sometimes
> the neocortex loses the battle to the more primitive instincts
> wired in to the older structures in the brain.
> 
> --Barry Kort   ...ihnp4!hounx!kort

20/20 also did a segment on it.  Only a tiny portion of the
population have that problem and respond to light therapy.  The
researcher experimenting with the light boxes seems to think that
the susceptibility is caused by a vitamin/hormonal imbalance (inherited)
that is most easily cured with the box (as compared to drug treatment
that have side affects and costs significantly more.)

I, personally, am severly nocturnal and tend to melt like the Wicked
Witch of the West if stuck out in a hot, sunny environment :-)