This is episode 25 of everyday wellness. Are you sad? Using holistic lifestyle medicine

strategies to treat seasonal effective disorder. Let's get started. Welcome to everyday wellness.

Wellness is the result of the decisions that you make every day.

It's your mindset and the thoughts you believe.

Wellness is the food you put in your body and the relationship you have with yourself and others.

Wellness is your work and meaning.

Join us on everyday wellness as we explore ways that you can choose wellness today. Hello everyone. In today's session we're going to talk about seasonal effective disorder and or the winter blues.

So this time of year it's common when many people feel a little sad, a little under the weather, a little less motivated,

and it can be written off as just this is what happens, or we can kind of quote unquote

diagnose it as seasonal effective disorder or we can just

call it the winter blues.

So Cynthia and I are going to talk about the definition, kind of the specifics required for the diagnosis of it. We're going to talk a little bit about

the contributing factors and then most importantly what we can do to treat this.

So I think we can start by thinking about the diagnosis

and I was actually surprised to hear what the diagnosis entailed.

I have this love-hate, mostly hate relationship with diagnoses,

and it's because I think it puts people in a box it often gets people to believe that they are that

label or that disease or disorder rather than being more proactive and empowered to do something

about their symptoms.

But according to the diagnostic and statistical manual, which is the DSM,

it's sort of the Bible for diagnosing mental issues. That indicates that you need to have a series of symptoms such

as having problems sleeping, changes in eating patterns, low energy, less connections with your friends, feeling more irritable,

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