Is seasonal affective disorder making you SAD?

As my kids and I took a bedtime bike ride around the block the other night, I lamented how it was already getting starting to get dark. Soon, our evening trips outdoors will start to be shorter and shorter, and by January, it'll be dark by 5 P.M. I don't know about you, but when it's cold and dark outside, I feel like curling up with something warm to drink and watching Grey's Anatomy.

It's natural to want to slow down in the wintertime, and we often have to work harder at staying true to our health and fitness goals. But if the shorter days of autumn and winter find you feeling unmotivated, uninterested in your regular activities, fatigued, or depressed, you may be suffering from seasonal affective disorder (SAD). The shortage of sunlight on those cold winter days is thought to cause a chemical imbalance in some people, and up to 20% of people may suffer from the disorder.

The solution is to get outside while it's light out as much as you can -- even if it's cold and cloudy -- and try to expose your eyes to at least an hour of light a day. If SAD gets serious, it can also be treated with antidepressants, psychotherapy, and light therapy.