Like air, food, and water, the sun is something most people take for granted. However, a lack of exposure to sunlight can not only make you cold - it can also cause you psychological distress due to your body's need for an essential vitamin that the sun is usually responsible for providing. That vitamin is vitamin D.
Vitamin D deficiency, usually caused by a lack of exposure to sunlight, is thought to play an essential part in a person's mental health and has been linked to disorders like seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. This article will discuss why vitamin D is so vital for our psychological well-being, and how you can ensure that you both get enough vitamin D and lower your anxiety.
Vitamin D and History
Vitamin D is not believed to affect anxiety directly. Though it may be correlated with higher anxiety levels, there are likely reasons beyond the vitamin itself - reasons that will be discussed later in this article.
Historically, seeing the sun was often a cause for celebration and happiness. Sun meant food could grow, and that warmer weather was coming. Conversely, not seeing the sun often meant food was becoming scarcer and that important members of your village, tribe, or family, not to mention yourself, were at risk of dying from the cold. People became less active, and some cultures even took to hibernating like bears during the colder seasons. It is no wonder that cultures across the world, from the ancient Egyptians to the Mayans to the Greeks, once worshipped the sun as a god.
Today, it is believed that ancestral memory - which is, in some ways, short-term evolution - may play a role in why vitamin D and spending time outdoors makes people feel better. Just as humans feel an instinctive revulsion towards bitter flavors due to our ancestral association of bitterness with poisonous foods, the human body may have an instinctive awareness of its need for sunlight.
Seasonal Affective Disorder and Anxiety - Is There a Link?
Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), once considered its unique disorder, has been renamed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) as a type of depression. It is now referred to as a specification only, i.e., depression with seasonal pattern.
People who experience seasonally patterned depression are known to show symptoms that include feelings of anxiety, and other symptoms that are reminiscent of those related to anxiety, such as irritability, antisocial behavior, insomnia, reduced sex drive, decreased appetite and weight loss. Some of these symptoms, like insomnia, may also contribute to the development of anxiety.
Your anxiety, therefore, can depend on how much sun you are exposed to if you are an individual who is particularly strongly affected by seasonal shifts.
