What do you like sunny or cloudy sky? Well, I asked this question because this morning when I saw cloudy sky from window of my bedroom made me really lazy and almost went to sleep again. I felt little depressed and while I was driving to school I was constantly yawning. When I got to school I thought about it is really the weather that made me depressed or something else. When it is sunny in the morning I really enjoy my fifty minute drive to school by watching the green trees, hills and blue sky. I thought then I will search for an experiment that shows this effect of weather on our mood.
Penckofer and colleagues did an experiment, “Vitamin D and Depression: Where is all the Sunshine?” This is the research article I chose because it explains not only lack of vitamin D causes depression , but also many other mental disorders. The article first defines depression and it says that depression in its own right is a disabling condition impairing all aspects of human function. Most individuals in this country have insufficient levels of vitamin D. This is also true for persons with depression as well as other mental disorders; whether, this is due to insufficient dietary intake, lifestyle (e.g., little outdoor exposure to sunshine). The article gives some good facts too such as this one that in the United States, 14.8 million (or about 6.7%) adults have depression. Depression is the leading cause of disability for Americans between the ages of 15 and 44. The article goes on and says that exercise involving exposure to natural sunlight is a new development in alternative treatment to depression. Combining exercise and light therapy can easily be accomplished by encouraging people to exercise outdoors during daylight hours. However, the benefit of exercise with natural sunlight exposure needs to be compared against the risk of skin cancer if sun exposure is significant. Therefore, additional research is needed in this area. The article give many good examples with their research , but it is very long that I include everything , but it is very useful and maybe surprising to some since it give many important function of vitamin D in regards to our health. It even mentions that one cause of obesity can be deficiency of vitamin D.
We really do not appreciate a lot of things in our life like sun it has a very important role in our health. While I was writing this I remember that one of my group member mentioned that people in bus station are very rude and mean. I was wondering that San Francisco has cloudy and depressed weather most of time except the few weeks. I thought maybe people of San Francisco could be depressed because of lack of sun and vitamin D. I love biology because from one study we can start many more to proof all possibilities that can be in for or against of our hypothesis. As it mention above that there has to be done another research to compare benefit of sunlight and skin cancer. What do you feel depressed when it is cloudy? Can you study well in a sunny or rainy day?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2908269/?tool=pubmed
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