Is it just me or do you also feel less energized, cheerful, and proactive during the spring semester? Well, don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with that. According to psychological studies, there has been evidence and hypotheses that try to explain why some of us (especially women) feel especially down during those months when there isn’t much sunlight going around.
For those of us who come from a tropical or humid climate, we might not have faced the side effects of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) previously, and ever since I came to MSU, I began to truly feel some of the consequences of not being used to a cold and dry climate. I think I’m not the only one to have observed this. Whenever spring came around, I truly felt I had zero energy and less focus on school, even though I didn’t change my physical health routine like exercising and eating right. However, as I began to do some research on the topic, I realized that I was missing something very crucial: to up my dosage of Vitamin D when there is less sunlight, like in the winter and early spring months.
One of the commonalities that I found within studies of SAD, was the fact that women retain less of vitamin D concentration in their system than men do, regardless of the season. The main reason for this is because women have less iron (due to our menstrual cycles), and this is the substance that helps absorb vitamin D. Therefore, the limited amount of vitamin D women are exposed to doesn’t last long in our systems. So, after reading about 10 articles on the matter, the main advice that health and psychological experts give not only to women but to everyone, is that we should all increase our vitamin D intake whenever there is less sunlight in the atmosphere, during those months where the solar cycle is shorter in northern countries.
If you don’t want to spend those extra bucks on Vitamin D supplements, here are some of the natural and cheap ways in which you can increase it in your diet: drink more milk, or vitamin-enriched nut milk (for vegans), increase your fish intake like salmon, tuna, and cod, eat more nuts and seeds, or beef liver.
I would like to leave you with a personal note, I started taking vitamin D last year due to Covid for immunity reasons; and I can honestly say that even though I feel like this particular spring semester is even colder and the weather is gloomier, I feel like I’m not as fatigued and unmotivated as I was in previous semesters where I hadn’t introduced a higher quantity of vitamin D into my diet.