European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 19, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                V7vk/ the dark Days of Winter a when the Sun never gets very High a Are hard on sad sufferers. File new Light on Winter depression by Jane e. Brody the new York times or some 10 million americans Winter s annoyances Are More than cold ice and excess clothing. They Are people who suffer from suffer from sad the psychiatric syndrome with the All too Apt acronym that stands for seasonal affective disorder. For them the dark Days of Winter spell months of emotional gloom and doom often accompanied by lethargy and an uncontrollable craving for carbohydrates resulting in weight gain that makes them feel even worse. Through studies of Many hundreds of people with sad researchers Are slowly coming to understand Why some people who live in temperate and Polar zones sink to such emotional lows during Winter s truncated Days. The two physician scientist who did the original work on the relationship of Light to Winter depression or. Alfred j. Leywand or. Norman e. Rosenthal now hold distinct but related theories about its cause which in turn have influenced their approaches to treatment. Lewy now at the Oregon health  in Portland and his colleagues say that the biological clocks of people with sad undergo what scientists Call a phase disturbance As the nights grow longer in fall. Instead of bouncing out of bed at about the same time each morning All year Long these people tend to synchronize their Normal time of Awakening with the delayed Dawn of late fall and Winter. If they had their druthers they would sleep each morning until the Sun was shining brightly then stay up lat a at night. Lewy has found in a few patients that when they Are allowed to go to bed later and awaken later so their sleep schedule coincides with their internal rhythms their pervasive Winter depression lifts. But most people s schedules do not permit a late bedtime and delayed Awakening and the need to get up in Winter at the same time they arise in summer puts people with sad out of step with their internal rhythms All Winter Long. A accordingly Lewy prescribes a therapeutic dose of High intensity Light in the Early morning to Force the patients biorhythms Back on a socially desirable schedule. The Light in effect resets their biological clocks by making their brains think it is Broad Daylight when it really is barely Dawn. The new setting also enables them to Settle Down for the night earlier than they would if allowed to follow their natural rhythms. Lewy has also been investigating the role that a hormone called melatonin can play in countering Winter depression. Melatonin is produced by the pineal gland a pea sized Structure tucked underneath the brain. The hormone has a Strong diurnal rhythm re it is released Only at night and its production shuts Down when Daylight reaches the eyes and is perceived by the brain. A Lewy and others have already used melatonin pills to Speed the adjustment of people with Jet lag. By controlling the timing of melatonin administration it can be used to set the internal clock Back or ahead Lewy said. For example if melatonin is administered during the afternoon it should cause a person s biological clock to think that night has already fallen. That should move the internal clock ahead so that by the time the person has to get up in the morning the body s rhythms would signal that morning had come even though it was still dark outside. Rosenthal who directs Light therapy studies in Bethesda md., has been focusing on the role of another substance a neurotransmitter in the brain called serotonin. The part of the brain that is thought to be a key component of the body s clock the Supra Miasmatic nuclei Quot is heavily endowed with nerve cells Rich in serotonin Quot he explained. This brain Region shows seasonal variations in serotonin concentrations with Levels lowest during the Winter months he said. Prozac among other drugs increases the Levels of serotonin. Then there is the role of carbohydrate cravings which Rosenthal speculates is Quot a form of self medication Quot because foods High in starches and sugars increase the entry into the brain of tryptophan the Parent chemical of serotonin. He said that even though Quot High carbohydrate foods ordinarily make people feel sleepy patients with Winter depression Are activated by carbohydrates instead of being  subject High tech goes after the common Coldby Lawrence a Altman the new York time medical researchers have brought out one of their heaviest weapons to study one of the most trivial but annoying health problems. Using the cat scanner to study the common cold they came up with some surprising findings that they Hope will Lead to better ways to. Counter the symptoms of sneezing coughing sore Throat and stuffed head. Common colds affect the sinuses As much As the nasal passages researchers at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville concluded from cat scan studies of volunteers. The new findings Challenge Many assumptions underlying current therapy. Many common Over the counter remedies Are intended to relieve nasal and Throat symptoms. But the head of the research team or. Jack m. Gwaltney jr., said in an interview Quot just putting in some nose drops May not be attacking a major part of the  in developing new therapies for the common cold Gwaltney said researchers need to find ways to Drain thick secretions from the sinus cavities As Well As from the nasal passages. Doctors had Long assumed that the common cold was largely confined to the nasal passages and the Throat. But because they lacked proof Gwaltney steam undertook the new study and turned to cat scans for a More precise determination of How the common cold affected All the upper airways. Cat computerized Axial tomography scans were chosen because they provide clearer detail of the sinuses than the other common Type of scan the Fri or magnetic resonance imaging Gwaltney said. Most of the 31 people who were Given the cat scans were students or employees at the University of Virginia who were picked from 356 people who responded to the researchers advertisements. Quot of course everyone knows that sinusitis is associated with colds but the general impression has been that sinusitis is a complication of the cold a Gwaltney said Quot what this study showed is that viral sinusitis is part of the cold almost an integral part of the disease Quot not a secondary infection caused by bacteria. Quot to find sinusitis in a few people with colds would not have been surprising but to find it in More than 87 percent really was surprising Quot said Gwaltney who has studied the common cold for Many years. Gwaltney said his findings did Quot not mean you do cat scans on people with colds1 because this was strictly a research  he said participants were advised in Advance that they would be exposed to a Small amount of radiation from the cat scans equivalent to Standard sinus a rays. Colds and sinusitis a matched pair wednesday january 19, 1994 the stars and stripes 17