Coping with the Winter Blues

Winter officially starts on December 21st, but for me, it begins much earlier. My winter starts when the sun begins setting earlier, around 6, 5, or even 4 pm, because I work for a living. It's the dwindling daylight hours, rather than the cold, that determines when winter begins for me. That’s because I associate winter more with the scarcity of sunlight than with chilly temperatures. Scarcity of sunlight is a serious issue. Cold weather is fine. The cold is healthy for you in fact.

In addition it allows people a chance to wear charming clothes with layers instead of the terrible t-shirts with sneakers aesthetic of the summer.

But Sunlight? That is important. We need that. The lack of sunlight is detrimental.

Step back for a minute and think about it. The modern white-collar worker, is probably the most sun-starved human in history's bleak winter chapters. Think about it. Back in ancient and medieval times—life was an outdoor experience, whether you were grinding it out in the fields or hustling in the bustling streets. Sunlight was the boss, dictating when to toil and when to kick back, whether you were a dirt-under-the-nails farmer or a smooth-talking merchant.

But today? That’s a different story.

Most modern workers shuffle into their cubicles, these modern-day tombs, maybe catching a glimpse of daylight in the daytime or at lunch—if they're lucky. This chronic starvation from natural light, it's like a slow poison during the winter months. And what's freakishly bizarre? We just shrug it off. In this age of obsessing over every calorie and Fitbit step, we're blissfully blind to the most glaring void in our existence: sunlight. It's the elephant in the room

A History of Winter

Humans carry an innate yearning for the caress of heat. Just look at the global population distribution – it's a loud, unequivocal vote for warmth over cold. People aren't flocking to retire in the icy embrace of Canada or Norway; they're chasing the sun southward, toward balmy breezes and endless summers. Winter, with its frosty fingers and howling winds, has always been a brutal adversary. We can even see it in the poetry of Hesiod over 2,000 years ago.

Since antiquity, artists have been rendering landscapes, a tradition practiced by the Greeks and Romans with their wall paintings of landscapes and gardens. Yet, for eons, the idea that winter's icy clasp could possess any form of beauty was almost laughable. Snow, ice, glaciers – these weren't symbols of enchantment but icons of life's ruthless, unforgiving nature. The very thought of romanticizing winter was as foreign as painting warmth in a block of ice. It wasn't until the fifteenth century that artists began to capture the winter season in their work. Throughout history, winter wasn't seen as a romantic backdrop, but as a brutal, unforgiving time.

The Book "Winterlust" paints a raw, unvarnished picture of human evolution's latest triumph: the domestication of winter. It's a tale of transformation, where today's comforts brutally overshadow the crude, almost barbaric, survival tactics of ancient times. We've not just tamed winter; we've turned it on its head. The book throws a spotlight on this stark contrast, showcasing our journey from mere endurance to mastery.

But there's more – a burgeoning culture of winter recreation, a phenomenon as wild as it is calculated. Skiing, snowboarding, ice skating – activities that once would've been seen as the dalliances of the mad are now badges of honor, symbols of luxury and leisure. "Winterlust" delves into this cultural metamorphosis, where the season of death and dormancy transforms into a playground for the daring. This isn't just adaptation; it's a full-blown revolution. Winter, once humanity's fierce adversary, now serves as a backdrop for some of our most exhilarating escapades.

But we’ve gone backward recently. We need to find a solution to the sunlight problem.

In This Newsletter

1) Vitamin D Supplements: New research on Vitamin D is coming out. It does not do what we think it does. Popping a pill doesn’t replace the sun.

2) Low-Sunlight Behaviors: You can begin to notice some strange things happening in consumer habits, and also in behaviors during modern times because of our low sunlight life in the winter. Arguably, these changes are much more pronounced in modern times than in previous eras because they received more sunlight.

3) Improving our Winter Life: Our ancestors had to figure out ways to stay warm in the winter. They did not have the issue of sunlight deprivation. We do, though. So what can we do alleviate this issue?

Vitamin D Pills Cannot Replace the Sun

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