Hacking Your Health
Hacking Your Health Podcast with Ben Canning and Dave Kennedy - Two guys setting out to hack body, mind, business and beyond. We are here to provide a single source, bullshit free guide to understanding your body and how you can live better, for longer.
Hacking Your Health
Episode 156: Understanding and Managing SAD: Seasonal Affective Disorder
Have you ever wondered why the colder months seem to cast a shadow over your mood and energy levels? Join us on this episode of the Hacking Health Podcast as we unravel the mystery of Seasonal Affective Disorder and its pervasive effects. We kick off with a personal catch-up, sharing the joy of a much-needed break from our hectic schedules and celebrating fitness triumphs. We honor our incredible colleagues who inspire us by persevering with their wellness routines amidst life's hurdles, whether they are new parents or facing surgery.
As we transition into the heart of our discussion, we explore the profound impact of shorter days and longer nights on mental health, particularly for those in regions like Ohio, where seasonal changes are pronounced. We tackle the symptoms of SAD, such as oversleeping and lack of energy, and question the continued relevance of daylight saving time, which further complicates our biological clocks. Listen in as we share daily strategies that can help alleviate these symptoms and discuss the critical role of vitamin D as not just a vitamin but an essential hormone for our well-being.
Finally, we focus on maintaining mental and physical health throughout the winter. Discover how aligning your fitness goals with the season can boost your mood and motivation. We suggest practical approaches, such as altering your routine to accommodate the colder weather, increasing social activities, and utilizing tools like sauna sessions and nutritional supplements for health optimization. This episode is your guide to keeping a positive mindset and progressing toward your wellness goals, no matter how frosty the world outside becomes.
Check out Overclock and Protein Protocol here
Want to know more about coaching? Book a call with Ben here
Check out Overclock and Protein Protocol here
Want to know more about coaching? Book a call with Ben here
Where to find us
We Hack Health: Twitter
We Hack Health: Instagram
We Hack Health: Discord
yo, hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to hacking health podcast. I'm your host, ben camming, with dave kennedy. Hopefully that guild gets dill's approval. I think I keep fucking it up and I give them like an actually a headache every single week. He keeps telling me of what's even like did you do the thing? I'm like, yeah, I've done that, he was fucked it up, but anyway, hopefully that's it. What's up, dude?
Speaker 2:hey, what's up, man, how you doing? Good day, good to hear from you, good to see you and, uh, good to be here yeah, well, what's the story?
Speaker 1:how are you?
Speaker 2:things are good. Things are great, actually. Uh, I am not traveling this week for the first time, I think, in two months, so that's a positive and I'm traveling next week. I have only two more travel trips left, so I am looking forward to not traveling again for quite a long time. I am done with travel, but my training has been good. I, you know, hit a six minute mile, which is great, and I'm not saying I hit it hit it at.
Speaker 1:Okay for anybody who was following along from last week, dave did submit his check-in, so he did a good job. I'm sure as shit I know he's going to submit it today because he thinks there's a potential he's going to get more calories from today thanks, come on.
Speaker 2:I thought we agreed upon this.
Speaker 1:I thought we were like pretty, things can come up, things can change, you never know well, let's hope.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm hoping, I'm hoping for more calories, that's for darn sure.
Speaker 1:So tune in next week to find out. I want to give a quick shout out before we get into it to the people that I get to work with. It's funny, like just this week alone. So monica was over for a couple of days. I think she had absolute fear of missing out, that she wasn't able to make it to the event.
Speaker 1:Um, she literally had a baby four weeks before the event and thought it might be a bit too soon. But she was over yesterday or the past couple of days for the baby and she was here on monday and I had to run up and take the monday call with the group number one. She was on the call so she logged in on her phone number two. She was getting her training session in with an eight-week baby attached to her. So you know she's here in terms of getting the workout in. Um and another, I had a call earlier on with uh, with jason who's going in for surgery on his hand, and the reason that we had the call was he was like I need to work out what we can still do if I can't use one of my hands. So, like everybody's getting to work in regardless of what's going on and I just, I'm very appreciative of the people that I get to work with in those situations yeah, it's, it's.
Speaker 2:You know, everybody has different situations that you know they go through throughout their lives, whether it's having a new baby or, you know, a lot of travel or trips, or stress and not stress. Uh, good times, bad times, and you get to see all of them, which is which is crazy.
Speaker 1:Right, I didn't need to make excuses and not do the thing, but everybody's like they're actively trying to find a way of what they can do rather than making the excuses, which is kills, fuck for me yeah, that's awesome, it's awesome man.
Speaker 1:Right, we want to get into it today. Today, as promised, we're going to talk about seasonal affective disorder, and I think it's timely because generally I find this comes around whenever the clocks change and the evenings or the days get shorter, the evenings get darker, quicker. So the clocks changed here last weekend and I'm pretty sure they change over there this weekend. So I'm an hour behind our usual, I'm an hour ahead of our usual time, but you're at the regular time, so they'll change this week.
Speaker 1:As Dave said, there is going to be a lot of chat about vitamin d, but I think we should talk about what seasonal affective disorder is. Essentially, it is a type of depression that is based around the seasons, generally found in fall or winter. So essentially, that mood that you find yourself in every time that the days get shorter, the weather gets worse and the there is less light in the day, is generally where the the impact comes. And today we want to sort of unpack that a little bit and talk a little bit about ways that but what I use with clients specifically, and things that I do myself to help overcome that sort of mood, that sort of overhangs for the winter months yeah, I, I, uh, I can definitely relate to this, uh, being in Ohio, you definitely get the seasons.
Speaker 2:You definitely get all seasons here.
Speaker 2:It's very, very cold, you don't want to go outside, the sun barely comes out, it's overcast all the time, you don't get a lot of light, and so there's a lot of things that I've been able to accomplish, that I do as well during these seasons, that we'll talk about here through the podcast, that I think are important to you things, protocols, that you can add to your daily routines, and things that you can do just to kind of keep mind of it, even if you're starting to feel this way. Things you can do to kind, of course, course correct and and, uh, you know, hopefully get out of it pretty quickly yeah, and I think that the thing, a couple things I want to talk about.
Speaker 1:Number one like some, some statistics around it and some, I guess, recognizable symptoms that will, in a sense, probably give you a little bit of comfort that it's not like anything beyond, something that you can control a little bit more. With what we're going to talk about today and after a little bit of research over the past couple of days, it turns out that seasonal affective disorder affects around 70, 50 to 70 percent of the us population for up to 40 of the year, which is a fucking lot like a lot of the year. So if there's anything that we can do to sort of alleviate those, um, obviously it's going to be beneficial for you. As you know, anybody who suffers generally people who suffer can see a reduction in 20 of your productivity. So you know, those days you just don't want to do shit.
Speaker 1:There is a reason for that and depending where on where in the world, obviously, depending even where you are in the world or where you are in the United States, the impacts and the symptoms are going to be worse. Obviously, if you're in a state that gets more sun, brilliant, perfect, I mean, like I said, I was in the sun a couple of weeks ago and it was absolutely ideal, but you definitely. I can't imagine there's much sun going on and obviously, coming into the winter months it's going to be much colder on. On your end. Um, symptoms and I find this myself and this is maybe just me adjusting to the hour changes over sleeping, so, like in the mornings usually I get up at 5 am without any problem struggling to get up in the morning, um changes in appetite and the things that you want to eat, and then just tireless and low energy throughout the day can relate oh yeah, all right, sorry I.
Speaker 2:I thought you were going through different components and then I got caught off guard. Sorry, I was looking up other notes, by the way, while we're doing this.
Speaker 1:That's the reason why, but but the next thing's new, so I'll give you the credit for that. So for anybody who I mean you can't see what we're looking at, I have started to create notes and I've shared the file with dave, so he's probably just catching up on what the fuck's going on today, which is absolutely fine, which is more than we have done, rather than just hitting record and absolutely weighing it.
Speaker 2:Yes no, um, listen, I I can definitely feel the differences, uh, especially like when you start looking at. So we have four seasons, right, you know, we have our, our fall, our winter, um, you know, our, our spring and our summers. Uh, here and there they range in in different types of of capacities. I know that when I, when I'm switching between hot and cold, so between the fall and spring timeframes, a lot of times people get sick during those periods of time because of the different climate changes. They feel run down. Plus, you also have the stupid thing that we have, which is the daylight savings time, which needs to be completely removed in all capacity.
Speaker 1:It's the dumbest thing ever no-transcript bit of this chat going on the 555 club today, because obviously sean keeps his times in the uk, because that's the majority of customers, right. I keep my time in eastern standard time because it's easier for me to change it on my end and a few people that I need to change on this side. But I thought about daylight. It's like what are we saving daylights? Like what are we saving it for or from? Like I don't I?
Speaker 2:I mean I get it but like I feel like it needs to be abolished what they're trying to do is give you more sunlight during certain periods of the season. Right, and, and I understand that. However, like losing an hour of sleep, you know, every year, is detrimental to our health period. Like, like there's studies that show that even just an hour of sleep is detrimental to our health, and and then you have to reacclimate to those specific times. You feel sluggish. It's not worth it, it's just not worth it. So, first of all, let's just get rid of daylight savings times period.
Speaker 1:We're saying we're starting to get rid of daylight savings. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Second, in the winter time frames there's things that happen. One, our blood gets thicker in the winter timeframes and you know cause? We're? We're adjusting to the, the climate, temperatures and things like that, but we don't want to go outside, um, because it's cold outside, right, you know, you get that brisk, you know coldness that's coming towards you, not a lot of sunlight, and you start to get, you know, basically tucked away in your own homes.
Speaker 2:You get used to kind of the winter timeframes. You you will have, you know, some seasons, obviously around Thanksgiving and Christmas, but after Christmas there really isn't a lot of big holiday get-togethers and things like that. So you're more acclimated to being home, away from other people, socially less active in many cases, and so you can definitely start to get a lot of that like feeling sluggish, fatigued, not wanting to do as much, being less motivated, feeling more like you don't have to accomplish as much and not being as driven as you typically are during the summertime frames. And that's why, you know, if you look at, you know a lot of vacations and things like that. People plan summer vacations most of the time because that's when they feel the most, you know, energetic of what they're doing. Winter vacations aren't as common, so for those types of situations I definitely notice a difference and so I start to do some things differently. Should I start going into what I do differently? Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:So some of the things that have been shown to really help out with seasonal affective disorders.
Speaker 2:One is going out and getting a nice walk in Walks outside, bundling up and just getting a nice brisk walk, moving the body being outside in general.
Speaker 2:There's a park that I go to that's pretty close to my house, that has a lake, and I just do quick walks, and I do more so in the wintertime than I do in the summertime because I enjoy the outside, the calmness, how it looks with the snow and everything else, and so for me, going outside and just getting a quick 30-minute, 45-minute walk is fantastic. Second, I up my dosages of vitamin D, so typically during the summer times I'm at 5,000 IU, with K2 as well, so vitamin D plus K2 for better absorption, and I'm at 5,000 IU a day, and I switched to 10,000 during the winter time frames because I know that I'm not going to get as much sunlight, um, as I typically would anyone any time else I also let's talk about vitamin d, because we're just saying that I feel like there's some notes that we need to make on vitamin d, so I know that you prefer to talk about the supplements.
Speaker 1:I know that you have been excited to talk a little bit more about supplements. So, in terms of vitamin d, what is vitamin d?
Speaker 2:where do we get it from and then why do you increase it during the yeah, vitamin D is honestly probably one of the most important vitamins that are out there. It's actually not a vitamin, it's a hormone. It impacts something like 78% to 90% of our DNA structure. It's absolutely needed for everything from our cardiovascular health to your brain development to bone density, to you name it. It's like used for like everything, but it's also what helps generate, you know, our feel good hormones and you know typically you get that through sunlight. So sunlight will hit your skin and you absorb vitamin D through your skin, which then is used, you know, obviously for for production of energy and things like that in your body and so for for most of us. You know we are more inside, you know we're more inside buildings covered, things like that. We don't typically get as much vitamin D as possible, and if you actually look at some of the studies that are coming out now around COVID, people that were vitamin D deficient, which is a large percentage of the population, had much more severe reactions to COVID and long-term COVID because of that, specifically, because of that specifically. So vitamin D provides such a baseline for our immune system, for how healthy we are, how we feel, our general mood, activity, motivation All of those things come directly from vitamin D. It's probably one of the most staple supplements.
Speaker 2:Like, if anybody asks me, like, what are my top five supplements, you know it's gonna be creatine, it's gonna be whey protein, it's gonna be caffeine, it's gonna be omega-3 fatty acids and it's going to be vitamin D. And if I throw a sixth one in there, it'd be magnesium. So those six things to me are the most important. Magnesium 65% reduction in cancer alone, just with magnesium, along with all the cardiovascular brain development, everything else that goes along with that. Omega-3 fatty acids massive reduction in all-cause mortality, including cardiovascular risk. Um, helps with brain development. The biggest stat with omega-3s that always just keeps mind-blowing me is that if you take a person that smokes and takes vitamin d, I'm sorry. If you take a person that smokes and takes omega-3 fatty acids and you take a person that doesn't smoke and doesn't take omega-3 fatty acids, statistically the person that smokes and takes fatty acids will live longer. Like that should be a good indication.
Speaker 1:Like, hey, we should probably take that we're not going to start taking vitamin D and start smoking. We're just showing the contrast of the two things, I think. On the vitamin D, you mentioned something about the immune system and I've noticed a lot of people in their check-ins on the weekly calls are getting sick at the minute, and then one of the biggest things that you can do, apart from taking your regular fresh ginger shots that everybody knows it's my first recommendation whenever someone says that they're not feeling well is vitamin D. It supports your immune system beyond anything that we can comprehend. The other thing that you mentioned there is about, obviously, brain health and you mentioned the sort of feel good hormones, the serotonin levels and things like that, like the impact that vitamin d has on that and the lack that we then get whenever we're not getting it from sunlight we have to get it from other places.
Speaker 1:The research that I did anywhere of an increase between a thousand two thousand I used between the summer months and the winter months is going to be beneficial to help sort of regulate that as much as possible. It doesn't necessarily always need to come from food and you know both of us can agree that the best way to look at it is actually to get your bloods taken and see sort of where your levels are with that. But beyond doing that, like I would recommend vitamin d to absolutely everybody. So ways that you can get it, beyond just supplementing with it.
Speaker 1:Obviously sunlight, to some extent, if you can, um, which is obviously limited during the winter months, foods that are high in vitamin d, um that will help. Obviously, things that make sense, like um avocados, fatty foods you mentioned. There are omegas you can get like from like oily fishes, like salmon and tuna and things like that. So there's other ways you can get it so you can increase those foods in the winter months as well, as well as supplements. Essentially, to an extent, the more that you can get a vitamin d, the better yeah, I'm a huge, huge fan.
Speaker 2:I can't emphasize that enough. So vitamin D is a big one. What I also increase in is saunas. So my sauna usage I go up quite a bit. Sauna releases beta endorphins, which is kind of like your feel-good hormone and serotonin, and those are really good for feeling amazing throughout the day.
Speaker 2:I recommend that for summertime and wintertime, but you know it's nice in the. In the wintertime you're cold. You hop in a sauna, you're nice and you know nice and warm as you get out of it and you're warm for quite a bit of time afterwards. So, um, heavily, heavily big fan If you have access to a sauna. Um, hitting that up and um there's uh, dr Rhonda Patrick just had something recently and I'll have to find the exact stats on it, but it was something like if you do a sauna one to three times a week, you decrease your cardiovascular risk by 35%.
Speaker 2:If you do it five to six times a week, it's like 70% reduction in cardiovascular risk. So I mean there's some major benefits of sauna, amongst other things, but it's one of those things where I'm a huge fan of sauna and using sauna more often. I actually just did a sauna today. Uh, plan on doing it more, more often, trying to become more of a regular staple. I kind of fell off of it for a little bit, uh, during the during the summertime, but definitely getting right back into it, um, as I go through in the wintertime yeah, I've actually noticed.
Speaker 1:Um, so I don't know if the brand's over there, but there's a brand over here that does cold plunges. I'm not saying you're a cold plunge, but they've started to do like a one-person sauna and I'm thinking about having one downstairs in the gym and potentially having one at the house. So that's cool. To get that, be able to get that in or, if you have access to it at the gym, kind of sort of scheduled time to to get that in will be will be hugely beneficial. One note on serotonin and I know you don't like them so you don't have to give a shit for this, but avocados in terms of All right guys, we're wrapping up this podcast here.
Speaker 1:Basically, what I'm saying is you need to eat an avocado in a cold plunge and you'll be immune to absolutely everything. No, but the avocado. And it's funny because I went out for breakfast this morning with Monica before she left for the airport and the place that I usually go to. They bring in the avocado seasonally and it pisses me off because they take it out. I have one last week and they don't do it in the menu anymore and they said I can fucking go to the shop and get one right now. I know you can get them. This is the time that everybody needs them, so bring the avocados back.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I would recommend and I've definitely recommended this to you before is light therapy. So probably in line with the sauna in some way shape or form. But the light therapy, um, one of the biggest impacts on seasonal affective disorder and your sort of mood is the impact that this sort of change in times, in the darker days and nights, have on your circadian rhythm and for me, like I said, the mornings and sort of trying to keep that as stable as possible. Um, I think called a sad lamp, which is definitely the worst name for a product ever I got. Who wants to buy a sad lamp right now? Yeah, so.
Speaker 1:So essentially, the goal of of the Saddle Amp, or the idea, is, if you get it, I think it's like 10,000 lux, whatever that is in terms of like the actual light capacity.
Speaker 1:The recommendation is to use it for 20 to 30 minutes per day, first thing in the morning, about an hour before between waking up and an hour, to use it then for about 20 to 30 minutes. What I do is have it at like a 45 degree angle, about two feet away from me, and that idea of that is to almost like trick your body into that is natural sunlight in some way, shape or form, and that sort of allows you to regulate your circadian rhythm whenever you know it's darker in the mornings, it's darker in the evenings. So it's like trying to maintain that morning schedule, that morning routine, as much as possible, and that's something that I have used probably for the past I'm not going to say about seven years. I would imagine Colin was the person that recommended me and he coached me about seven years ago. So I'm getting a sad lamp and they're not like you pick one up on Amazon for about $30.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually have two sad lamps. I have one at the office and I have one in my gym. So in the mornings when I go downstairs to go lift in the gym, I turn the sand lamp on and I'm looking at it. You know, in between reps and sets I actually noticed a pretty substantial increase in energy in the mornings because of that, because it's really kickstarting your thing and Huberman is a huge, huge, huge, huge fan of direct light exposure in the morning to really kick off and start your, your skating rhythm.
Speaker 2:It makes a lot of sense because, you know, if you think about it, you know, when we didn't have a ton of shelter and things like that, or we were waking up in a tent or a cot or a little wooden structure that we built, we'd go right outside and see light letting us know, hey, it's time to start the day. So our bodies became acclimated to that and obviously at night time for us to go to sleep, and so by using the sad lamps and things like that, especially in lieu of when there's not a lot of light around in the locations that you're at, can really help boost your energy in the morning through the day and then, you know, obviously help you sleep better at night because your security room is right on track for what it should be, from when you go to sleep and when you wake up to when you go back to bed again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think I mean many, many podcasts ago with Andrew when he talks about the most important thing that you can do to sort of maintain your sleep schedule is maintain your wake time, but not only that, like the impact of using light therapy in the mornings and the impact that that has on pretty much everything that happens after that throughout the day, so your energy levels throughout the day and for anybody who has who sort of has used the um, the rise sleep app and it sort of tells you like when you will peak in energy and sort of when you'll have a slump and things like that. So maintaining that as much as possible and sort of taking away from the fact that there's not much sunlight and there is other ways that you can sort of trick your body into to follow in that same sort of pattern that you're used to, will hopefully have a an impact on the seasonal affective disorder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just to clarify what. To clarify what I talked about with Rhonda Patrick and the sauna. I found the tweet. So people that use a sauna two to three times a week have a 24% lower risk of hypertension. People that use a sauna four to seven times a week have a 46% lower risk of hypertension. On top of that, a single sauna session lowers blood pressure. So again, benefits upon benefits upon benefits on sauna usage as you go through. So again, benefits upon benefits upon benefits on sauna usage as you go through.
Speaker 2:So another one that I'm a big fan of is exercise. So exercise, obviously big staple to what we talked about in this podcast. But exercise has a massive impact on you know seasonal moods and what you're going through from from those specific things. So you know, when you look at at seasonal affective disorder, it's one of those things where you know moving around, being more social with people, so being able to interact with people in person, you know whether that's. You know your kids, your spouse, your significant other, your partner, friends and family having get togethers, those types of things dinners at your house also have been shown to really kind of, you know, negate a lot of the impact from the seasonal activities that are out there, keep energy levels up and then, but but for most importantly, moving your body around getting exercise done.
Speaker 1:Uh, really has a major impact on on making sure that you have the right, adequate levels of energy and don't feel the type of of impact of you know, the seasonal affective disorders that you see yeah, and I think to your point about you know, get out and walk around the lake, like it's not necessarily that you're getting a lot of sunlight, you are outdoors and just even the benefit of being outdoors. It's much easier during the winter months to not go out because it's cold and it's miserable and you don't want to. So getting out and actually making a conscious effort to do so, and to your point of like, okay, yes, we're coming into the winter months, but also it's going to be thanksgiving, it's going to be christmas there's things that people are looking forward to. So like, generally, fine, it's.
Speaker 1:It's the sort of other side of the start of the other side of the holidays and the start of the new year, when it really becomes prominent that it's okay, right. I don't really feel like I have anything to look forward to. Summer feels like a fucking lifetime away. All the good shit and winters already happened. So it's like that's when it really becomes a potential problem. You mean to yourself.
Speaker 2:I did mean myself. I completely agree. And you know, for me, when I look at what we're talking about here, I almost have like different routines for different types of parts of the year, like, for example, today we're hopefully starting my surplus, which means I get to eat a lot more. But this is time perfectly around the holiday timeframes, isn't it? You know, right around Thanksgiving and Christmas, where you know I'm going to be enjoying food with family and I'm okay, you know, going over calories a bit while I'm trying to build more muscle mass and to get bigger, for, you know, a summer, you know deficit and cut, and so you know I plan a lot of these things differently. And what's interesting is more calories for me equates to more energy, you know, equates to more muscle mass, which creates more strength, which equates to me feeling better, which also equates to, on top of it, you know, coupling up vitamin D and moving out more, doing sauna more. You know being more interactive with folks. You know having get togethers and people coming over and just drinking with some buddies, like all those things amplify and really negate a lot of these problems and it's all just habits that you start to build, you know, based on, you know the seasonal activities a lot of times, you know, especially when you start looking at, like right now, when we start getting into the November timeframe, right this is kind of like the, where things start to ramp down a bit and you start to enjoy some time with your families and you may be going to visit some of them. You know sharing lots of good foods and you know those types of things can be really beneficial for your overall mental health, but also just regular routines that you can incorporate to make sure that you don't really you know, necessarily have a lot of these.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you, last year, obviously COVID was a whole shit show in general. Obviously COVID was a whole shit show in general. But when you look at last year specifically, it was probably one of the best winters that I've had from a positivity performance, you know, gains in the gym, but also how I felt in general, because I was able to implement a lot of these protocols to really help me out through the winter times that I didn't really think were possible. And I'll tell you, there's a number of winters I can remember just feeling totally down, know, feeling like I didn't have a lot of motivation, just always just tired, didn't really care about it, just by implementing small little, tiny things really shaped out to make it, you know, completely tolerable and even better, honestly, than sometimes in the summer yeah and I think it coming in the other times it's easy to allow everything to fall off because there's a lot more potential excuses in terms of, you know, get togetethers and whatever else.
Speaker 1:And actually just had a call with nick and we were sort of planning out what we want to achieve in the next few phases and you know we both agreed that yes, we're in a position that we do still have some body fat that we want to, that we want to lose, but from a me managing his expectations and him managing my expectations, we both agreed to sort of move into not necessarily a surplus, but more of a performance-based phase where there are more calories available so that he doesn't have to like dodge social events that are going to have that sort of feel-good factor in terms of the things that he's doing throughout the summer or throughout the winter and whatever else, but it allows him to have that feel-good factor of performance in the gym, not feel like he's missing out of stuff in the social events and then having to deal with the you know everything that comes on top of what we're talking about with the seasonal affective disorder and it's just understanding that there are different times, that you can do different things and mapping out the different phases that are going to be beneficial to what's actually happening in in these actual seasons of the year.
Speaker 1:So, while, yes, you can give it the I can dig deep and whatever else, but if you look at the things that you can't control, we can't control what the weather's going to do, we can't control what the seasons are going to do, but we can control what our priorities are at those times and there are definitely things that we can do to sort of make ourselves feel better.
Speaker 1:Daniel asked on Twitter. He says you know, with sunlight being such a huge source of dense source of dopamine, like what can we do to sort of not replace that but to sort of compensate whenever we're lacking in those things? So exactly what you're saying like it's moving into a surplus you know that there's going to be a lot of feel-good factor in terms of the gym. You're going to hit new prs and you're going to feel good about those things. Also, you're going to have a little bit more leeway with your calories to enjoy the social events and whatever else. So those things are going to give you the feel-good fact that you're control that aren't just, you know, moving into a deficit and sort of going through hard times whenever it's shitshow outside at the same time.
Speaker 2:Yep, it's all about like changing behavior patterns, just as we talk about on anything else that we do. You know in this podcast and you know for me. You know, when I say I use 5,000 IU and then 10,000 IU, that doesn't mean that that's a great dosage, just for you. Right, Be careful with how much you supplement. The types of dosages are small. See how you feel, Iterate and go up if you need to for some more.
Speaker 2:I just saw someone had shared with me a post. It has nothing to do with seasonal disorders. It was more so. Like, hey, I was 41.
Speaker 2:I was feeling like total crap and my doctor came out and told me you know, like you know, I've been going to my doctor, my PCP, for a long time and one of my buddies came to me and said, hey, you should go see a wellness doctor that specializes in like blood work, hormonal stuff, you know, hormonal balances and those types of things.
Speaker 2:And the doctor basically gave him a slew of things like um found out that he's deficient in vitamin d, found out he's deficient in thyroid and testosterone levels, his estrogen is too high, and he's like, honestly, he's like I don't know which one it was because you know I supplemented all of them at the same time.
Speaker 2:But he's like, I feel like amazing with the amount of energy that I have, and so you know, if you're starting to feel sluggish, there's probably something wrong, and I might say wrong. I mean, I'm not saying catastrophic, but little things that you can change to really try to optimize how you're feeling, your overall mood, and just simple things, and even just getting some blood work done in the winter time just to see how things are going from a micro and macro nutrition test. Get vitamin D testing done to see, hey, what's your vitamin D levels look like. Do I need to be supplementing more here to help out with some of the things that I'm dealing with? Maybe magnesium is a good option for you. So you know, again, we're not saying just supplement to supplement, but you know, during these periods of time, there's things that you can implement as far as protocols, like with the sad lamps and everything else. I mean my sad lamp's literally sitting right here. It's not going to move.
Speaker 1:We trust it. I can see it in your face. I believe it. There's my same name right there. Um, I think it's so people don't accept things for the way they are because and one of my favorite quotes is just because it's always been that way doesn't mean it always has to be that way. So, yes, okay, right, you maybe feel a certain way whenever it comes into the winter months, but try and work out why. Like, like you say, get blood work done and you know it. It may not be as big as you think it is and it may just be a case of supplementing with iron or vitamin D or maybe testosterone or whatever it is. So, like, don't just accept things for they are. Like, be be curious and try and work out why and, like you said, it could be the smallest thing to have the biggest change with you long term.
Speaker 2:That's pretty much that simple, easy podcast for things that you can do. I mean, this is what we're trying to get more towards is like down to the mean potatoes of what you actually can do to really help adjust certain things based on certain situations. Or you know what you're going through in life, or new research is coming out. So you know, today's podcast is really just to say hey, short and sweet, of what we can do to help you out during these periods of time and you know, always obviously ask us questions at Hacking your Health and WeHackHealth on social media, always happy to help out and answer questions as you go through it.
Speaker 1:Agree, I want to give two shout outs before we go. Number one is to my client, Scott, who has I'm sometimes reluctant to share wins that are around weight, but I don't think I can avoid this one.
Speaker 1:He has lost 40 pounds in the past 14 weeks, which is just an absolutely insane amount of that's amazing so credit to him and the work that he's put in and I want to give out a shout out, as we did last week, to the users of the hashtag we have helped um rich green for his absolute incredible reviews that he's been giving us, the video reviews that he's been doing and the work that he's been doing and the big lifts and I'm actually I'm gonna have a call with him here, I think next week, but just the shout-outs and the bits and pieces that he's done and just sort of sharing and even sort of enticing the rest of the community by asking questions and sort of get other people involved. It's a credit to him and the work and obviously beyond just us doing it on ourselves.
Speaker 2:And I will actually be seeing jeff uh later this week. So jeff's coming to cleveland, ohio, and I'm gonna go meet with him on friday. So I can't wait to get to get to see him and see his swollenness. From the last time I saw him, he's looking great.
Speaker 1:So nice, cool. Well, uh, that's it from us for today have a good one, everybody.
Speaker 2:Thanks for tuning in. Next week, same time, same place later.