Grab your shaft: it’s shower time

What many people casually dismiss as “the winter blues” is actually caused by a biochemical imbalance in the hypothalamus part of the brain due to the shortening of daylight hours and the lack of sunlight in winter. Such imbalances can result in lack of motivation and energy, eventually leading to poor academic, and athletic performance. Katy

Kidell, sophomore, major undeclared, said“Inever believed in seasonal depression until I was affected by it in high school.

I stopped sleeping, I stopped eating, and was unable to fully function until the weather improved.” Thinking back, she added, “The continouse cold and dark of winter just killed me.”

Kidell has even lost weight from the disrupted eating patterns she suffered during poor seasons. For many people SAD is a seriously disabling illness, preventing them from functioning normally without continuous medical treatment. For others, it is a mild but uncomfortable condition causing minor depression but not severe suffering. Statistics show that winter depression becomes increasingly more common the farther people live north or south of the equator. Episodes of winter depression also tend to be longer and more severe at higher latitudes.

Seasonal Affective Disorder is believed to be caused by too little sunlight, which causes the body’s time clock to go out of sync, thus upsetting the body’s routine. This upset even affects certain hormonal levels in the body causing mood swings and other emotional instabilities. The symptoms of SAD are depression, sadness, lethargy, fatigue, excessive sleeping, difficulty getting up in the morning, loss of appetite or increased eating of carbohydrates, increase in weight, decrease in weight, decreased activity and socializa- tion, and ir ritability. Even though it seems impossible to treat a disorder resulting from the weather, there is treatment available for those who suffer the effects of S.A.D.. Treatment includes UV Light therapy which is administered by a 10,000-lux light box, which contains white fluorescent light tubes covered with a plastic screen that blocks ultraviolet rays. Other methods of treatment include medicating with anti-depresents prescribed with certain specific needs kept in mind. Counceling is also available, especially psychotherapy and cognitive therapy. There are also new forms of Electroconvulsive therapy available using a finely controlled electrical discharge to induce seizure-like activity in the brain helping ease S.A.D.’s negative side effects.

With winter depression soon behind us, many students at Cabrini are looking past their winter sadness. Taylor Hicks, junior liberal arts major, said, “In the summertime I feel untouchable. It’s like nothing could go wrong because the sun is shining.” Although many share this feeling, Seasonal affective disorder can even occur in the summer, and is known as “summer depression”. Although this disorder is much less common than S.A.D., its side effects can be just as devastating to a person’s lifestyle. As more students become aware of seasonal depression, they will be able to acknowledge and control the negative effects of S.A.D. before letting poor weather get the best of them.

For information or treatment for S.A.D. or seasonal depression, contact your doctor.

JOHN HOLLOWAY GUEST WRITER JMH725@CABRINI EDU

Ar med and dangerous, the Cabrini men’s lacrosse team guards their puny field, hurling rubber balls at cars and students trying to drive or walk by. After having a strenuous night of drinking and hanging out in the locker room, these guys try to unwind in their jock straps, grab their shafts, and toss the ball around for a while. By a matter of coincidence, an unlucky student decided to drive out one of the two exits on campus that happens to look over the f ield-hockey field, currently being used by the men’s lacrosse team. Had that student known the men’s lacrosse team had just realized how pointless their insignificant lives were, he may have chosen the main exit rather than the back. Bam—one ball hits the sport utility vehicle. Seconds later, a second ball barely misses him as he stops at the stop sign outside of Grace Hall.

When the student stopped on the fringe of the field to inquire about the attempt at his life, the men’s lacrosse team responded with laughs and four-letter words currently banned by the FCC. “Maybe you shouldn’t drive by when we practice,” a worn out athlete yells after his long walk from the Dixon Center.

I’m sor ry sir, I thought that large, metal fence was enough to block the insane madmen from ripping shots 40 feet off target.

But that obviously wasn’t meant for overthrown shots; the fence is meant to block the animals. Now I am insulting defenseless animals—I meant to say lunatics.

Typically I would apologize to the team for insulting them, but luckily the only member of the team that knows we have a school paper is Matt Campbell, and he is cool.

Having attended Cabrini for the past four years, I have interacted with most of the departments and clubs on campus in some way or another. Fortunately, I never had the pleasure of mingling, or shall I say grumbling, with the lacrosse heads. For some reason, I’m not down with swinging big sticks around with a bunch of guys and then showering together afterwards. I guess we have different interests.

I’m tired of these dubious ruffians thinking they can lay down the biz. They’re no more than a bunch of hacks, and can they croon? If there was any talent on the men’s lacrosse team, they wouldn’t be throwing balls over 20 foot fences and hitting cars— they might actually hit the net. Let’s face it, our lacrosse team is made up of a bunch of reject jocks who rode the bench in high school and are trying to re-live their glory days in a college only known to those who attend it. Division III teams are made up of the worst of the worst when it comes to men’s lacrosse. With a 7-4 record, these hotheads aren’t even the best of the worst. Their rank falls in between bad and really bad, and that isn’t very good.