Crypto News: Hello darkness, my old friend

Hi there, it's Cynthia in New York, where I've been lamenting the ever-shortening days. But first…

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It always hits me that first time I notice that it's dark in what was just the middle of the afternoon days before. I was playing soccer with my son a few weeks ago when I noticed it this year. I thought we had plenty of time to kick the ball around, but instead the shadows were already ominously long. It was, at most, 4 pm.

Earlier this year, the US Senate unanimously voted to stop the practice of turning the clocks back in the fall, though the bill has stalled in the House. There are a lot of reasons the idea is gaining steam. Changing the clocks can impact a person's sleep patterns for days or weeks. There's also this study from 2017, which showed that shorter daylight hours were linked to an 11% increase in depressive episodes.

There's even a name for mood disorders tied to the seasons, and it's a pretty apt one: SAD. Seasonal affective disorder is a diagnosis that affects around 5% of adults and can last some 40% of the year, according to the American Psychiatric Association.

A person with SAD has similar symptoms as someone with depression -- though there are a few distinctions. "The classic seasonal affective disorder is around November, a person has symptoms of major depression and it remits and resolves around April," says Ken Duckworth, a psychiatrist and chief medical officer of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Duckworth says there are other key symptoms to be on the look out for, like patterns of over-eating, over-sleeping and social withdrawal. (Though the "winter blues" may involve some of these symptoms, SAD is a more complex diagnosis with more persistent symptoms.)

SAD can also affect some people in the summer. Duckworth's own father was bipolar and suffered manic episodes in the summer. His family didn't know about seasonal triggers for mental illness at the time. Duckworth says that if he knew then what he knows now, he would've encouraged his father to engage in treatment in the spring, getting ahead of the impact that summer had on his mental health.

"Learn about your own patterns," he says. "If there's a pattern, you can be empowered to problem solve."

Some of the treatments for SAD are similar to those of depression, like talk therapy and use of certain medications. But for those who experience SAD in winter, therapeutic light boxes may also help.

And for those of us who aren't necessarily suffering from SAD but still could use a boost in winter? Duckworth recommends exercise and sunlight — whenever you can get it. A beach vacation somewhere warm, if you can swing it, might not be a bad idea either, whether or not you suffer from SAD.

The fate of daylight saving time is now in the hands of the House. New Jersey Representative Frank Pallone Jr. said in a statement that the House hasn't yet reached a consensus because of regional differences of opinion. My best guess is that we'll be turning our clocks back — as we've done for over a century — for many more years to come. — Cynthia Koons

Men are having trouble making friends in what's being called a "friendship recession," the New York Times reports.

A man hospitalized for 453 days with Covid was home for the holidays, according to the Washington Post.

How hospice has become a $2 billion industry and who's getting hurt by that, in the New Yorker.

Ask us anything — well, anything health-related that is! Each week we're picking a reader question and putting it to our network of experts. So get in touch via AskPrognosis@bloomberg.net.