The third Monday in January is often referred to as the most depressing day of the year, with many feeling the letdown of the holidays, financial pressures from gift giving and the impact of dark, cold weather that can be isolating. Carol shared the importance of mental wellness and self care, and how we can prepare ourselves with resiliency for those bumps in the road that could impact our mental and physical health.

Read transcript below.

Liz Lewin (LL): AWe're talking about Blue Monday. This has dubbed the most depressing day of the year. Carol Zuniga is back with us to tell us how we can help boost our mental wellness. Welcome back.

Carol Zuniga (CZ): Thanks so much, Marielle. Just another one of the challenges that we're facing

LL: You got that right! So we are going to find a way to get through it. Tell us what we need to know as we approach what is supposed to be the saddest day of the year. I'm thinking maybe if we shift our mindsets now , we can get rid of that thought.

CZ: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, science doesn't tell us that the third Monday of January is the saddest day of year. But we certainly face issues during the winter months that people should be aware of. Challenges to our mental wellness are always there, but that much more during the winter months.

LL: So what can we do? 

CZ: Addressing the basics of good mental wellness: eat well, sleep well, exercise and socialization. During the winter, we face some additional challenges around eating in particular, tend to be carb focused. It's really important to spend time thinking about proteins and managing our blood sugars. So we don't have those spikes that affect our food and our attention.

Paying attention to vitamin D has become a large issue, not just because of the winter with our shorter days and lesser sunlight, but also because of Covid. We're all spending so much more time inside.

And you know, between quarantining and isolating, food rich - and vitamin D is very important to pay attention to. Milk, orange juice, yogurt, certified cereal. Those are really easy ways to build your vitamin D. Vitamin D has some pretty serious consequences: depression, confusion, attention, things that people should be paying attention to.

LL: Yeah, that seems like it would be good idea, Carol, to start taking multivitamins and things that help us with our wellness, and do have a proven benefit physically when we have these in our body.

I do wanna ask you in the last 30 seconds what you think about social media now that we are all still spending more time at home, even if you're ready to go out and hang out, it's just the state of the world we are at home more.

Is that impacting our mental health and does that make it so much worse now for a Blue Monday?

CZ: So social media is good because of socialization, but it's really kind of dependent on where you focus your attention. Focus on uplifting, stay away from, sorry, the news, you know.

LL: Come on Carol, you're killing me here.

CZ: Make sure that your social media is giving you new joy and pleasure. 

LL: Yes. No, but you are right.

You want to be careful with all the incoming negative information no matter what it's about.