T3 Syndrome

Posted by Anthony and Christine Powell at 10/13/2008 9:06 AM
Categories: uncategorized
Summer is here. Today the temperature is only about -10C / 14F.
A week from now the sun will be above the horizon 24 hours a day.
The station population is up to around 800 people now.
It's a lot for my toasty winter-over brain to deal with, but the sunlight and activity is starting to relieve the typical T3 symptoms.
 
Polar T3 syndrome is an unusual thing that typically affects people who spend the winter down here the hardest.
It is thought to be caused by a combination of things, lack of sunlight, lack of new stimulus, low vitamin D levels, and T3 hormone being diverted from the brain to the muscles.
Common symptoms are fatigue, short term memory loss, zoning out with a 1000 mile stare, or forgetting every day things.
It's something you just get used to and typically have a laugh about. It also means that you have to be very well organized and write everything down, or there is no way you will remember to do something.
Thankfully the effects are only temporary, and go away once you get a bit of time off the Ice.
In the recent interviews I have been doing with people for the Year on Ice movie I'm making, I've been getting them to give examples of how it affects them.
 
Here's a few examples people have given me:
-Constantly forgetting appointments, meetings, and social functions.
-Walking into the next room to grab a tool you need to do a job you are working on, when you get there you have absolutely no idea what you went there for.
-Suddenly forgetting the name of someone you have known well for years.
-Forgetting common random words halfway through a sentence and having to stop to remember what the word was.
-Trying to remember which day of the week comes first, Wednesday or Thursday.
-Forgetting the phone number of the house you have lived in all your life.
-Forgetting the name of every day objects like the salt shaker on the dinner table.
-Forgetting which key opens the office door you unlock every morning at work.
 
Consequently people typically become less articulate.
Another often-wintered couple, Tom and Lynn along with Christine & myself have had people comment to us quite often about how we seem to communicate by grunts and pointing. When it comes right down to it, it is amazing how little articulation is actually required to communicate.

Here's a couple of still photos from recent time-lapse film sequences...

Crescent Moon setting over the Royal Society Ranges


Nacreous Clouds in the sky behind one of the small satellite dish enclosures




 

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