Featured Image Credit: Cecilia Blomdahl/YouTube
What’s it like to spend over two months without any sunlight?
It sounds cold, dark and ultimately not a great experience.
YouTuber Cecilia Blomdahl found out firsthand not through some scientific experiment, but because of where she lives.
Cecilia lives in quite a unique spot on Earth, the darkest to be exact.
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Svalbard is an island between Norway and the North Pole and as she lives in the northernmost town of it, every winter she experiences a polar night.
During this period, the Sun doesn't rise above the horizon for more than 24 hours. In Cecilia's case, this would last a period of two and a half months.
So, she decided to document her experiences of experiencing her sixth polar night.
'I made it my mission to find out how my body reacted to this period of no sunlight,' she described in the video.
'I documented my moods and did blood work both before and after this extreme season.'
Having been in Portugal before the polar night, Cecilia expected her Vitamin D levels to be around 70, the normal range being between 50 and 150.
She made sure to take her daily Vitamin D supplements throughout the polar night and even kept on top of her exercise, work and skincare routine.
But it wasn't long until she started feeling the effects of no sunlight on her body.
Although she had experienced polar nights before, she was 'shocked' to have experienced 'debilitating' anxiety.
She reported not feeling so tired at the time but reflecting on her experience, she 'didn't realise how tired' she actually was.
When she finally got her Vitamin D test results back at the end of the period, she found her levels had dropped to 49. While this is slightly below the normal range, she expected it to be a lot higher with all the supplements she was taking.
Cecilia took from her experience the importance of maintaining Vitamin D levels and how much a deficiency in it can affect your mood and cause fatigue.
When the polar night ended and she had exposure to sunlight, she already started feeling the effects on her body after just a few days.
Her energy levels rose and she felt much more like herself.
'Apart from just the Vitamin D, if I look back on this polar night, I was quite shocked by how this one affected me,' she explained.
'I think why this one made such a big difference is because almost every single other one I've left to go to the mainland for a few days here or there.'
Unlike previous years where Cecilia had taken short trips to the mainland to break up the darkness, this time she endured the entire period without leaving.
'I learned a lot about myself this polar night, and also about how I will go into the next polar night,' she concluded from her learnings.
