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Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants

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Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants

#131

Because it's common to hate on antidepressants, I've always personally had a bias against them. For the past 15-20 years, november thru february are basically a writeoff due for me due to seasonal affective disorder. Cold showers, exercise, no alcohol, strict sleeping rituals. Vitamin d. I can still sleep 11 hours and feel like reheated cat shit. Enter citalopram. "It will take up to six weeks to dial in" they said.…

If a drug has an 1% chance of 100% effect, it will look pretty weak in those studies.

IMO it's pretty clear that depression is a symptom of many independent issues, so it's really lame that we don't have a more accurate way of diagnosing it.

Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants

#132

With depression it is important to find the cause of it. You might be depressed because you life objectively sucks. Then you symptoms are good and healthy and a signal to make changes in your circumstances. You might actually have a good life but still feel depressed because there is a chemical imbalance in your brain. (Very simplified). That is when drugs come in. It might be just a seasonal thing and you need to go…

> You might be depressed because you life objectively sucks

The problem with this that to a bad situation different people react differently - some trying to do what they can to improve the situation or at least don't make it worse and some give up and let situation to slip and become worse and worse (becoming a self fulfilling prophesy). It's not a choose one makes I think (it's likely a biological predisposition) but the difference is still exists.

People prone to depression genuinely believe the main (only) reason for a depression that the life sucks and as a result they avoid medical help and don't do anything which could help them.

Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants

#134

Because it's common to hate on antidepressants, I've always personally had a bias against them. For the past 15-20 years, november thru february are basically a writeoff due for me due to seasonal affective disorder. Cold showers, exercise, no alcohol, strict sleeping rituals. Vitamin d. I can still sleep 11 hours and feel like reheated cat shit. Enter citalopram. "It will take up to six weeks to dial in" they said.…

Yah. Measuring the effects of these drugs with a single effect size number is ridiculous. They work exceptionally well for some people (myself included). It seems as well that SSRIs work much more reliably on anxiety disorders than on depression.

Getting on them can be a ball ache (or entirely painless; escitalopram was easy on and easy off, Wellbutrin was a nightmare to get on, but also easy off), but entirely worth a shot for anyone symptomatic.

Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants

#135

Because it's common to hate on antidepressants, I've always personally had a bias against them. For the past 15-20 years, november thru february are basically a writeoff due for me due to seasonal affective disorder. Cold showers, exercise, no alcohol, strict sleeping rituals. Vitamin d. I can still sleep 11 hours and feel like reheated cat shit. Enter citalopram. "It will take up to six weeks to dial in" they said.…

[flagged]

If you spend a lot of time among some folks or talk a lot to LLMs, you are guaranteed to pick up manners, manners of speech, ways of thinking, behaviors (where applicable) ...

Me and my brother just can't stop mixing English and German when we talk to each other. But we don't or barely do it when we talk to others.

When I learned about code, logic, math, I started talking and thinking in different ways and from different and towards different perspectives.

The more I read, which I haven't done in a long long while, the more massive and vast the info I pack into a few sentences becomes.

The more I draw or play the guitar or work on game mechanics and story design or dialogues, the more annoying my speech and manners become but to my environment, that also means that I become "more" social and actually somewhat likeable and bearable.

You smell like Non-evidence based arrogance. I was always surrounded by people who smelled like that. But they are good little copypasta soldiers who follow trends and mutually assure that they don't go completely off the rails. But if one does, they leave him on his real or imaginary battlefield. Nobody wants to evolve anymore. It hurts some people just a little too much, I guess. They'd rather poison others and have their code deleted before getting to live a second life. I hope I could get you on edge a little. I'm just fucking around. But you will probably think something the likes of ... "there's always some truth to it when ..."

Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants

#136

Because it's common to hate on antidepressants, I've always personally had a bias against them. For the past 15-20 years, november thru february are basically a writeoff due for me due to seasonal affective disorder. Cold showers, exercise, no alcohol, strict sleeping rituals. Vitamin d. I can still sleep 11 hours and feel like reheated cat shit. Enter citalopram. "It will take up to six weeks to dial in" they said.…

As someone who tried citalopram escitalopram and sertraline, along with venlaflaxine and fluvoximine, I would suggest doing a pharmacological test for psychiatric medications.

I am an intermediate metabolized for the first three and the ones I was on most long. It did not suit me and made my orgasms go from ‘wtf’ to ‘that’s it?’ And they are still not normal 2 years after discontinuation.

I am still depressed and anxious to the point of serious consideration of these medicines to save myself, but you can save yourself the experimentation by doing a simple test and avoiding those medicines.

Anxiety depression panic attacks are something I wish more people studied along with sexual health.

Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants

#137
post #4

Please do not take 5000mg/day of Vitamin D. The author confuses IU and mg which is very dangerous.

If you don't have an underlying condition it is way better to get the Vitamin D from the sun in 10-30min increments per day after which you are saturated for the day. Overdose is not possible via the sun (excluding sun burns of course). > A single, optimal sun exposure session might produce the equivalent of 10,000 to 25,000 IU from a supplement, but it will not keep increasing with more time in the sun. That's your…

Agreed, but I live in Sweden so I take vitamin D supplements every winter.

During the spring, summer, fall months I barely need it since I'm outside so much with my dog.

Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants

#138
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is easily possible to overdose on oral Vitamin D tablets and damage your body.

Source? There have been many articles on HN showing the RDA to be ~10x too low (something like 5,000 IU) and that the daily safety limit to be significantly higher than that (something like 30,000 IU). Edit: for clarity I am not saying it is impossible to overdose on oral tablets, but rather that with most tablets 400 IU to 1000 IU and the safe limit so much higher than these, it seems like it would be extremely unli…

Why would you not be able to overdose orally? It's not like it stops absorbing past a certain dose, and there is such a thing as too much (especially if vitamin k2 is lacking)

Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants

#139
post #10

Can I just add: In addition to this, if you struggle with anxiety or have some sort of ADHD, then try cutting out caffeine entirely . Not just switching to "decaf" (which isn't), but cutting out tea and coffee, and switching to an alternative like Barleycup. Doing this has had a massive positive effect for me, and combined with decent nutrition and daily exercise, has been wonderful.

> Not just switching to "decaf" (which isn't)

Going to argue here, this is wildly bad advice. Decaf practically has no caffeine, it has 2-7 mg from what I can tell which is less then chocolate. 2-7mg is like impossible to notice and might aswell be water with how little there is.

Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants

#140
This made me think of Pauling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling) who was a famous scientist and big proponent of high-dosage C-vitamin. He claimed it could cure everything from a cold to heart disease and cancer. Later studies did though not find any benefit of high-dosage C-vitamin and that potentially had a higher risk of prostate cancer. Pauling died of prostate cancer.

Edit: This may also be of interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthomolecular_psychiatry

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