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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

#551

Post by hirvi74 »

kadushka wrote: post #535
Aurornis wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Researchers have noticed it for 13 years! From the linked Ghaemi et al 2024 meta-analysis You’re cherry picking papers. Others have already shared other studies showing no significant effects of Vitamin D intervention. For any popular supplement you can find someone publishing papers with miraculous results, showing huge effect sizes and significant outcomes. This has been going on for decades. With Omega-3s the la…

the larger the trial size, the smaller the outcome I find this a bit surprising. Could there be something else affecting the accuracy of larger trials? Perhaps they are not as careful, or cutting corners somewhere?

Just my hypothesis, but I wonder if larger sample sizes provide a more diverse population.

A study with 1000 individuals is likely a poor representation of a species of 8.2 billion. I understand that studies try to their best to use a diverse population, but I often question how successful many studies are at this endeavor.

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

#552

Post by LazyMans »

wincy wrote: post #452
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, Vitamin D and B12 had more of a positive effect on my mental health than therapy or any of the half dozen prescription meds I tried. Hiking has the biggest effect though. I think maybe the problem is that therapists are diagnosing people, and psychiatrists are prescribing pills based on those diagnoses, but neither are ordering bloodwork to check for deficiencies. Which leads to a lot of people suffering…

I bought an E-Bike two years ago and it’s changed my life. I want to ride my bike all the time, and am counting down the days to spring. During the warmer months I run all the errands I possibly can with my bike instead of driving, and ride for pleasure often, going on multi hour bike rides. It’s just such a blissful feeling, and as I’ve gotten more fit I’ve been able to turn down the bike assist and built a lot of l…

Getting an e-bike has got me out getting exercise way more than a regular bike ever did. Being able to dial my effort up and down pushes me further, quite literally in distance and fitness goals. I'm by no means fit and almost did a 5 hour 40 mile ride one day. I completely used up the battery in that time, my legs were cooked from the effort. I would have never attempted something like that on a regular bike unless I was fit.

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

#553

Post by trilogic »

16bitvoid wrote: post #472
trilogic wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is only one cure/hack for Nihilism or similar... Go somewhere where you need to work physically you az off to afford daily food. You will be so exhausted eventually that: 1 you will not have any energy left for thoughts. 2 If you have any energy left, you will give it to angriness which will lead to other circumstances which are none related to find the meaning of life. Ignorance may lead to happiness and frien…

I think a lot of people are conflating depression with "bad thoughts". That's just one possible symptom, usually as a result of a combination of both anxiety and depression. I didn't have anxiety, just depression. I rarely thought. I existed on autopilot. I was physically exhausted on a daily basis as a division 1 athlete in college. Often went days without eating either because I simply forgot to eat or forgot to ma…

Interesting reply thanks. I would say though, If I were programmed or a program or whatever you name it... I would realize the under statement:

If One can´t be happy with what One have now, One will never-ever be in any circumstances.

This is not your case certainly but is connected with the autopilot (meaning we don´t get to choose.

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

#554

Post by mrguyorama »

drumdance wrote: post #243
chasil wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I have a yearly physical, my GP will ask if I have feelings of depression. I know this road leads to SSRIs at the very least, so I always reply in the negative. The parent comment hints to me that this might be a mistake. I do not want to become accustomed to an antidepressant, so perhaps my course of action was correct. I was measured low on Vitamin D, which I've hopefully corrected, and I haven't always…

There are also SNRIs, which don't have the sexual side effects. I've done mostly SSRIs but in the last few years I've been on an SNRI called Pristiq and it's the best by far.

Why do you think SNRIs wouldn't have sexual side effects? They still inhibit the reuptake of serotonin just like SSRIs. That's the part that causes (certain) sexual side effects.

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

#555

Post by Nevermark »

Aurornis wrote: post #325

Vitamin D and Omega-3 are the two supplements that consistently appear to be super powerful in small studies and then fail to do anything significant at all in larger studies. Pause for a moment and consider the mere plausibility of the claims in the first few paragraphs: The effect size for antidepressants is 0.4, but the effect size for Vitamin D is 1.8? Are we to believe that Vitamin D supplements have an effect s…

> The effect size for antidepressants is 0.4

What the article states, then fails to take into account, is that is the mean effect size, and there is huge variation.

Anti-depressants are notorious for producing different effects for different people.

What that high variance means in practice, is for any anti-depressant, the people who get good results are getting a much higher effect than 0.4. And the other people move on to try something else.

So to keep comparing 0.4 directly to the effect of Vitamin D and Omega-3 directly is very misleading.

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

#556

Post by trilogic »

moron4hire wrote: post #508
16bitvoid wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said I'm looking for meaning? I'm not. It's not as liberating as you might think. A joyless existence is either suffering or nothingness. A life without meaning, either internal or external, is one where nothing is meaningful with no motivation thus one of crippling catatonia til death. All I can say is just that it doesn't feel good and if you can't feel good about anything, your calculus of your life inevitably…

Yeah, most folk get the causation backwards. They think having meaning in life will pull you out of depression. It's the other way around. You have to get pulled out of depression to be able to find meaning in your life.

Realizing that some "chemical reactions" can change your destiny then further learning that when you want something, all the universe is bound to conspires in helping you to achieve it.

This one came out good :)

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

#557

Post by mixmastamyk »

janpeuker wrote: post #301

Super interesting, just sad that Omega-3 supplements are one of the main drivers of unsustainable Krill overfishing https://seashepherd.org/2025/02/25/protecting-the-oceans-vit...

Look for algae oil instead.

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

#558

Post by lamename »

kadushka wrote: post #535
Aurornis wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Researchers have noticed it for 13 years! From the linked Ghaemi et al 2024 meta-analysis You’re cherry picking papers. Others have already shared other studies showing no significant effects of Vitamin D intervention. For any popular supplement you can find someone publishing papers with miraculous results, showing huge effect sizes and significant outcomes. This has been going on for decades. With Omega-3s the la…

the larger the trial size, the smaller the outcome I find this a bit surprising. Could there be something else affecting the accuracy of larger trials? Perhaps they are not as careful, or cutting corners somewhere?

Maybe. Those could be the case. But ignoring all confounding factors, this phenomenon is possible with numerical experiments alone. One of the meanings of "the Law of Small Numbers".

Basically, the possibility that the small study was underpowered, and just lucky...then the large studies with more power are closer to the truth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization

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

#559

Post by kadushka »

hirvi74 wrote: post #551
kadushka wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the larger the trial size, the smaller the outcome I find this a bit surprising. Could there be something else affecting the accuracy of larger trials? Perhaps they are not as careful, or cutting corners somewhere?

Just my hypothesis, but I wonder if larger sample sizes provide a more diverse population. A study with 1000 individuals is likely a poor representation of a species of 8.2 billion. I understand that studies try to their best to use a diverse population, but I often question how successful many studies are at this endeavor.

use a diverse population

If that's the case, we should question whether different homogeneous population groups respond differently to the substance under test. After all, we don't want to know the "average temperature of patients in a hospital", do we?

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

#560

Post by pixl97 »

htek wrote: post #467
ghusto wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hate on antidepressants is not because they're not effective, but rather that they're abused by psychiatrists. Ideally, a professional will prescribe them as a necessary helper to becoming (more) mentally healthy whilst tackling the root cause. Most of the time however, it's more of a "here, take these indefinitely". It's like if we took sleeping pills every time we had trouble sleeping. Having said that, I just…

It's a symptom of the "health care" insurance industry. Many people end up paying a specialist doctor's co-pay when they see a psychiatrist. Some plans limit you to a maximum number of sessions you can have (6, in my case) per year. Talk therapy eats up sessions and co-pays like Pac-Man eats dots. One doctor expected me to come in twice a week. Americans don't get all the PTO and/or excused sick time they want to acc…

With that said, does anywhere have enough specialists to cover as many sessions as would be needed for as many people would seem to need it?
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