Several people in my family have a MTHFR gene mutation that screws stuff up, including causing problems with anxiety+depression. But a simple B12 shot every couple of weeks does wonders.
Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
201–210 of 669 posts
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#202I would take these articles about vitamin D with a grain of salt, there is a big vitamin D supplement and testing market and most of the studies about the miracles of it are dubious at best
including the mentioned meta-analysis? if yes, can you explain why you think that it's dubious?
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#203Your body makes Vitamin D when in sunlight. Could it be that sunlight - and the whole being outdoors situation - is the thing that helps rather than vitamin d levels?
In most northern countries like the UK, there is simply not enough UVB in the winter to make any Vitamin D through sunlight.
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean relatively sucks. Else every single human ancestor would have to be super depressed too given the standard of life in the past.
I guess there are different types of "life sucks" that can or cannot contribute to depression, my current understanding is that a lot of it depends on whether you feel you have some control over the situation or if you think you have absolutely no power over it
Isn't people in the past had less control? There were dying from infections and not only had no vaccines and drugs they didn't understand how infections are spread. They also suffered from various natural disasters not having a protection a modern civilization gives us.
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#205> A 2014 systematic review concluded that vitamin D supplementation does not reduce depressive symptoms overall but may have a moderate benefit for patients with clinically significant depression, though more high-quality studies were determined to be needed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D#Depression
The meta-analysis cited in the article is from 2024 and specifically mentions the Shaffer et al. 2014 review cited by Wikipedia as being low quality: > Some of the available reviews, owing to the limited number of trials and methodological biases, were of low quality (Anglin et al., 2013; Cheng et al., 2020; Li et al., 2014; Shaffer et al., 2014). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11650176/
If you're not in the respective fields it can be pretty difficult to distinguish good from bad research. I am not able to do so.
If you (or your close ones) don't suffer from depression, then I guess it's best to ignore it until scientific consensus has formed. That will for sure show up on wikipedia. As far as I can see as a layperson there is a lot of correlation with Vitamin D that breaks down in interventions and Vitamin D is recommended mostly for babies and elderly people. On the other hand I see Vitamin D pushed as a miracle drug not unlike Vitamin C used to some decades ago and regular reports of overdosing of supplements leading to organ failure.
If you're suffering from depression, you should talk to your doctor. They will be able to help you to weigh potential benefits with risks
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#206Please do not take 5000mg/day of Vitamin D. The author confuses IU and mg which is very dangerous.
yes, once i saw that i stopped reading. if the author can't get that right i am not going to trust anything else they say.
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#207Because 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.…
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…
Also they are often prescribed as a life-long solution, instead of a temporary stop-gap to get through some bad state of mind while, as you said, "tackling the root cause". At some point they will potentially stop working which requires switching meds and often the next one won't work as well, plus, leaving the user stuck with withdrawal symptoms for unspecified amount of time (potentially years) and anti-depressant pushers don't usually warn about this, or even acknowledge it when confronted with "since stopping I have symptom x, y, z".
Source: multiple friends, family and forums (while researching how to help friends & family get off of various SSRIs).
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fascinating. Can you describe what else you tried? Other supplements? Any other non-food/supplement techniques like journaling, breathing, etc.? Any therapy and other similar human interventions? After all those - is it / was it still the case that cutting caffeine drove the best outcome?
Not OP but I'll share my experience. For me, I have to quit caffeine for those to even become an option. Otherwise I get my short burst of productivity then everything shuts down after and I don't want to do a thing, everything feels "impossible" or like it doesn't matter at all. Things like journaling / breathing / etc calm the nervous system while caffeine stimulates it. I would say caffeine is counterproductive to…
Thanks for sharing.
I briefly quit caffeine once but it as well before any realization of anxiety. So, hard to extrapolate forward from that experience.
What feels different to me (compared to you) is this: sometimes I'll drink 2 cups of coffee in the morning and be awake but useless. Sometimes totally productive. Caffeine in some form is there - recently sometimes substituting coffee for a Celsius.
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#209Here you go HN commenters. Last month when I made the observation that "from what I've read recently, I've started to get the impression that the explosion in mental health problems (depression, autism rates etc) has more to do with the western diet than genetics"[0] Y'all called me MAHA and down voted me into the negatives. Please, insult your own analytical ability by doing the same here. This time I'll just revel…
A study proposing that diet can affect the expression or severity of some autism-related behaviours is not the same thing as claiming “80% of what people consider autism is actually just the western diet's effect on normal brain chemistry."
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#210Because 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 it is SAD have you tried bright daylight balanced lighting?