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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

#291

Post by marginalia_nu »

b800h wrote: post #248
marginalia_nu wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downside with going completely off caffeine is you get so tired and unfocused and it lasts for ages. I tried doing this for almost a full year, and while the improved sleep and generally improved mood was fantastic, and even toward the end it was so much harder to get any focused work done.

I have to say that I don't find this at all. I've been off caffeine for years, and I'm perfectly able to focus without it.

Stimulants (of caffeine is one) are the de-facto treatment for ADHD, not entirely unlikely caffeine is keeping me subclinical.

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

#292

Post by Aurornis »

isoprophlex wrote: post #43

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.…

> I won the SSRI lottery I guess,

From reading internet comments you’d think so, but your experience is more typical than anything.

Depression is deceptively common. As a consequence, SSRI use over a lifetime is also more common than most would assume. Any drug will come with negative side effects for some portion of its users. Multiply that by the high number of people who have ever taken an SSRI and it starts to become obvious why there are so many Internet anecdotes about SSRIs not working.

Meanwhile, most people who take SSRIs successfully aren’t going around and advertising the fact that they’re on psychiatric medications. There is less stigma now than there was in the past, but it’s still not something most people like to broadcast to the world. For patients on long term SSRIs in stable states, the SSRI is just a routine thing they take in the background and don’t really think about. There’s no reason for it to come up in conversation.

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

#293

Post by freedomben »

kyleblarson wrote: post #234
isoprophlex wrote: post #43

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.…

I had disk issues in my lumbar spine that caused nearly unbearable pain and terrible quality of life. Tried everything: PT, OTC painkillers, epidurals, massage, nothing worked. Was prescribed pragabalin and duloxotine. Duloxotine is an SNRI that also treats nerve pain. That combination helped some but I was sleeping 11+ hours per day and generally felt like my head was in a complete fog, was pretty much useless with…

Duloxetine was indeed a beast to get off of. It got so bad that I would open the capsules and count the number of beads to taper as slowly as possible. It was hell

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

#294

Post by Aurornis »

r1ch wrote: post #4

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

That’s a large enough error that it calls the rest of the writing into question, in my opinion.

Also, be careful taking 5000 IU/day of Vitamin D. I did this for a few months and it was enough to send my blood levels over the top of the range, even in winter.

Too much Vitamin D is not good for you. The supplement fans have gone too far in recommending too high of dosages. My doctor said she’s seeing a lot of people with excessively high Vitamin D levels now that it has become popular.

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

#295

Post by cameronh90 »

ghusto wrote: post #161
isoprophlex wrote: post #43

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.…

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…

I suffer from severe crippling OCD and anxiety. Years of therapy and psychoanalysis have failed to find any cause, and, if anything, made it worse. The best explanation has been it's probably because I'm autistic, and these things tend to happen to autistics.

Luckily, sertraline was an almost instant cure.

I can come off it for periods, but it tends to reoccur after a while. So, it does mean I have to take a drug indefinitely, but is that really a problem? It turns my life into one worth living.

The reason we can't take sleeping pills daily is because they stop working in fairly short order. But if, like antidepressants (typically), they didn't lose their effectiveness over time, would there even be a problem with using sleeping pills if you had trouble sleeping?

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

#296

Post by BeetleB »

cardanome wrote: post #42

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…

Most people's lives objectively suck. Most of them are not depressed.

Pinpointing problems in your life as the cause of your depression is a trap.

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

#297

Post by Aurornis »

vegancap wrote: post #2

I found this to be the case. Tried Sertraline for a while, gave me headaches and made me feel sick. Then as part of a new gym plan, started taking Omega 3+VitD daily, and I just felt a sense of calm and peace after a few weeks. The massive uptick in exercise probably also helped. I also felt quite an extreme uptick because I was a vegan for 10 years, and found out I had basically zero Omega 3 in my blood. I suspect o…

> Then as part of a new gym plan, started taking Omega 3+VitD daily, and I just felt a sense of calm and peace after a few weeks. The massive uptick in exercise probably also helped

I would bet that 95% of that improvement or more was due to the exercise.

Your anecdote is common: People start taking Vitamin D or fish oil as part of a bigger plan to have a healthier lifestyle and then they attribute success to the pills, not the lifestyle changes.

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

#298

Post by aweiland »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #253
isoprophlex wrote: post #43

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.…

Tangent… but for sweaty feet, try a ski boot dryer! You can get them for $50… they dry out my shoes which makes them last a lot longer before they get so smelly I have to throw them away. Plus, who doesn’t like warm shoes in the morning? That, and there are some creams called Sweat Block or whatever you can rub on your feet which reduce sweating. Those work as well.

You can also 3D print them: https://www.printables.com/model/194340-60mm-radial-fan-boot...
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