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

blog.ncase.me

431–440 of 669 posts

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

#431

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.…

“God, I see what you’re doing for others, and I want that for me.” I had a very similar experience, except it killed my libido, so I chose to endure the suffering of Winter rather than live with emotional numbness. Still, I strongly recommend it for people flirting with the abyss. It was life-changing for me while I was raising an autistic 2yo during the pandemic.

Speaking from personal experience, people react to different SSRIs differently. I took a popular one that had significant side effects without a whole lot of benefit, and so I stopped it and didn't try anything else for 10 years. Then I spoke to a psychiatric nurse practitioner who suggested trying several others until we found something that worked for me. I had (incorrectly) assumed that if you had e.g. sexual side effects from one SSRI, that you'd have them for all. That is not the case.

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

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also noticed that. Opened issue: https://github.com/ncase/blog/issues/4

Hi, author of the blog post here! Yes thank you for catching this awful typo, it's fixed now! I did write "4000 or 5000 IU of Vitamin D" everywhere else in the article -- main text, conclusion -- just my luck that the one place I mess up is right at the very start. (Do not take 5000 mg , that's 200,000,000 IU. You'd have to chug dozens of bottles per day)

Hi, I’m curious about medicine in general and I’m considering going back to school.

what formal education do you recommend so that I can better understand this data?

It’s clear you’ve dealt with anxiety before, but this analysis is super thorough!

And thank you for quickly fixing that mistake - that could have really harmed someone.

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

#433
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent commenter describes seasonal Winter depression. If the problem was brain chemistry, wouldn't it be with them from birth until treatment? Who has Seasonal Type 1 Diabetes, or Seasonal Dwarfism, or Seasonal Missing-an-Eye-From-Birth? Depression generally isn't something children have from birth, it's something adults get temporarily. A few HN submissions recently are in the style " thinking about doing the t…

> If the problem was brain chemistry, wouldn't it be with them from birth until treatment Ha, of course it can be! Our brain chemistry is not stable through our life! Many children are born with epilepsy, but some people develop it later in life. epilepsy, like all neurological disorders are nature AND nurture, genes AND the environment. Using your roller coaster analogy, there very well may be genes that control; ho…

> "Our brain chemistry is not stable through our life!"

Citation requested. Because, y'know, it's not like your leg muscles suddenly don't work from age 40-50 and then start working again and we say it's because of unstable "leg chemistry". It's not like your stomach, liver, kidneys, suddenly stop working after you lose your job or your life partner and we say it's both inexplicable and because of a deficit of "body chemicals" and nod agreement with each other that "body chemistry isn't stable" through a lifetime.

These are just unsatisfyingly crappy non-explanations.

And quick attempts to assume that Doctors, Neuroscientists, Psychiatrists, Psychologists must have a better detailed knowledge of brain chemistry and I'm just falling for nonsense seems to find that they actually don't, and they don't agree that "brain chemistry" is a good explanation, and it can't be measured in a patient, and the idea isn't strongly supported by evidence, and even the mechanism of action of "drugs which correct brain chemistry" isn't agreed on, and when given to people to "correct brain chemistry" it often doesn't make the problem that was blamed on brain chemistry go away.

> "there very well may be genes that control; how much fear someone experiences when riding a roller coaster."

I will lump "genetics" in as another pet-hate unsatisfyingly crappy non-explanation that people tag onto whatever they want so they can stop thinking about it further. There probably are many genes which affect how much fat bodies store, or burn, or food cravings, or what constitutes hunger, or production of various leptins and grehlins and insulins and stomach acids, but that doesn't mean "I'm obese because of my genetics" is any kind of explanation at all. Or "I have this personality because my parents and grandparents had it, it's genetic" is an explanation. Downe's Syndrome is a good use for genetics as an explanation. "I have a macro-scale set of vaguely related behaviours, symptoms and body effects and no clear cause, it's my genetics" isn't.

Even if you have sequenced your genome, and have some specific gene that is associated with extra fat storage, genes can be turned on and off through a lifetime by behaviours and environment. Having a gene from birth doesn't mean it's being expressed and is therefore causing a specific problem, or that the problem can't go away and can't be fixed. ( https://www.cdc.gov/genomics-and-health/epigenetics/index.ht... )

> "The problem society has is telling people that they all should be able to not have feear riding a roller coaster and if you are too afraid to ride a roller coaster you should take xanax."

I agree with this. Society likes assuming everyone is the same. Imagine if we collectively noticed that Adrenaline gives people "a burst of strength" and decided that daily exercise, individual strength training plans, gym visits, were all too much bother and that ageing adults were suffering from "an imbalance of Adrenaline" and when they struggle to carry their massive haul of groceries in from their car they should carry an auto-injector of Adrenaline to help their chemical deficiency.

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

#434
I have seasonal affective disorder and was taking a medication that sort of helped, but was causing mood swings if taken even slightly out of rhythm, increased my blood pressure, and was just generally not that effective, but it was better than nothing. Last winter I switched to vitamin D (it was already uncovered in blood tests I had a deficiency, which is what turned me onto it - when I started taking it, I felt a lot better) and omega 3 and I won't go back. I wish someone had told me a decade ago, probably would have saved a lot of damage to my organs (another reason I got off of it)

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

#435
To add another data point: 4,000 IU (two Kirkland capsules) daily keeps my Vitamin D levels at the high end of the reference range. I also take six Kirkland fish oil capsules which happens to hit the 1,500 mg DHA+EPA target suggested in the article.

Honestly, Costco supplements are hard to beat since they're both USP certified and are usually the cheapest.

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

#436
I saw a thing from HealthyGamerGG youtube[1] that he said one of the things about depression is that it causes/influences one to avoid the things that would make their life less depressing.

eg just to paint the picture: you're depressed so you don't get out of bed, therefore you don't go do your workout, therefore you lack endorphins and look in the mirror and see squishy, you're sad about how squishy you are and so you get more depressed. You're more depressed so you also don't do your dishes, when you do get out of bed you are depressed you feel like a slob and you're squishy, so you get more depressed...

Whereas adding anti-depressants, and other virtuous cycle things like vitD/O3, exercise et al. Give the boost necessary to _make your life less depressing_ ...

So if you know someone who's depressed, it might be helpful to help them make their life less depressing too. (in addition to all the best medical advice!)

[1]- he's a real Dr... Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K), a Harvard-trained psychiatrist (MD, MPH) specializing in modern mental health

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

#437
post #149

Here 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…

Except depression rates are rising at similar or worse levels in other places too, including sunnier/tropical regions and the ones with "better" diets.

The main instigator of depression is still societal as the postmodern era is pushing everyone into seclusion and addicting them to constant individualized dopamine hits, increasing the miserable effect on one's chronic mood and exacerbating one's self-consciousness about it.

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

#438

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.

Also try wearing merino wool socks. It seems counterintuitive to put wool on your sweaty feet, but they're quite comfortable and they help you avoid that "clammy feet" feeling when you are sweating in cotton socks. They also don't develop odor the way that cotton does.

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

#439

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 severe SAD to the point of having a mental break where I told my wife I was flying that very day to Miami to get away from the cold. I didn’t end up flying to Miami, which is likely why I’m still married…

So I ended up spending $300 on LED bulbs, both corn bulbs and 200W equivalent, bought some 7-Way splitters for my ceiling fan so it’s holding 28 light bulbs (people have joked I have a “biblically accurate ceiling fan” because it’s so bizarre looking, like a weird glowing biblical angel), and get about 10,000 lux in my home office now. As a bonus, I don’t have to run a space heater in my home office (since I only need it in winter, I’d have been using that electricity anyway via a space heater). Solved the issue completely for me.

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

#440
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…

Don’t guess; just get your vitamin D levels tested. It’s $20, you can just buy it à la carte.

For some people even in sunny areas, 5000 IU might be needed to get you in-range. This is highly individual.

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