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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

#581

Post by mrguyorama »

phoronixrly wrote: post #176
afpx wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Therefore what to do? I have seen these Hacker News vitamin D ads appear every few months for the past 15 years, or so. I always seem to have a vitamin D deficiency, so it reminds me to take supplements. I take them for a few months, hoping to see a change, but I don't feel any benefit. Then, I forget to take the supplements until the next time I see an ad. How to know if they're actually doing something useful?

Until you see an article like this which calls for '5000 mg ' of supplementation, decide that you didn't take enough and overdose... HN and dubious self-medication advice go hand-in-hand. Please consult a medical professional instead of a bunch of ad-tech devs.

Remember when HN had an entire year of articles about how we should all be on microdoses of various hallucinogenic and psychoactive substances for "peak performance"?

Good times.

HN is as bad at medicine as it is at everything else.

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

#582

Post by Fischgericht »

I can only provide anecdotical evidence, which is ... not evidence, really.

Within my peer group of people on the spectrum (which very often comes with a depression, which is logical) we've discussed Vitamin D studies for years. And multiple of us decided to give it a try for a couple of months. And neither those who tried it INSTEAD of an SSRI, nor those that took both (SSRI + D) could report any measurable difference.

I have a theory on why is that: It is known that low levels of Vitamin D is one likely cause for depression - in Northern Europe, where during winter time people do not get enough sunlight, that correlates very clearly with the suffering of depression.

But potentially it simply does not work the other way round: I moved to near the equator, and I therefore basically have sunlight shining out of my butt, but still am depressed. It makes sense that in this case Vitamin D makes no difference at all.

In summary my theory would be: Vitamin D only has an effect on a depression that was caused by a lack of Vitamin D.

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

#583

Post by seba_dos1 »

snickerer wrote: post #299

If you look at the studies on which this post is based, you find out that the (very) positive effect oft Vitamin D is only short-term. The effect after taking the Vitamin longer than 24 is not significant anymore.

As one would expect when you get your blood level out of the deficient range? It takes a while to get back down.

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

#584

Post by phoronixrly »

mrguyorama wrote: post #581
phoronixrly wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you see an article like this which calls for '5000 mg ' of supplementation, decide that you didn't take enough and overdose... HN and dubious self-medication advice go hand-in-hand. Please consult a medical professional instead of a bunch of ad-tech devs.

Remember when HN had an entire year of articles about how we should all be on microdoses of various hallucinogenic and psychoactive substances for "peak performance"? Good times. HN is as bad at medicine as it is at everything else.

No, I was here just for the year in which they ended COVID with vitamin D. With the weekly (n=5) articles garnered with blog posts from randos swearing by it...

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

#585

Post by seba_dos1 »

tiffanyh wrote: post #193

Before anyone goes out and overdoses on Vitamn D (since lots of multiple vitamin include too much), see this article on toxicity from too much Vitamin D https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557876/

It cites a study about vitamin D toxicity where the range of cumulative intake causing it was identified to be 2.2 million - 6.3 million IU. When you take 6000 IU daily for a whole year you only reach the lower end of that range, and you definitely shouldn't do that without checking your levels somewhere in between. Taking it for a few months may get you above the recommended blood levels, but is very unlikely to cause issues unless you started with very high levels already (which you most likely did not).

Toxic levels of vitamin D can be life threatening, so do keep your levels in check, but you won't get there unless you really try, so if you can't get out of the bed to have your blood tested just start taking it and check it after 3 months when things get hopefully easier for you. Just make sure to get the number of zeros in the dose right.

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

#586

Post by pavel_lishin »

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.…

> Cold showers, ... no alcohol, strict sleeping rituals.

I feel like doing those three things would make me feel like reheated cat shit, regardless of the weather outside.

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

#587

Post by marcuschong »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #493
marcuschong wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was incapable of the compassion you're talking about until I had a bad shroom trip and felt some horrible, hard-to-describe anxiety the next morning. It was some of the worst hours of my life until my serotonin system rebalanced itself. I'm not saying it's the same thing as depression or regular anxiety, but it gave me tremendous perspective on how bad these conditions can be and you just don't have the ability to…

> Maybe that’s how my wife feels The good thing is it isn’t necessary to know how someone else feels to have compassion.:) It’s enough to accept you don’t understand the other person‘s thought process and stop trying to tell them what they are thinking. You don’t need to fix things, you just need to listen and not make them justify or explain themselves to you. Doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing. This…

Precisely. That's what I took from the experience as well. If that's so hard and I had no idea about it until now, maybe there are other things that I don't know, and some that I will never learn, and I should tread lightly.

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

#588

Post by seba_dos1 »

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…

I believe presenting vitamin D supplements as effective in treating depression is kinda misleading. It's rather vitamin D deficiency that is super effective at making you miserable, but it's not the only thing that can do it to you. And since a lot of us are in fact deficient (and the threshold of being categorized as deficient may be placed too low too), it will appear as being quite effective overall, especially compared to other drugs that act on less common and poorly understood causes.

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

#589

Post by matsemann »

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…

I do understand there are many things that can make it infeasable to bike during winter, but if you miss your bike absolutely give it a try! I bike year around in Norway. Studded tires help tons, and that the city maintains the bike infrastructure during winter.

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

#590

Post by [deleted] »

thewebguyd wrote: post #512
sameesh wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If its not just a matter of perspective and only medication can help, etc, then why do we call depression a "psychological" or "mental health" concern? Why isn't it just considered a neurological disease?

Depression is increasingly starting to be seen as a neurobiological disorder as we learn more. In my own opinion, we need to stop viewing "mental health" as a separate class of conditions from general/physical health. A mental illness is a health/medical condition just like any other and shifting our views and diagnostic criteria in that direction would do a lot to remove the stigma associated with mental illness. So…

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