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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

#631

Post by betty_staples »

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…

> People with cabinets full of dozens of supplement bottles that were chosen based on studies, too. Then they finally decided to try real antidepressant medications and wished they’d done it sooner.

Here's the thing - if you click a button and pay a dollar your supplement will be there at your door in hours.

Getting a SSRI is a whole damn thing

Lot of drugs - mental health, low cholesterol, low blood pressure -- a lot of drugs along the lines of "take them rest of your life" -- ought to be OTC you ask me. Of course medicine would hate that because the red tape of going in, checking a box, and getting a script, is a nice little profit center. Not as much as racket as say spine surgeries, but a bread & butter small time racket. Here's a question, has anyone tried making these OTC and measuring risk & reward, deaths vs lives saved? Or measure healthcare costs? Because I'm willing to venture lots of lives would be helped, families whole, at a much lower cost.

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

#632

Post by pseudalopex »

johnisgood wrote: post #477
pseudalopex wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fortunately today’s vegan communities are much more aware of this so I started taking these supplements right up front and all my blood markers improved dramatically since when I consumed meat/dairy.

Yeah but that sentence does not refer to why the person switched to being vegan, the first one does. In any case, let us not beat the dead horse there. :P Supplement B12 and it is fine.

No sentence referred to why they became vegan. Their nutrient numbers improved when they became vegan. This happened because becoming vegan moved them from a group who didn't know they needed supplements to a group who knew they needed supplements.

> In any case, let us not beat the dead horse there.

You would not have replied if you meant this.

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

#633

Post by MRtecno98 »

svara wrote: post #567
ncasenmare wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’re cherry picking papers. I just picked the most recent meta-analysis I could find, which also specifically estimates the dose-response curve. (Since averaging the effect at 400 IU and 4000 IU doesn't make sense.) > Others have already shared other studies showing no significant effects of Vitamin D intervention. Yes, and the Ghaemi et al 2024 meta-analysis addresses the methodological problems in those earlier…

> They're from a major peer-reviewed study published in Nature, the highest-impact journal. No, the domain name is nature.com because it's in a Nature Publishing Group journal, Scientific Reports , which is their least prestigious journal. It's a common mistake, and they do that on purpose, of course, to leverage the Nature brand. It's also a mistake that implies a complete lack of familiarity with scientific publish…

> It's also a mistake that implies a complete lack of familiarity with scientific publishing, unfortunately, which makes it a bit difficult to take your judgements regarding plausibility very seriously.

It's still peer reviewed, and as the sibling comment said, more applicable to this type of research. Also you now went from raising understandable objections to refusing the argument because it comes from a specific journal, which doesn't sound very scientific to me

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

#634

Post by michaelsshaw »

darvid wrote: post #353
michaelsshaw wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like if we took sleeping pills every time we had trouble sleeping. Having said that, I just realised I have the impression that's exactly what people do in the USA? I'm not sure if it is common but I've definitely taken my fair share of my dog's trazodone.

after being prescribed Mirtazapine, then Trazadone I realized I don't think I've had restful sleep as long as I can remember. I need a sleep study done probably but until that the quality of life from taking something that has virtually no negative side effects for me is insane. meanwhile people are like "just take magnesium or melatonin lol"

I have sleep apnea. Get the study done ASAP. It's a home test, non-invasive. Will change your life if you have it.

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

#635

Post by svara »

MRtecno98 wrote: post #633
svara wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're from a major peer-reviewed study published in Nature, the highest-impact journal. No, the domain name is nature.com because it's in a Nature Publishing Group journal, Scientific Reports , which is their least prestigious journal. It's a common mistake, and they do that on purpose, of course, to leverage the Nature brand. It's also a mistake that implies a complete lack of familiarity with scientific publish…

> It's also a mistake that implies a complete lack of familiarity with scientific publishing, unfortunately, which makes it a bit difficult to take your judgements regarding plausibility very seriously. It's still peer reviewed, and as the sibling comment said, more applicable to this type of research. Also you now went from raising understandable objections to refusing the argument because it comes from a specific j…

You're right it isn't fair to reject someone's scientific argument just because they seem unfamiliar with how professional science works.

We shouldn't have believed the study more if it actually had been in Nature.

I don't think that's what I was saying, though.

The issue in this thread was about taking a step back and looking at the overall plausibility of the conclusions, taking together multiple studies.

I agree with the GP that the argument doesn't really pass the smell test.

That's still the main issue, and it is something that people who don't understand scientific publishing struggle understanding/doing, because they lack the intuition for how certain results came about.

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

#636

Post by theshrike79 »

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 described SSRIs like this:

When you're depressed, you're in a hole that's too deep to get out of.

The SSRI basically shovels stuff from the top of the hole to the bottom of the hole so your head is above ground level. You are still in the hole though and you need to climb out of it.

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

#637

Post by theshrike79 »

sschueller wrote: post #87
r1ch wrote: 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…

Yeaaah, in Finland the sun just fucks off for multiple months over the winter.

It's much cheaper to take a few pills than it is to travel 3000km south to see the sun for 30 minutes :D

We even put Vitamin D in milk by default just so that people would get some extra.

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

#638

Post by arethuza »

matsemann wrote: post #220
arethuza wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From NHS Scotland: "In Scotland, we only get enough of the right kind of sunlight for our bodies to make vitamin D between April and September, mostly between 11am and 3pm." https://www.nhsinform.scot/healthy-living/food-and-nutrition... Personally I found that taking Vitamin D supplements made quite a bit of difference - and I spend a fair amount of time outside (~3 hours each day).

And in Norway we often don't see the sun during certain months, due to it only being up for a few hours in the middle of the day (when we're working). And even if I was outside I would be covered in clothes. We have a saying here to take cod liver oil all months ending with R (in Norwegian that's September to Februar) to get both omega 3 and the vitamin D.

Indeed, I was going to add that Scotland isn't really that far North (or indeed South) so there will be lots of places where the problem is far worse!

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

#639

Post by bamboozled »

majkinetor wrote: post #516
bamboozled wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the smell, texture and taste of coffee I love, not really the caffeine. I tried decaf, doesn't taste the same.

Find better decaf. Caffeine has no taste.

Don't the beans need to be processed to remove the caffeine ?

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

#640

Post by b800h »

jofzar wrote: post #139
b800h wrote: post #10

Can I just add: In addition to this, if you struggle with anxiety or have some sort of ADHD, then try cutting out caffeine entirely . Not just switching to "decaf" (which isn't), but cutting out tea and coffee, and switching to an alternative like Barleycup. Doing this has had a massive positive effect for me, and combined with decent nutrition and daily exercise, has been wonderful.

> Not just switching to "decaf" (which isn't) Going to argue here, this is wildly bad advice. Decaf practically has no caffeine, it has 2-7 mg from what I can tell which is less then chocolate. 2-7mg is like impossible to notice and might aswell be water with how little there is.

My advice was along the lines of saying, in the 1950s, "give up all cigarettes, not just 'low tar'". Potential straw man here, but surely you wouldn't call that "wildly bad advice".

My comment was predicated on the belief that we wildly underestimate the negative effects of caffeine, as well as its activities at lower doses.

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