why is this nonsense trending here? this is a random blog
Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
641–650 of 669 posts
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#642How many people have depression without vitamin D deficiency? And how many people have vitamin D deficiency, but no depression? Are there any studies about that?
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#643Earlier quoted context omitted.
Find better decaf. Caffeine has no taste.
Don't the beans need to be processed to remove the caffeine ?
The quality of the coffee depends on the technique used (and who does it). Yes, most decaf coffees suck, but there are some very good you can find. For example, Arpeggio [1] is for me and few people I know the best of all Nespreso coffees. In specialized coffee bars you can get amazing decafs.
[1]: https://www.nespresso.com/us/en/order/capsules/original/arpe...
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#644Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Chemistry trumps psychology To nitpick: The mind is applied biochemistry. Psychology intervenes in the chemistry, like many other activities do. The goal of that is to solve the root cause so that your future levels will be maintained at the right level, instead of just forcing the level by sourcing the respective chemicals externally. A good rule of thumb in biology and particular any kind of hormone production an…
>A good rule of thumb in biology and particular any kind of hormone production and balance is "use it or lose it" - Very basic and very often wrong rule, so take it with a grain of salt. Insulin for example is the opposite. "lose it then use it" would be a general rule for type 2 diabetics where insulin resistance commonly due to weight gain is the primary problem. Losing the weight leads to better uptake and usage.…
> Insulin for example is the opposite.
You're describing entirely orthogonal issues. In case of insulin resistance, your natural production is running full blast with demand exceeding supply because the consumer stopped caring about the hormone. In case of autoimmune disease, the natural production was killed - you can neither use nor lose what is already dead, and even if some capacity was left it will either soon be killed or atrophy under external insulin, but it will not be mourned.
So no I would say it is exactly the same - "use it or lose it" - but that does not mean that there is never a reason to manually overrule your body's attempt at homeostasis through direct manipulation. It just means that there is a very significant consequence to the process.
> The body itself typically attempts to main homeostasis, but at population scales this is something that is going to have a massive range of ways it shows up.
As a somewhat sidenote, this is also why I dislike the idea of trying to classify people into "normal" and "divergent/atypical". In my eyes we're all normal people and an entirely normal aspect of being a human is that we all differ and have individually specific needs by virtue of being built by a trillion micro-meter sized workers, each with their own hand-copied version of the blueprint, only caring about the millimeter of you in their immediate vincinity and not really talking to any of the others.
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#645Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Researchers have noticed it for 13 years! From the linked Ghaemi et al 2024 meta-analysis You’re cherry picking papers. Others have already shared other studies showing no significant effects of Vitamin D intervention. For any popular supplement you can find someone publishing papers with miraculous results, showing huge effect sizes and significant outcomes. This has been going on for decades. With Omega-3s the la…
the larger the trial size, the smaller the outcome I find this a bit surprising. Could there be something else affecting the accuracy of larger trials? Perhaps they are not as careful, or cutting corners somewhere?
No, the other way around. It's the combination of two well known effects. Well, three if you're uncharitable.
1. Small studies are more likely to give anomalous results by chance. If I pick three people at random, it's not that surprising if I happened to get three women. It would be a lot different if I sampled 1,000 people.
2. Studies that show any positive result tend to get published, and ones that don't tend to get binned.
Put those together, and you see a lot of tiny studies with small positive results. When you do a proper study, the effect goes away. Exactly as you would expect.
The less charitable effect is "they made it up". It happens.
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#646Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Chemistry trumps psychology To nitpick: The mind is applied biochemistry. Psychology intervenes in the chemistry, like many other activities do. The goal of that is to solve the root cause so that your future levels will be maintained at the right level, instead of just forcing the level by sourcing the respective chemicals externally. A good rule of thumb in biology and particular any kind of hormone production an…
>A good rule of thumb in biology and particular any kind of hormone production and balance is "use it or lose it" - if you start regularly receiving something externally, internal production will scale back and atrophy in response, in many cases permanently. There are ways to "hack it". For example, ~6 months ago I started trt (testosterone replacement). It was the best decision health wise ever. I feel way better ps…
> Some cancerous tumors produce this hormone; therefore, elevated levels measured when the patient is not pregnant may lead to a diagnosis of cancer and, if high enough, of paraneoplastic syndromes. It is unknown however whether this production is a contributing cause or an effect of carcinogenesis.
Interesting.
Well, I don't think you'll be able to avoid testicle atrophy even if it minimizes it, but the important part is understanding the tradeoff. Particularly, that adding testosterone will cause changes throughout your entire body (including, for example, shortening life expectancy a bit), and that adding other hormones to the mix will likewise cause changes around the entire body and not just one single process or organ.
But it's your body, your life, your priorities and decision. I also wouldn't consider it a good decision health-wise to take steroids to get huge, but I have no problem with someone deciding that absurd bulk is their main goal in life and worth the tradeoff.
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#647> due to some quirk of evolution, Omega-3, -6, and -9 are the ones biological life uses most. As far as I can tell, there's no specific reason they're all multiples of 3. Probably just a coincidence.
This curio bothered me as well. I didn't yet get a fully satisfying explanation for this either.
There's this diagram, showing for example the full pathway of how linoleic acid catabolizes: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Linoleic_acid_beta_o...
It shows dependencies of the process onto several very specific molecular machines we call enzymes.
(main pathway, handling saturated fatty acids)
° Acyl CoA dehydrogenase -- removes 2 hydrogens from carbons immediately after the carboxylic head, forming a π-bond (double-bond) between the α-β carbons;
° Enoyl CoA hydratase -- adds water as H-OH to that α-β carbons π-bond;
° 3-hydroxyacyl CoA dehydrogenase -- converts the added -OH hydroxyl group to =O keto group;
° β-ketothiolase -- grabs the two keto groups, and snips off 2 carbons from the chain, carrying them off in bound form as a molecule of acyl-CoA;
° Dienoyl CoA reductase -- collapses two neighboring π-bonds into one;
° Enoyl CoA isomerase -- converts cis- to trans- variants, making them compatible with Enoyl CoA hydratase. Pathway continues from there.
Besides catalysis (combustion of the acids for energy), the two other paths for consumed fatty acids are excretion, and laying them into cell walls and membranes. These two paths aren't selective; they mostly don't care about the length of the chain, and where which π-bonds occur in it, if any.
So this must imply, that the "quirk of evolution" lives somewhere on the anabolic (synthesis/production) side of fatty acids; definitely not on the catabolic side.
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#648Earlier quoted context omitted.
look my other comment for niacin
That’s B3 for nerve and dna repair if I understand correctly. I notice a difference after eating non vegetarian food but since I also have IBS, my absorption can be a hit or miss. A very balanced and nutrient rich diet with good sleep and exercise is the start to mental health recovery. People often forget how important all this is.
for ibs: no coffee, milk (any milk), vegetable oils, wheats, soy, or anything from USA :D and no sugar or alco
then slippery elm and probiotics, d-vitamin + c-vitamin.
fasting, intermediate is also helpful.
add berries and yes, beef meat and lots of greens.
with strict diet ibs goes better.
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#649I 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…
>he's a real Dr. Careful, he is also a believer in Ayurveda[1]. Which basically basically categorizes people into different elements like fire and water and then tries to change their diet and habits to match their elemental style or something. You can hear him talking about it here [2]. Kinda reminds me of Humorism [3]. Dr. K seems like a nice enough guy but don't get too lured in by the "Harvard-trained" credential…
Definitely agree. He sometimes says things that sound interesting or true, but for the most part I believe he is full of it.
The field of psychology is barely removed from charlatanism anyway, having a diploma from Harvard doesn't change that.
Re: Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants
#650Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> but rather that they're abused by psychiatrists Doctors of all countries have been under a lot of pressure by patients and health administrators to "fix the issue and quick". The last thing that your doctor wants is giving you pills so you go away, but that's what the context very strongly incentivize. You want doctors to stop abusing pills, stop asking them for immediate fix. Give them less patients, more time and…
> The last thing that your doctor wants is giving you pills so you go away
Except for all the doctors who do want just that.
> Doctors of all countries have been under a lot of pressure by patients and health administrators to "fix the issue and quick"
While such patients exist, I don't believe they're a global majority, and the group of patients who want the exact opposite, more time rather than "quick", is the bigger out of the two.
Literally a few comments down from this one:
> N=1, but last yearly physical my primary care doctor asked me if I ever had anxiety. I said yes, but that I wasn't really interested in treating it outside of lifestyle change. They asked if I wanted a prescription for prozac, without explaining anything about how to does it or titrate up or down or a time frame. I said I wasn't interested again, and that I particularly didn't want to take any medications that you can't just stop taking one day on a whim (a statement she didn't respond to). She then proceeded to say "well I'll just write you the prescription anyway and you can do your research later and decide to fill it or not".
> I was actually shocked by this interaction, and think about it often. She's a regular family doctor with the local hospital system, and this was just a regular checkup. I answered one question with a "yes, but it's manageable and I think I can handle it with lifestyle change" and then said no twice to medication and ended up with a prescription, which I ignored but don't appreciate having on my record, since it's a false indicator for future prescribing physicians.