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

> So why are all the official sources still so paranoid about Vitamin D

It is fat soluble vitamin, together with A, E and K. That in itself makes in more risky in terms of overdose. I didn't hear of any cases outside kids eating jars of vitamin gummies but it does happen.

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.

I would take these articles about vitamin D with a grain of salt, there is a big vitamin D supplement and testing market and most of the studies about the miracles of it are dubious at best

I eat so much vitamin d and omega 3 i should be shitting fish shitting sunshine... and yet, cold baltic winters with only a few hours of sun still make me depressed.

How many of you feel worse when taking vitamin D supplements? Alternatively how many of you feel only temporarily better?

Please talk to a doctor if you're curious about this instead of following this advice. Megadosing vitamins and supplements comes with risks not addressed by the author.

A very important article for the hacker news community. Maybe we should pin this on the top for a couple of days.

Wrong unit in text, right? Graphs shows UI. 5000 UI would mean 125µg of D-vitamin. Which is a bit smaller than 5000 000 µg from the next

Homemade Avocado toast is easy and inexpensive

> The twisted kink is caused by the hydrogens being on opposite sides, hence "trans". (And yes, if they're on the same side it's "cis". Latin was a mistake.)

Why you being mean to latin? ;)

Scott Alexander observes in this piece https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/all-medications-are-insigni... that the effect size for even EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE medications are remarkably low.

> Zolpidem (“Ambien”) has effect size around 0.39 for getting you to sleep faster. Ibuprofen (“Advil”, “Motrin”) has effect sizes between from about 0.20 (for surgical pain) to 0.42 (for arthritis). All of these are around the 0.30 effect size of antidepressants.

...

> Some of our favorite medications, including statins, anticholinergics, and bisphosphonates, don’t reach the 0.50 level. And many more, including triptans, benzodiazepines (!), and Ritalin (!!) don’t reach 0.875.

As for why, read his essay I guess. But I wouldn't take at face value the interpretation of effect sizes in the original article.

(I also couldn't say why the effect size of vit D and Omega-3's is so large, although per Scott Alexander's article if fewer people drop out of the treatment group, that should increase the effect size, so maybe the relative tolerability of the treatments is part of the story?)

can only say, if you have depression or mental problems: NIACIN. not the niconinamid or whatever which is a scam. do not drink alco or smoke! kidneys will suffer.

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.

I started back on Vitamin-D and Omega-3 (with extra EPA & DHA) about 2 months ago or so. Sadly, I don't feel much of a difference, but I believe the potential harms are quite minimal, so I am going to maintain supplementation for the purposes of self-experimentation.

The article even states that nothing here is written in certainty. It’s just pure speculation. No, fish oil and vitamin D do not have a larger effect than SSRIs for depression.

Not to say they don’t help, but it’s asinine to state that nutrients are a replacement for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, whose sole purpose is to help with depression, and has been designed by an army of scientists, researchers, psychologists, psychiatrists.

> "mild hypercalcemia" increased from 3% to 9%. IMHO, that's a small cost for reducing the risk of major depression & suicide."

- I believe this crucial bit is missing from TLDR

Also magnesium! Magnesium bisglycinate, in particular. Great stuff.

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 in your ideologically confined science denial this time.

[0] https://scitechdaily.com/simple-three-nutrient-blend-rapidly...

Can confirm. Since I take 20000 IU vitamin D every sunday, my winter depression is gone.

Staying awake is an antidepressant, up to a limit.

then it would suggest why depression gets worse in colder and less sunny part of the year. That even has its own name - Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

Yeah, I call bullshit. Tried both, and SSRIs are a godsend.

Over the last few months, I’ve increasingly come to believe that depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance. After trying ten different antidepressants with no success, I found far greater improvement by changing my patterns of thinking.

The amount of people in this thread rejecting behavioral health as a legitimate science/field and calling for bootstraps to solve depression et al. is wild to see. So many anecdotes and grand statements saying that it’s all nonsense. Very sad to see.

My dad if he was alive would have shouted "I told you so"

wait till they discover sex, drugs and alcohol :)

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Your body makes Vitamin D when in sunlight. Could it be that sunlight - and the whole being outdoors situation - is the thing that helps rather than vitamin d levels?