Vitamin D supplementation may help reduce the symptoms of depression, new results of an updated meta-analysis show.
“People who were vitamin D deficient and depressed seemed to respond best to supplementation, but there was some evidence that supplementation improved depressive symptoms in people who had a normal level of vitamin D,” Marissa Flaherty, MD, of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, told Medscape Medical News.
Don’t I keep telling you guys, there are some good doctors out there? Not everybody in the medical profession is corrupted (yet).
This is very refreshing, to find orthodox doctors on the same page as me.
If you don’t know it, I just published a MASSIVE book on the ills of psychiatry and what to REALLY do about mental health symptoms. I take the position that almost nobody is psychiatrically ill. It’s nearly always some undiagnosed physical state which makes the patient think or feel bad: things like food allergies, hormonal imbalance or… yes, vitamin deficiencies.
Depression is for sure an inflammatory condition. In my book, I even speculated that was why SSRIs sometimes “work”. They have proven anti-inflammatory properties. So absolutely NOTHING to do with serotonin! Ha ha!
I also cited a study showing the curcumin from turmeric was as good as, or even better than, real “anti-depressants”. Go figure, as you Americans say.
Globally, more than 300 million people suffer from depression. It’s the number one cause of years lost to disability worldwide. In the United States, the overall prevalence of vitamin D deficiency hovers around 42%, with the highest rate seen in blacks.
In her third year of residency, Dr. Flaherty noticed that a lot of my depressed patients had very low vitamin D levels, and when she supplemented their vitamin D, their depressive symptoms, particularly their fatigue and energy levels, would noticeably improve.
To investigate further, Flaherty and her colleagues conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of five randomized controlled trials published from 2011 to 2016 that examined the effect of vitamin D supplementation (vs no supplementation) on depressive symptoms, as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale.
In the pooled data analysis, Flaherty and her colleagues found that vitamin D supplementation clearly improved depressive symptoms.
I think all doctors should check vitamin D levels and supplement when needed, she said.
I applaud that.
You know in the 1970s Thomas Szasz MD published a controversial book entitled The Myth Of Mental Illness. His main concern was always the abuse of psychiatric power, where people are coerced, or deceived, into accepting bogus “treatments” for their metaphorical “illnesses.” His view, like mine, is that people really suffer from what he called “problems with living”, not a fleshly disease.
He was probably the first psychiatrist to deny that homosexuality is a disease, thus paving the way for gay rights. “Gay” is something of a misnomer, since people of that persuasion are only superficially merry and free. Most are hurting deeply within, and I don’t just mean about not being recognized. I think most of them are as puzzled as the rest of us about the homosexual phenomenon.
I’m not gay-bashing or homophobic, so don’t bother to write to me and put me straight! The truth is a major 2015 study has found that homosexuals are less personally fulfilled, have more health problems, and are not as happy in their relationships as “straight” people.
Participants are followed over time, and in-depth interviews are conducted annually with all adult members of each household.
Gay, lesbian, and bisexual people fare far worse than heterosexual people on literally all well-being and social support measures studied, and such homosexuals consistently reported significantly lower “life satisfaction.” So it’s just me saying it.
The point I want to make is not a moral one. It’s that lots of supposed “mental illness” is really just the stress of living and/or physical factors. In the case of homosexuality, one might point to the increased estrogenic burden in the environment, resulting in well-documented gender problems. But of course, that would not explain lesbianism particularly.
Conclusion: we have no right to interfere or moralize until we know more than we do.
Unfortunately, psychiatry subsumes the right to “meddle”, under the directives of Big Pharma, and the nonsense claims that chemicals are the real answer to an unhappy life. It can never be. Anti-depressants will no more solve misery than will cocaine or getting drunk (two very common choices).
Couple this vast ineptitude with the fact there is a large body of data pointing to mental health, well-being and healing being brought about by attention to diet, lifestyle and other physical factors and the old expression “barking up the wrong tree” seems more expressively put as “yapping in the wrong forest”!
In my new book Real Secrets To Transforming Mental Health (aka “Holistic Psychiatry”) I have collected a vast body of data and methods that point to the fact that a happy, fulfilling and consequently longer life is not a matter of pill-popping but a matter of living “the good life” as nature intended it.
Just some of the topics I’ve covered are:
- Violent gun crime (a well-documented effect of the Prozac family of drugs)
- The Suffering Seven (Schizophrenia, depression, bipolar, anxiety states, dementia, minimal brain dysfunction (like autism and ADHD) and addiction states.
- Is grief an illness? Bereavement could be big business if a drug solution can be pushed on people.
- Flower remedies, to adjust mood and temperament.
- Hypoglycemia (one of the most dramatic mental phenomena)
- Hyperventilation (know what that is?)
- Discarnate entities and “hungry ghosts”.
- Pyrroluria and excess or deficient histamine states.
- Spiritual emergencies (better called exceptional human experiences)
- I even looked at meteorological stress (how weather affects moods)
But I have also written a great deal about the principles of holistic living, stress as it applies to all of us and methods of staying in good humor!
Even loneliness is covered as a health topic (it has the same damaging impact as obesity or smoking 15 cigarettes daily).
Get yourself a copy of this historic book here!
It has over 350 citations. It’s based TOTALLY on fact. It’s 450+ pages and weighs a bunch; so watch out for shipping costs!