
Irish scientists prove Vitamin D levels linked to depression - Flott
https://www.irishcentral.com/news/trinity-dublin-irish-scientists-vitamin-d-depression
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pc2g4d
"scientists prove"

Somebody needs to read some Kuhn :-P

Vitamin D deficiency correlates strongly with time spent sitting around
indoors. They control for physical activity, but not for time spent indoors as
far as I can tell from the linked article. Separating time indoors from
vitamin D levels would seem to be a tricky endeavor, so it's understandable
that that's left uncontrolled.

A vitamin D-depression connection would make some sense. Given that humans
largely evolved spending much more time outdoors than modern humans,
deleterious effects of indoor life would not be surprising. +75% sounds like
an extremely strong effect size deserving of some skepticism.

The original source: [https://tilda.tcd.ie/news-events/2018/1813-vitd-
depression/](https://tilda.tcd.ie/news-events/2018/1813-vitd-depression/)

~~~
mygo
I studied vertebrate physiology in college and Vitamin D is a bit of a
misnomer, because it’s not really a vitamin, it acts as a hormone. And
although Vitamin D is known as the “sunshine vitamin”, you can get it as a
supplement. There’s no telling how many people in the study took it as a
supplement vs getting it naturally from the sun. But a vitamin D deficiency is
a hormonal deficiency. Whether or not they got their hormonal balance from the
sun or from a supplement shouldn’t matter so much. And being a hormone, its
deficiency can have different symptoms for different people. Depression is a
common one.

You can take a vitamin D supplement and stay indoors or otherwise keep your
routine and still receive the hormonal benefits if you are deficient.

~~~
ionised
I thought supplements were generally considered a scam, as our bodies
won't/can't absorb vitamins in that form, we need to absorb them from food or
sunlight.

~~~
mygo
It's fat-soluble so you're not as likely to just piss it out like the usual
vitamins. D3 gets pretty good absorption. I wouldn't take it as a dry pill, if
they even manufacture it like that. Get it in a liquid gel format that has it
suspended in lipids. Take it with a meal or after.

If you really want to be anal about it, best move is to get your levels tested
and then start supplementing and test levels again after a month, then up or
down your dosage accordingly till you know how much you need to be taking
daily. Most people depending on ethnicity, lifestyle/occupation, and locale
just take like 500 - 5,000 IU D3 daily. If you're a white dude who goes
surfing every day on the equator, you're probably good. If you're a black dude
with a desk job, there's about a 90% chance you're deficient.

A doctor can diagnose extreme deficiency and might put you on like 50,000+ IU
/ week for a short while.

------
SpikeDad
I'm always skeptical when ground breaking research is only discussed in one
specific journal, commented on only people who participated in the study or
work for the journal and all who are vested in a specific country where the
study was performed.

There really needs to be a lot more discussion over the specific scientific
realms with lots more independent commentary on the study and results.

And as comes up frequently in human psychological issues repeatability is the
gold standard and there isn't any in this specific case.

And humans and their behaviors are so complicated and so difficult to quantify
that it seems so unlikely that one specific substance would be a "miracle
cure" for human depression.

