Posted by dive407 on April 4, 2005, at 21:45:03
In reply to Re: Cyclothymia mood stabilizers, posted by Elainep on March 5, 2005, at 15:20:04
Hi Elaine and Quincy
I have just begun to investigate cyclothymia and am intrigued by the connection you alluded to between Vit D, hypothyroid, SAD and this rapid cycling I have been experiencing for over 25 years.
We recently returned to southern Canada from 2 weeks of sunshine in Florida and I fell inexplicably into a deep depression. My sister speculated that the crash may be attributable to the return to a cold climate where we generally avoid being outside-expecially after acclimatizing somehat to the warmth of Florida. She suggested I try full spectrum flourescent lighting-and I am just as likely to do that as I am to supplement with Vitamin D.
I work with two adolescent psychiatrists with children in care and thus am cautious about meds. Yet I am actually looking forward to discussing all of this with a psychiatrist in the near future.
I really look forward to reviewing all of the threads written over the past five years and greatly anticipate sharing and (mostly) learning.
regards
Dave
> Hi Quincy
>
> Your symptoms sound so creepily similar to my daughter's that I wanted to reply. I've written elsewhere on this post, see the whole set of
>
> http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20050131/msgs/451955.html
>
> But what I want to ask you, before you continue to see a counselor or seek out a psychiatrist, is some lifestyle questions.
>
> You see, my daughter eventually was diagnosed with a severe vitamin D deficiency and she never had to see a psychiatrist at all in the end.
>
> So what I want you to ask yourself is, do you see less sun than you did as a child, or 5 years ago, for any reason? Do you have an indoor lifestyle? Do you have any other symptoms like a sore back or (I know this will sound kind of weird) a clicking jaw? If you've travelled to another time zone, has that brought on a 'low' incident? Do you have any scoleosis (curved spine) or other structural skeletal anomolies?
>
> If you think you're not a very sunshine kind of person, and you don't eat much oily fish or egg yolks on a regular basis, you could be suffering from vit D deficiency, even if you eat vit D fortified foods (which are generally fortified with vit D2 rather than D3).
>
> Regardless, it might be worth checking this connection out, before you take anything else any further. If you follow the thread I gave in the ref above, you'll find a whole lot of references I've posted that refer to the fact that vit D deficiency is becoming widespread in the population again, and one of the symptoms is depression. Cyclothymia is what what my daughter had, she'd be okay for a couple of weeks, then come down again for 3 or 4 days. It was definitely a pattern with no triggering incidents that we could see. AND it happened at the end of the summer, not in the middle of the winter like SAD is supposed to express itself. It turned out she just hadn't been getting enough sun (for years) and had a major deficiency. I should also say that I have a minor vit D deficiency myself , despite seeing an awful lot more sun than my daughter. I'm neither sun seeking nor sun avoiding.
>
> So if you're wanting to check out alternatives before you go the whole hog of medication, please check out my other posts and read about my daughter's story.
>
> Good luck
>
> Elainep
>
poster:dive407
thread:9730
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050404/msgs/479894.html