Posted by Elainep on February 5, 2005, at 15:55:07
In reply to Re: Vitamin D is likely better than a lightbox for SAD, posted by Shortelise on February 5, 2005, at 1:50:31
Sorry if it sounds like a personal crusade, ShortE. You don't know me at all and I have just popped up randomly on this board from nowhere, so I certainly don't blame you and it's always good to be skeptical. It's not exactly a personal crusade, although it does have elements of that, if I'm perfectly honest, because I'm a mother and mothers tend to go overboard when their kids are in trouble.
My background is I'm a scientist with a PhD, I'm 47 years old, and my perfect life was blown apart last year when my daughter,I'll call her Jo, who was then 17, came down with depression,punctuated with periods of what looked like hypomania to me. I was terrified it was more serious than 'just depression', because I have an aunt who was diagnosed with bipolar some 40 years ago.
My GP was as helpful as he could be and gave Jo all kinds of blood tests, all the B vitamins and iron (she's a teenage vegetarian)to see if it was a nutritional deficiency. But she came up fine on everything he tested for. I took her for a second opinion and the guy didn't do any blood tests, just immediately said he'd prescribe her some kind of antidepressant. I said no, I'd wait for her to see a psychiatrist I had her booked into. I was almost depressed myself after that meeting, I'd already read up on antidepressants and knew the side effects. I was especially concerned that if it was bipolar rather than 'just depression', the antidepressant the last guy was prescribing could send her into a manic state. I was nearly in a manic state myself, I admit, all the fear of consequences, but also knowing something had to be done, I'm sure many people on this site can relate to that. I decided I really had to wait it out to speak to the psychiatrist -the waiting list was several months to get into see him. I live in New Zealand, which is small without that many psychiatrists on the register, especially ones who see children and adolescents.
In the meantime I was doing what I know best, which is research. I started digging on sites like this, reading about people's stories and looking for help from people who had the same problems as Jo, because I figured they possibly knew more than the doctors did. Eventually I read a few posts about omega3 and bipolar (I don't know if it was this site, I think it was one more devoted to bipolar)and I became very interested in the whole nutrition/depression thing myself. I ordered about 5 books from amazon.com about nutrition and depression, and one, an old one from the eighties, had one paragraph about vitamin D and depression. It was the first time I'd ever seen anyone suggest a link between the two. I remember it was a Sunday night and just as I was dropping off to sleep the paragraph hit me and I knew it was Jo's problem. Not because I'm a medical doctor, but because I'm a mother who knew her daughter's behavior better than most. In New Zealand they've been running a 'Sunsmart' campaign for kids for years, telling them to 'slip slop slap' the suncream because we have a thin ozone layer down here (like Australia) and you burn really easily. So there's a high prevalence of skin cancer. Jo took this message to heart, plus as a typically vain teenager she decided she never wanted to get old and wrinkled (people also weather more down here because of the high burn exposure)so she constantly wore a hat and suncream when she went outside, even just to pick up the mail. She'd been doing this for years, and I just knew she hadn't seen any sun for a long time. Sounds crazy, but the extreme behaviour on her part made my own mental diagnosis easy. So I went back to my GP. He thought I was nuts quite frankly, and I did feel like an overdramatic mother, but the thing is, a vitamin D test IS really easy, so just to put my mind at ease he tested her. She came back with a very low level, I mean REALLY low, and he gave her a megadose of calciferol (he had to do more blood tests first for calcium and phosphorus before she could take the dosage), and then I swear she was better in less than a week. Really. I can't quite credit it myself, but there it is. She's been more than fine ever since (9 months later) and we just had her vit D levels re-tested. They'd dropped because she still hasn't been seeing the sun, so I've had her dosing with a good vit D supplement from Solgar (the english brand, not the American because the American one includes vit A).
Now, I don't think that Vitamin D is necessarily the miracle cure for any of you out there, but it IS easy to test for and I don't see that your doctors should protest too much on that. Then you'll know one way or the other. I should also tell you that I tested low myself (I got tested just out of curiosity) even though I don't avoid the sun or any such thing like my daughter. I wasn't really low like her, but I was just under the recommended blood level. And Jo's sister was halfway between Jo and I. I certainly have had no symptoms of depression or anything else and neither had Jo's sister, so I was a little shocked to find out we were both deficient too. I've read several articles since where scientists are suggesting 30%-50% of people are deficient in Vit D because of our indoor lifestyles and 'sunsmart' policies. I wear mositurisers with SPF15 every day, as recommended...
So is this a personal crusade? Not exactly. I put the link on this site because I've just had a nephew visiting from Canada and he was admitting to feeling a bit blue so we got talking about Vitamin D and I just decided on impulse to send the knowledge out to people who may be interested, like you lot. What I discovered in my own research is that the doctors are miles behind the scientists on this one, and the scientists are just beginning to scrape the barrel of what they're finding. I could be cynical here and say because there's no money in it (no copyright) the drug companies aren't interested and that's why so little research is being done, but whatever the issue the weblink I gave on my earlier post sums up my own feeling pretty well: I don't want to give anyone false hope, but it IS something worth getting tested for, if only to tick it off your list as something that isn't an issue with you. Get tested, it won't cost you much, and then you'll know.
Good luck!
ElaineP
> Honestly, this link sounds like someone's personal crusade.
>
> BUT ... I will ask my doc if I need to consider this, and if I could get a test for vit D. I think it's worth considering.
>
> There were people who thought the idea that ulcers being caused by bacteria was nonsense. WAy before that, there were people who thought the idea of *bacteria* was nonsense.
>
> So, I'm paying attention.
>
> Thanks
> ShortE
poster:Elainep
thread:451955
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20050131/msgs/453679.html