Posted by Elainep on March 13, 2005, at 15:57:42
In reply to Re: Vitamin D and depression, posted by mystery road on March 10, 2005, at 19:59:06
Sorry to sound so adamant MR! I forget that I only had to deal with the medical profession for 5 months and I wasn't depressed, my daughter was. I can't imagine what it's like to be depressed for 10 years AND probably be sick to death of ahaving dealings of any kind with the medical profession. All I know from my experience is that depression is NOT something that's imagined or some kind of mental weakness: I really believe it's biochemistry.
Actually, that last post of mine was a follow up post to another one I wrote, which never seemed to have appeared. So it was meant to be a tag-on to my main post, where I described my daughter's symptoms and how they were treated and what happened with her blood levels and my other daughter's and my own.
So I'll repeat the story now, in the hopes that it might give you and others more info to base your own decisions on.
Jo had her first episode of depression in early November 2003. She was meant to read at a writers' night (she'd recently won an award for a piece of poetry) but when she came home from school she collapsed on the bed, crying, couldn't get up, didn't want to go, was terribly upset and in a dreadful state. I'd never seen anything like it. You have to understand that Jo has always been a person to tough it out, sensitive but confident, quiet but not unassured. Her teachers called her serious but positive: she was NEVER an overanxious child and never a pessimist either. She was 17.
I put it down to teenage angst and some strong criticism she'd received about her writing a month or so before, plus the fact that she hadn't been voted in as literary leader. Disappointment?
Summer is Dec-Mar down here in New zealand.
Jo was then fine all summer, until we went to Canada in January to go skiing. 2 days after we arrived at Whistler, she couldn't get out of bed, crying, fatigued, no interest in skiing (which she'd always loved). She came right after 2 days. Then we stopped off in Hawaii on the way back to NZ and the same thing happened. Wouldn't go out, lay on the bed, crying, tired, ill.
Again she was okay after a few days. Got back to NZ and she started her final year of highschool in February. A week into it she came down in a depressive jag agin, and told me there was something wrong. I hadn't known how bad her symptoms were in Canada and Hawaii, I'd just thought she was tired.
I took her to the GP, he ran blood tests for B vits and iron. Her iron was a bit low (it had been low the year before as well: she's a vegetarian) so he put her on iron supplements and suggested counselling.
We set her up with a counsellor and I made an appt with a psychiatrist for June (there's a very long waiting list here for psychiatrists, I set it up as a step to consider once we tried everything else for the next several months).
Then started a cycling pattern of 10 or so days ok, 2-3 days down. Also, in her 'normal' periods I saw signs of hypomania. For instance, she moved all of her furniture around in her room one night at midnight (it was a school night) Another time I talked to her on the phone and she was talking too quickly (very unlike her)about what she was going to do for an english assignment: then she couldn't concentrate to do it. The whole thing looked like cyclothymia to me, and I was very worried because I have an aunt who was diagnosed bipolar so I had some worry that it ran in the family.
In the meantime I immersed myself in sites like these, because I had rapidly lost faith in the medical profession (a second opinion doctor simply told me what antidepressants he'd put Jo on) No one suggested any other blood tests, and it was hard to find a nutritionist doctor here in NZ who could tell me more. I was very frustrated (sound familiar?)and I found that these sites with people suffering the disease of depression were far more informative than anything out there in the community that I could find. Thank goodness for the internet!
From these sites I became interested in nutrition and I ordered some books off amazon.com. I'd already put Jo onto fish oil and had Dr. Stoll's book, I had a light box, and I even bought a biotuner _ a thing that supposedly corrects your brainwaves with electricity. None of these things appeared to work, although I was hopeful the fish oil might come through eventually.
It was the nutrition books that came through in the end. I read all three in the weekend before Jo was due to see the psychiatrist, leaving the oldest one for last. On Sunday night I skimmed through it, and discovered ONE paragraph that related vit D to depression. It was the first time I'd ever seen anyone make a connection, and as I fell asleep that night it came to me that this was what was wrong with Jo.
Jo has never been that much of an outdoor girl, more of a reader writer and artist: and she'd followed the sunsmart campaign they ran here to prevent skin cancer (there's a very thin ozone layer down here)rigorously. She even wore a sun hat and suncream out to get the mail. So that's how I KNEW. My GP thought I was nuts (I took Jo in for a blood test the next afternoon after spending all morning on the internet and discovering that there were a few studies on vit D and depression: with incredibly good results).
Anyway, she came back very low, a DAY before due to see the psychiatrist (I cancelled) and was given a megadose of vit d after checking for her calcium and phosphorus levels. She was perfectly fine again in about 3 days. Jo's sister then got tested because she'd been a sun avoider too and came back low. When I got the girls retested 6 months later I got myself tested too and I was slightly low as well! I came to believe that the scientists are right when they predict 30-50% of the population are deficient in vit d. Anyway, here are the results for my family and what we've done about it, for your interest.
Jo, weight: 50-55 kg. First blood test was 16 nmol/l (normal range is 50-150 nmol/l). She was given a megadose of 6 pills: it was either 150,000iu, or else 300,000 iu. I suspect the latter, I'm sorry I didn't keep records.
For everyone's interest, in Europe it is common to give a megadose of 250,000 iu to deficient people. My GP has also since told me that elderly people in resthomes are commonly given a 50,000 iu pill once a month.
After one month, Jo's blood level was tested again: this time it was 86 nmol/l. She still wasn't making any effort to see the sun, so I put her on a 400iu a day supplement. She was tested again 6 months later, blood level was down to 68 nmol/l (in January 2005) so I have since put her on to 1000iu a day, and we'll get her tested again in July.
Jo's sister, Pat, who weighs about 70-72 kg, tested initially at 22 nmol/l. After the same megadose as Jo, she came back a month later at 72 nmol/l. She didn't supplement for six months, but tried basking in the sun most mornings for 15 minutes, her levels in January 05 had dropped to 67 nmol/l. So I've put her on 1000iu/day for the next six months to see what happens as well.
I also got tested in January and came back at 48 nmol/l. My GP was shocked: he'd seen my tanned arms for himself (plus it was midsummer here!) So I am also supplementing at 1000iu a day.
I suspect that even 1000iu a day may not be enough for my daughters and I to sustain the right level of vit D. In July if I'm still low I'll ask for some kind of megadose (maybe a 50,000iu pill) from my GP to top me up. If my daughters and I are still falling, I'll up us to 2000iu a day for six months and see what that does.
MR, you see I am naturally conservative, plus I like to know exactly what's going on. I'm running my family's blood levels as a scientific experiment for 3 years or so, so by the time my daughters go overseas or live far far away they will have a good handle on what they need to do to keep their own vit d levels in the right range. I should add that since the vit D megadose, both girls iron levels are also normal now (apparently vit d aids iron absorption amongst everything else it does!)
As for my advice to you, I think you could try 4000iu a day quite quickly, I don't think you need to lead up to it. The Solgar 1000iu a day capsules are tiny, 4 of them would only be about the size of 1 fish oil capsule, so it's not a lot of oil that you're swallowing. And even when both my daughters swallowed a megadose, they had absolutely no side effects (no nausea no nothing). I guess I worry that even 4000iu a day may take quite some time to knock you back into the normal range, and so I guess you can see my scientific concerns of: say you are really low like Jo was and you start off at 16, after a few months at 4000 you may still be low so it may not be regulating your moods normally again. Also, Jo and Pat reacted quite differently to the megadose in that Jo went up nearly 70 nmol/l (68) wheras Pat only went up 50. So it's clear that body mass and other things have an effect as well.
Anyway, I've given you all the info I can from my neck of the woods. I'd just again like to suggest to people out there who don't think they have typical SAD symptoms (maybe they have cyclothymia, or depressions in the summer) that it still could be Vit D and be certain you look into it!
Oh, final words. Make sure if you supplement it's vit D3, not D2. And watch out for the vit D and A supplements, try to find a vit D only supplement.
Good luck MR, I really have my fingers crossed for you.
Elainep
poster:Elainep
thread:410247
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20050225/msgs/470537.html