blueangel
01-07-11, 09:10
Hi all
I went to see my GP yesterday to review my progress on citalopram, and he was telling me about some fairly recent research on anxiety and depression.
Rates of anxiety and depression increase the nearer the North and South poles you go - obviously, a big part of this is exposure to light, and the links with Seasonal Affective Disorder.
However, something else that has just been picked up is a link with Vitamin D deficiency. Our major provider of Vitamin D is the sun, as we synthesise it through our skins. Dark-skinned people (e.g. Asians, Africans) don't synthesise quite as much as fair-skinned people, as the body works on the assumption that they are going to receve far more exposure to the sun.
In the far Northern and Southern hemispheres, somewhere between 70% and 90% (!) of dark-skinned people are deficient in Vitamin D, some severely. Fair-skinned people have problems with this too, as between 30% and 50% of them are lacking it as well.
We store Vitamin D in our livers, and our supply of it can last for a few months. What tends to happen though is that by about April or May, these supplies have gone - and guess what, rates of depression climb very steeply in these months!
He has recommended that I give Vitamin D a try - it's not one of the vitamins that are toxic in large doses, but evidently there are high dose tablets for sale in most chemists that will do the job fine if you take one a day in the summer and two in the winter.
Hope this helps someone.
I went to see my GP yesterday to review my progress on citalopram, and he was telling me about some fairly recent research on anxiety and depression.
Rates of anxiety and depression increase the nearer the North and South poles you go - obviously, a big part of this is exposure to light, and the links with Seasonal Affective Disorder.
However, something else that has just been picked up is a link with Vitamin D deficiency. Our major provider of Vitamin D is the sun, as we synthesise it through our skins. Dark-skinned people (e.g. Asians, Africans) don't synthesise quite as much as fair-skinned people, as the body works on the assumption that they are going to receve far more exposure to the sun.
In the far Northern and Southern hemispheres, somewhere between 70% and 90% (!) of dark-skinned people are deficient in Vitamin D, some severely. Fair-skinned people have problems with this too, as between 30% and 50% of them are lacking it as well.
We store Vitamin D in our livers, and our supply of it can last for a few months. What tends to happen though is that by about April or May, these supplies have gone - and guess what, rates of depression climb very steeply in these months!
He has recommended that I give Vitamin D a try - it's not one of the vitamins that are toxic in large doses, but evidently there are high dose tablets for sale in most chemists that will do the job fine if you take one a day in the summer and two in the winter.
Hope this helps someone.