Our bodies need the right amount of vitamin D to function normally – both physically and mentally – and there is a growing amount of evidence linking vitamin D deficiency to depression.
Now, a new analysis of 41 previous studies suggests that taking vitamin D supplements can relieve depressive symptoms in people already diagnosed with depression, opening up a potential alternative treatment option, according to RT.
In addition to controlling calcium and phosphate levels in the body, vitamin D is thought to help regulate various functions in the central nervous system — and previous animal research suggests that it can contribute to controlling chemical balances in the brain, which may explain the link between vitamin D. (d) mental health.
“These findings will encourage new high-level clinical trials in patients with depression in order to shed more light on the potential role of vitamin D supplementation in the treatment of depression,” says Thomas Mikkola, PhD researcher and principal investigator at the University of Eastern Finland.
The new analysis covered a total of 53,235 study participants from 41 studies, including people with and without depression, people taking vitamin D supplements and people taking placebos, and individuals with a variety of physical conditions.
While the doses used varied, the typical vitamin D supplement was 50-100 mcg per day. In depressed participants, vitamin D supplements were found to be more effective than placebos at relieving depressive symptoms.
The researchers reported that vitamin D supplementation appears to be most effective for shorter periods (less than 12 weeks). However, in healthy individuals, placebos had a slightly greater effect on depressive symptoms.
“Our results indicate that vitamin D supplementation has beneficial effects both in individuals with major depressive disorder as well as in subjects with milder and clinically severe depressive symptoms,” the researchers wrote in their published paper.
With depression now recognized as the leading cause of disability worldwide – affecting more than 280 million of us each year – and antidepressants not being effective for everyone, more treatment options must urgently be explored.
However, before we get ahead of ourselves, the data we have so far isn’t enough to prove that low vitamin D levels cause depression, or that supplementation is an effective treatment. Although this new analysis shows an association, previous research has not been entirely conclusive.
While analysis like this is useful for comparing results across a large number of people, the different methods and factors in each individual study make it difficult to draw general conclusions – although much work has been done to correlate the information across the studies as a whole.
#study. #Vitamin #relieves #symptoms #troubling #common #condition