If you wake up feeling kind of “blue” or “down in the dumps” day after day and can’t see any reason why you are feeling this way, you may be suffering from a vitamin D deficiency. This is because researchers are now finding that there is a relationship between vitamin D deficiency and depression.
Two studies on vitamin D deficiency
In fact, there are two studies done recently that found a link between a vitamin D deficiency and depression.
One of these studies involved more than 400 overweight or obese people. Those who had vitamin D levels less than 16 ng/ml were found to have significantly higher levels of depression than those patients whose blood levels were higher than 16 ng/ml. The patients with the lower levels were given vitamin D over the course of a year and showed a significant improvement in their depression.
In a second study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers in the Netherlands studied more than 1200 patients over the age of 65. The study found that 169 patients with minor depression and 26 patients with major depression showed vitamin D levels 14% lower than the 1,000 control patients. Just as important, these findings held up after many other factors had been controlled for such as body mass index, age, level of physical activity and smoking status.
Vitamin D and SAD
It has also been shown that there is more than likely a link between vitamin D and Seasonal Attitude Disorder (SAD). During the winter, many people suffer from this disorder because of a lack of exposure to sunlight.
The reason for this is that sunlight triggers our bodies to manufacture vitamin D. In fact, vitamin D is the only vitamin our bodies create. It is manufactured endogenously when ultraviolet rays from sunlight strike the skin and trigger vitamin D synthesis.
Vitamin D is technically not a vitamin. Its metabolic product, calcitriol, is actually a secosteroid hormone that targets more than 2000 genes in the human body or about 10% of the human genome. Today’s research has implicated a vitamin D deficiency as a major factor in the pathology of at least 17 varieties of cancer as well as muscle wasting, heart disease, hypertension, stroke, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, chronic pain, and birth defects.
In addition to all this, vitamin D is essential for promoting calcium absorption in our stomachs – making it absolutely necessary for bone growth and bone health. In fact, people who have osteoporosis often show low levels of vitamin D. This is especially true of older women who have gone through menopause.
How much vitamin D do you need?
If you are not suffering from depression or SAD, the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamin D for adults is 600 IU (units). However, if you do have a mild case of depression or SAD, you may need to take anywhere from 1,000 to as many as 2,000 IU daily. Naturally, you need to discuss this with your healthcare provider as only he or she can recommend the amount of vitamin D that would most help with your depression or your SAD.
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