Posted by Tomatheus on March 1, 2014, at 14:28:21
In reply to Re: Interesting study on vitamin D, serotonin, posted by bleauberry on March 1, 2014, at 12:33:18
Bleauberry,
Thanks for responding. Yeah, with no offense meant to anybody, I think it would be kind of silly to go get a prescription for an SSRI or to get some 5-HTP for more brain serotonin when you quite possibly could have already gotten to the root of why serotonin might have been low in the brain (and that's *if* it was low) by taking vitamin D. Of course, if your vitamin D level is back to normal, and you're doing well, it would make no sense to go messing with something that no longer needs to be messed with.
And of course, even though the study that I posted found that vitamin D modulates enzymes involved in serotonin synthesis, there's a lot more than just serotonin that vitamin D affects. I mentioned the vitamin's (or hormone's) effects on the synthesis of dopamine, norepinephrine, adrenaline, and acetylcholine in another post -- and these neurotransmitters are all relevant to mental health and illness -- but in actuality, vitamin D has been found to influence more than 200 genes in the body. So, yeah, I suppose that if a person has a vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency, the person could just address the possible "imbalances" in serotonin, but it does of course make more sense if a person has a vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency to address the vitamin D problem instead of just treating one of its many effects.
As far as why vitamin D is low is concerned, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that an infection might be causing it, but I think that there's a good chance that many individuals with low vitamin D levels became that way because they largely cut themselves off from the main source of vitamin D, namely the sun. I've been found to have a vitamin D insufficiency, and I've usually attributed the onset of my psychiatric symptoms to the fact that I deprived myself of sleep over an extended period of time during my third year of college. I would also say that my symptoms seemed to intensify when I had a job that involved working the overnight shift. I didn't sleep at night when I worked that job, which of course meant that I slept during the day, when I could have otherwise been spending at least some time outside absorbing the vitamin D-producing UVB rays of the sun. After that point, I started sleeping excessively, sometimes during at least some of the peak vitamin D hours of 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. That probably caused my vitamin D level to drop further, worsening my symptoms and creating a vicious cycle.
At any rate, although we may have differing opinions as to what causes vitamin D levels to drop in individuals with deficiencies or insufficiencies of the vitamin-hormone, we seem to be in agreement that if someone is low in vitamin D that something needs to be done to bring that person's vitamin D level back up into the healthy, normal range. I don't think that vitamin D is benign with respect to its effects on mental health, and even though studies on the effect of vitamin D supplementation in clinically depressed patients have yielded mixed results (possibly because some of the studies were too short), I do think that vitamin D is turning out to be a big piece of the mental illness puzzle.
Anyway, I hope I didn't carry on for too long. Take care, Bleauberry. I wish you continued good health, mental and otherwise.
Tomatheus
Has schizophrenia with strong negative and cognitive symptoms
Taking Abilify, niacin, & vit. D3
poster:Tomatheus
thread:1061422
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20131226/msgs/1061632.html