Vitamin D and the Cold Blue Funks

Posted on March 26, 2011 in Depression Glands Mania Medications

My endocrinologist tapped a few keys and brought up my latest bloodwork. She pursed her lips as she scanned the numbers. My [[triglycerides]] were too high, so she upped my [[Lipofen]]. Everything else was within proper balances. Except at the bottom of her study: my [[Vitamin D]] levels were excruciatingly low.

I asked her what that meant.

“We don’t know a lot about how it works,” she admitted. “We do know that when it is low you can feel tired and depressed.” I had just confessed to these symptoms a few minutes before, so the result explained the torment of my winter.

Some people, she explained, had trouble producing enough Vitamin D from sunlight. The amount that they use to fortify milk didn’t suffice. I spent the winter taking walk after walk in the bright sunlight, but I wasn’t producing.

So the cure was a megadose of the food supplement. It came in an emerald softgel about the size of my little fingernail that I have to ingest once a week.

The role of Vitamin D in depression is not confirmed at this time, but a recent study out of Great Britain suggests that low vitamin D levels are associated with melancholy, “independent of age, sex, social class, physical health status, and season.” This finding remains controversial because other symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency such as heart problems might in themselves lead to depression.

What I can say about this is that since taking Vitamin D, I have begun to smile again — genuine smiles rather than the forced grins that civility demands. The glow of my exercise sessions last beyond an hour or two and it is far less hard to get them started. Other depression sufferers report similar results.

The one thought that troubles me is whether the symptoms of depression that I have felt all these years is nothing more than a symptom of this deficiency. But then there is the question of the mania: This can happen when there is too much Vitamin D in the system. Are my mood stabilizers the wrong treatment? I do not remember changing my habits in advance of the surges of energy. So I shall work with my psychiatrist, remembering that for the bipolar the body is an explosion and a fire that rages and ebbs.