Can Vitamin D Combat SAD(Seasonal Affective Disorder)?

. . . correcting a vitamin D deficiency may lift your winter depression

Newsclips readers already know that vitamin D is crucial to immunity and helps to prevent winter colds and the flu. You may also know that vitamin D deficiencies contribute to cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, neurological disease and many other health problems.

But can vitamin D ward off winter blues?

Also called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), the winter blues can make you feel lethargic, fatigued, unmotivated and depressed. You can crave carbohydrates and want to sleep all day.

Clinical experience and preliminary scientific investigation have found that low levels of vitamin D correlate with a higher incidence of SAD, and that when patients with SAD and low blood levels supplement with vitamin D, their depressive symptoms improve.

Since SAD is associated with lack of sunlight, our main source of vitamin D, and since vitamin D levels decline in the winter months, it is reasonable to hypothesize that vitamin D deficiency may be a significant factor in SAD.

If you suffer from SAD, consider it one more reason to get your vitamin D levels up into the high-normal range. Most Americans are low in this critical vitamin and don’t know it. That’s why it’s so important to get your blood levels tested with the 25(OH) D (25-hydroxyvitamin D) test. Normal range is generally defined as 30-85 ng/dL, but 50-60 ng/dL or more is where you really want to be.

While sunlight is our primary source of vitamin D, various factors prevent most of us from getting enough direct sunlight to make all that we need, and supplementation has become necessary.

Although most doctors give their patients vitamin D2, vitamin D3 was found to be 3 times as effective as vitamin D2 by a 2004 study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. There are also different forms of vitamin D3. The vitamin D in all of the supplements we carry at Beyond Health is in vitamin D3’s best and most bioactive form. (For more on the differences between D2 and D3 see the third article in this Newsclip.)

You’ll find 800 IU of vitamin D3 in two tablets of our multi, but if your blood level is deficient or suboptimal, you’ll almost certainly need significantly more than this to bring it up to the recommended high-normal level. In a 2006 study, Bischoff-Ferrari and colleagues found that 700-1,000 IU taken for eight weeks resulted in less than half of average healthy adults achieving 30 ng/mL, the low edge of the normal range.

Our Vitamin D3 formula provides 5,000 IU per capsule. Call our office for more information on raising your vitamin D levels.

Fiedler C. Got the weinter blues? Bastyr Center for Natural Health, 2002.  Accessed online December 21, 2012.

Armas LA. Vitamin D2 is much less effective than Vitamin D3 in humans. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. November 2004; 89(11):5387-5391.

Bischoff-Ferrari HA. Estimation of optimal serum concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D for multiple health outcomes. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. July 2006; 84(1):18-28.