Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays, and today we are going to talk about the sunshine vitamin D, which actually has a bit of an identity crisis. It's more of a hormone than a vitamin, and I have spoken about it before, but I want to revisit it because there's been a new meta analysis release of thirty one different randomized control trials, which is really good evidence when we get that number of RCTs and the end
there's a meta analysis pulling all the data together. And what this meta analysis looked at was supplementing vitamin D and its effect on depression symptoms. So the studies included a total of twenty fourth thousand, just over twenty four thousand adults and from age twenty two to sixty most of had depression. And I just want to jump to
the findings and then discuss about it. And what they find was that vitamin D supplementation reduced depressive symptoms with small effects size, which is moderate certainty of evidence, and that is exactly what you see with antidepressant medication like SSRIs, So it would appear that vitamin D is as effective
with SSRIs, but without the side effects. Now, they only confirmed the benefits in the patient two did have depression because they were looking at mood, right, But what they find was that higher doses of vitamin D up to and this is from supplemental form up to eight thousand IUS per day reduced depressive symptoms to a greater degree. Right. So when I said that the effects size was small, that was across all of it. But when the people
had higher doses, that had a greater impact. And most of the impact was about people's supplement ending with about five thousand I used per day. And the study lasted for twenty four weeks, so there was no long term stuff. But this is pretty important stuff. And let's look at a big picture. So you see in observational studies low
levels of vitamin D, people who have low levels. And by the way, estimates are that anything from seventy to eighty five percent of people around the world have suboptimal levels of vitamin D. So you have vitamin D deficiency and then you have vitamin D insufficiency. I mean you pull those two together. We talk about suboptimal, all right, So there's a lot of people out there with suboptimal vitamin D that is probably affecting their mood because vitamin
D does so much shit in the body. Neither's Several prior meta analysis actually looked at the evidence for vitamin D and symptoms of depression and they also find small to moderate benefits in patients with depression, particularly those who had low vitamin D levels. And the main result in this meta analysis brings to the table is the dose response. So a large range of vitamin D doses have been studied and that can contribute to the difference that you
see in the effects between different studies. Now, this meta analysis was designed to clarify the relationship between the doses and the effects size. So they used a method that was devised by Swedish researchers in twenty sixteen and combined the data from randomized control trial of many different dosages to plot what we call a dose response curve that
then estimated the effects size of different doses. And as I said in the analysis, the effects size of five thousand ius per day was roughly the three times the effects size of people taking a thousand iu per day. So in comparison, the recommended daily amount for VINAM and D supplementation is four to eight hundred I used per day, so that would suggest that that's nowhere near enough to
have those benefits on mood. Now, the plot that they did suggest that there were diminishing returns above around five thousand I use per day, right, so that would have seemed to be the optimal amount if you're going to supplement with it. Now, one thing that I would say is to get your vinamin D levels checked and then and once you get them checked, and then you go on the supplement and then you check them again. You can get vinamin D toxicity, but it's highly unlikely if
you're taking five thousand I use per day. But really you should be checking your levels if you're taking that supplement for six months or longer, because then it could nudge your levels up if you have first gain in your spur, spend a bit of time in the sun, so we need to know what your levels are and then I actually am a big fan of getting your levels up to one hundred milli males per liter, which
is I think it's forteen nanograms per milli lider. So in Australia we use milli males and in the US to use nanograms and it's a factor of two point five, so one hundred to one hundred and fifty millimles per leader. That's where I like to get my vinamin D levels. And then if you're in nanograms per per millileter, you just divide that by two point five, right, so that is forty to sixty is what you're looking at here.
So the takeaway is that in the short to medium term, supplementing with vinamin D does appear to reduce depression symptoms and individuals with depression and or low vitamin D levels and higher that dosages up to about five thousand value per day lead to greater benefits. So and as I said right at the start, it's the similar, very similar effects size to antidepressant medication, but vinamin D doesn't come with the whole host of scurry side effects that antidepressant does.
So it really is important. I mean, our biology really is oriented around the sun a lot of it, and vitamin D is so critical. I think it is absolutely the most important vitamin in the body bar none, and particularly if you live in Australia. We're obviously all aware of the dangers of the sun, but it is very clear that not getting enough sun is bad for your mood and it's bad for so many other processes in your body. So we need to strike that balance and the best way to do it is go and get
your vitamin D levels measured. If your doctor doesn't want to do it, you can get it done commercially. That is it for this week, folks, Catch you next time.