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Very low vitamin D produces fatigue, low mood and a flatness that looks exactly like depression, and it is not part of routine bloods in most places. If you have never had it measured, it is a fair thing to ask for.
One clinician telling this story about himself had a level that was almost undetectable, and no antidepressant would have raised it, because what was missing was a substance rather than an effect. That does not mean everyone low in vitamin D is low in mood for that reason. It means this is cheap to check and expensive to miss.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Eat the good things We have provided for you (Quran 2:57). What came down in the wilderness was actual food for an actual need, and some needs are met by a substance and by nothing else.
وَظَلَّلۡنَا عَلَيۡكُمُ ٱلۡغَمَامَ وَأَنزَلۡنَا عَلَيۡكُمُ ٱلۡمَنَّ وَٱلسَّلۡوَىٰۖ كُلُواْ مِن طَيِّبَٰتِ مَا رَزَقۡنَٰكُمۡۚ وَمَا ظَلَمُونَا وَلَٰكِن كَانُوٓاْ أَنفُسَهُمۡ يَظۡلِمُونَ
We made the clouds cover you with shade, and sent manna and quails down to you, saying, ‘Eat the good things We have provided for you.’ It was not Us they wronged; they wronged themselves
Qur’an 2:57read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
The evidence comes in two halves and they do not match. Pooling observational studies and trials, low vitamin D is associated with depression, while the trial evidence that supplementation improves mood is much weaker than the correlation. The case for testing and correcting a genuine deficiency is therefore stronger than the case for taking it as a mood treatment.
Anglin RE, Anglin RE, Samaan Z, Walter SD, McDonald SD. (2013). Vitamin D deficiency and depression in adults: systematic review and meta-analysis.. The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
If what is missing is a raw material, only supplying the raw material will put it right.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
When digestion goes wrong there are usually two things to look at rather than one: something you are eating that does not suit you, and a body too braced to digest properly. Checking only one door tends to leave you stuck.
A child struggling with attention, anxiety and daily reflux at once may be dealing with one problem wearing three coats. Undiagnosed coeliac disease and other food reactions can produce all of it, and the gut symptom is the clue worth following.
Even where a herb has good evidence behind it, that evidence belongs to the plant and not to the bottle in your hand. Testing keeps turning up products that do not contain what the label says.