Areas › Your body › Food, caffeine and fuel
Here is a question that costs nothing: has anyone in your family been told their vitamin D was low? It runs in families through genes, skin tone, where you live and how much time anyone spends outside.
The clinician telling this story found out only afterwards that his mother, father and brother had all been low. Nobody had mentioned it, because it does not feel like the sort of thing that gets passed on. Ask at the next family gathering, and while you are there ask about thyroid problems too. One conversation can shorten a long search.
Qur’an and Sunnah
You do not control its sources (Quran 15:22). A good deal of what your body is working with was set by things nobody chose, which makes this easier to ask about than to blame yourself for.
وَأَرۡسَلۡنَا ٱلرِّيَٰحَ لَوَٰقِحَ فَأَنزَلۡنَا مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءࣰ فَأَسۡقَيۡنَٰكُمُوهُ وَمَآ أَنتُمۡ لَهُۥ بِخَٰزِنِينَ
We send the winds to fertilize, and We bring down water from the sky for you to drink- you do not control its sources
Qur’an 15:22read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Looking hardest where the shortfall is largest is usually where the returns sit. A dose response review of 24 cohorts found higher diet quality associated with lower depression risk, with the relationship strongest at the poor diet end. Different nutrient, same principle: the biggest changes come from finding people who are genuinely short of something rather than fine tuning people who are fine.
Molendijk M, Molero P, Ortuño Sánchez-Pedreño F, Van der Does W, Angel Martínez-González M. (2018). Diet quality and depression risk: A systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective studies.. Journal of affective disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Families share genes, skin, latitude and habits, so what one person is short of the others often are too.
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
If your body has something going on as well, try to get both looked after at the same time rather than in a queue. Therapy for what happened to you does not have to wait for your gut to settle, and it often goes better when the two run side by side.
Several herbal products change how fast the liver processes medication, which can leave a prescribed drug either weaker or stronger without a single change to the dose.
Food and movement are powerful, and hardly anyone keeps them up as prescribed. So the question is not what works best on paper. It is what you will still be doing in six weeks.