8 ms·

I also did some reading about vitamins last year and ended up taking vitamin d for a while, then magnesium for a while. My method wasn't any more scientific tha

by Kluny 10y ago

I also did some reading about vitamins last year and ended up taking vitamin d for a while, then magnesium for a while. My method wasn't any more scientific than that, but the vitamin D had no noticeable effect, while the effect of magnesium was dramatic. I was suffering from mood swings, poor concentration and low energy serious enough that I was considering seeing a psychologist about depression. Magnesium seems to eliminate the problem completely. I just wish there was a better way to figure out your deficiency than just popping some pills and wait to see what happens. A weekly blood test for vitamin levels combined with mood and health journaling would probably give me the kind of data I'm looking for, but that only seems to be available in science fiction so far.

taurath 10y ago
There's a certain level of orthodoxy in psychiatry now.. I have yet to see anyone try to get any information other than "let's try putting you on this extremely mood altering pill with side effects for a month". No attempt is made to find any real evidence other than anecdotal patient information. Maybe the science isn't there?
- chongli 10y ago
  Maybe the science isn't there? That's exactly it. A given drug may be one person's savior and another person's nightmare. It's extremely complex. To get just a hint of what may be going on, check out Scott's article on ANTIDEPRESSANT PHARMACOGENOMICS [0]. [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/06/antidepressant-pharmacogenomics-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/06/antidepressant-pharmac...
  - taurath 10y ago
    And it's failing patients left and right, who have to somehow go to work while already stressed anxious or depressed while now having to deal with rapid mood changes, insomnia, or one of any other side effects. If you roll the dice and get the wrong medication you will be worse off where you started. People shouldn't be used as test tubes - in no other field is it okay to "experiment" on people like in psychiatry.
- kolinko 10y ago
  The science isn't there yet :( Quite likely there are various neurologial/genetic reasons for things like adhd and depression. It's quite likely that there are many subtypes of that, depending on which pathways are broken, but we aren't good enough yet to figure out the details. If you have a car with a locked hood, there is not much you can do but hit it in various places and hope it works. Some people are trying to unlock the hood, and one day they surely will succeed. But for now, all we're left with is listening carefully and trying from the safest to the craziest options.
amelius 10y ago
If you have a disease such as depression, make a list of conditions that can cause it. For depression, vitamin deficiencies would be on the list (but also things like hormone imbalances, and many other conditions). Bring this list to your doc and let them add probabilities to each condition. Now work your way down the list, and get the blood work done. In any case, make sure your doc presents upfront an analytical approach to curing your illness. Don't let them just do what they think is right because you're likely to end up in a maze.
- amygdyl 10y ago
  as someone who has suffered from acute and chronic* depression, i do want ask, is disease the correct noun? by "acute and chronic" relating to my experience, I intend this to mean long term and severe, but also "narrow basis" and severe and recurring. I know I am overloading a operator somewhere here... [ inline footnote for reading meter] If cancer is many kinds, it is a a disease in the sense that it is systemic, and can be cured, in theory, by medicine.* In the similar way, depression is a very wide and complex range of similar things, but the systemic nature is less definable, we only have systemic symptoms, do we not? I mean is my supposition accurate medically? By systemic I mean depression is a malfunction of systems, interacting, that we can define as alien,unwanted, interactions of our body and brain chemistry (for surely depression can affect the entire being, and so we find things like magnesium, or sunlight or better diet help, if not resolve) But the conditions which can cause my depression, are emotional or circumstantial even, very much more than environmental or physical health. (I learned this after too many years had passed, I was made to be unaware, unpleasantly made to be unaware, of a infant trauma i endured amazingly well, but which sank triggers deep into my psyche) Luckily - if by luckily you understand at enormous human cost* - I got through most of my younger years without resort to clinical medical intervention, such as by medication regimes, and I curl up in a fetal ball every time I hear even reference to another lamentable saga of medication experimentation (by the doctors, not patients) endured along the way to a viable life, so common among programmers. My question whether "disease" is first of all the appropriate word to describe depression, must come with a sister question: if disease is not a universally sound description of depression, is it so in some cases, even edge cases, and if we have stretched the definition, is there a underlying argument for why we stretched the definition, other than those afflicted so often feel accursed and afflicted as if by terminal disease? It seems to me, that because depression is a vital and axial point of interaction between brain, mind systems (reflexive brain body interfaces, e.g. exercise benefits almost always functioning) and body, is therefore a better taxonomy not necessary? The best description I ever heard, of the DSM, is that with only the effort of observation and tedious reference, you could probably diagnose any child with all the pediatric diagnoses therein contained. Whether strictly true or not, and I wish I could recall to whom that quip is attributable, but a Psychiatric doctor 5 , that certainly ought to strike home with anyone old enough ever to have had the pangs of wanting a family. I suggest that the computing community, is uniquely positioned, to develop a better and more innately intelligent, taxonomy, of psychiatric "disease" (if it must be so called) and that it might be right to "reclaim" a important but seriously, gravely, and frequently abused "discipline" from a profession almost a industry of commercial practitioners. * years and years after i learned what "survival rate" for cancer really means, I am still aghast that such a blatant semantic spin could be applied to something s incredibly important. The very idea that a huge, industrial scale, hard science in modern medicine, would willingly supplicate to acceptance of language so distorting, and liable to distort perception, remains beyond me, a assault on the senses I first gained benefit my first and earliest exposure to science as a discipline. * Beyond me, the personal devastation to loved ones, to anyone who cared for me, ever, was appalling. For only myself, I elected to end up in prison, rather than risk being committed, which would have created a probably fatal misdiagnosis that freezes me, i feel nauseous just saying this.. these people play with lives... in prison, i only found about two thirds were dumped there who probably should have been in hospital for mental health problems, and did some amateur lawyering, of which I am intensely proud, and one day want to figure out a way to encourage like efforts, because it sure ain't hard, law, only getting any legal system or judge to understand the black and white ink on paper thing, is actually hard. * I think many of us seek the rationale and intellectual uterine safety of computing, the warm appreciation of rationality and consistency that in particular low level programming can provide. My earliest observation of a sales floor, was that mental health must be inversely proportional to the immediately available intellectual structures, and that the semantic playfulness, to be polite, of my company's sales outfit, was the obvious explanation for whiskey under desks, and regular delivery of marching powders. Sometimes this drives the more creative to create enormous works, of varying success, in creating reflexive, consistent, homogeneous systems. At least I thought that efforts such as CLOS, C++ templates, were efforts at including the world, by type inheritance, and therefore insuring a hermetic and therefore emotionally safe, environment in the editor. (But then I purchased Design Patterns, when it came out, hardback, and loved it... but i knew i may have projected this thought onto it, as much as it may be a projection now, and by no means should I expect to be able to apply my own self meta cognition into the world, not before some very careful type definition, anyhow... *5 two school friends attained giddying heights, one Royal Colldge Psychiatry and General Medical Council (one of the boards anyway), the other a worldwide veep for a major pharma, having a psycho-pharma career taking him to that position. Neither will;speak of their experiences, both quit from such great heights, i sense about the moment their family was financially secure. One works with startups now, and I wish I could give my bottom of lunch box adoring endorsement, but both are privacy intense, for indisputably valid, obvious, reasons..
quinnkcq 10y ago
I've never heard that about magnesium, thanks for the heads up. It's worth a shot a suppose. Cheers
- tremendo 10y ago
  https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201106/magnesium-and-the-brain-the-original-chill-pill https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry...
fusillijerry89 10y ago
Sorry man but I have to butt in here. The culture of hacker news-type thinking can be very toxic and lead to such thoughts as "I just wish there was a better way to figure out your deficiency than just popping some pills and wait to see what happens. A weekly blood test for vitamin levels combined with mood and health journaling would probably give me the kind of data I'm looking for, but that only seems to be available in science fiction so far." Notice how you are trying to find a solution based around technology. Why does the solution have to involve technology? I think hanging around on forums like this, or with engineers to often can blind us to solutions which don't require engineering. If all we have is hammer then nails nails everywhere!! We're all guilty of it. Let's just be aware of it when it happens and move on. Ready for the solution? It's very simple but tough to follow through with : Radically Change your diet. Eat plants mostly, eat within a time window (don't allow yourself to oversnack, etc.), don't eat shit, not even a little bit, cut it out 100%. Be extreme, this is the experimentation phase. Later you can be less extreme, but let's see how much a radical change to the diet will affect the body. This isn't a guarantee to fix vitamin deficiencies, but I will gladly bet that it will sure help a hell of a lot. Finally, I would like to add that another trap that we all fall into is trying to optimize a system by changing one thing at a time. Firstly, this doesn't actually work. Secondly, this is extremely slooooowww. If we want to experience change fast we have to be radical about changing our habits. If I am experimenting with anything in my life it's a good idea to try all sorts of different stuff. Diversify my experiments. Explore. If you are having vitamin deficiency issues and are not setting yourself up to be in the position to explore and experiment with diet, then you will have to wait for luck to come along before your issue can find itself a solution. Again, hopefully I don't sound like an ass, I am just trying to help, given that I make the same mistake a lot in my own life, and have screwed myself over too much to not try and speak up a bit on the subject. Feel free to be angry with me :) :(
- projektir 10y ago
  Please source or argue your claims. > Why does the solution have to involve technology? Because technology has the potential to be more powerful than other solutions. Your suggestion, and the direction of your post in general, sounds like moralism. Moralistic suggestions have more to do with virtue and privilege signaling than actual results. I am generally extremely suspicious of any advice that comes from a moralistic angle because it's noisy and mostly driven by logic in the nature of "bad things don't happen to people who live correctly". Unsurprisingly, the suggestion misses the fact that eating plants is not going to address something like a Vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D deficiencies, as far as we currently know, are caused by lack of sunlight and the use of sunscreen.

by Kluny 10y ago

taurath 10y ago

There's a certain level of orthodoxy in psychiatry now.. I have yet to see anyone try to get any information other than "let's try putting you on this extremely mood altering pill with side effects for a month". No attempt is made to find any real evidence other than anecdotal patient information. Maybe the science isn't there?

chongli 10y ago
Maybe the science isn't there? That's exactly it. A given drug may be one person's savior and another person's nightmare. It's extremely complex. To get just a hint of what may be going on, check out Scott's article on ANTIDEPRESSANT PHARMACOGENOMICS [0]. [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/06/antidepressant-pharmacogenomics-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/06/antidepressant-pharmac...
- taurath 10y ago
  And it's failing patients left and right, who have to somehow go to work while already stressed anxious or depressed while now having to deal with rapid mood changes, insomnia, or one of any other side effects. If you roll the dice and get the wrong medication you will be worse off where you started. People shouldn't be used as test tubes - in no other field is it okay to "experiment" on people like in psychiatry.
kolinko 10y ago
The science isn't there yet :( Quite likely there are various neurologial/genetic reasons for things like adhd and depression. It's quite likely that there are many subtypes of that, depending on which pathways are broken, but we aren't good enough yet to figure out the details. If you have a car with a locked hood, there is not much you can do but hit it in various places and hope it works. Some people are trying to unlock the hood, and one day they surely will succeed. But for now, all we're left with is listening carefully and trying from the safest to the craziest options.

amelius 10y ago

If you have a disease such as depression, make a list of conditions that can cause it. For depression, vitamin deficiencies would be on the list (but also things like hormone imbalances, and many other conditions). Bring this list to your doc and let them add probabilities to each condition. Now work your way down the list, and get the blood work done. In any case, make sure your doc presents upfront an analytical approach to curing your illness. Don't let them just do what they think is right because you're likely to end up in a maze.

amygdyl 10y ago
as someone who has suffered from acute and chronic* depression, i do want ask, is disease the correct noun? by "acute and chronic" relating to my experience, I intend this to mean long term and severe, but also "narrow basis" and severe and recurring. I know I am overloading a operator somewhere here... [ inline footnote for reading meter] If cancer is many kinds, it is a a disease in the sense that it is systemic, and can be cured, in theory, by medicine.* In the similar way, depression is a very wide and complex range of similar things, but the systemic nature is less definable, we only have systemic symptoms, do we not? I mean is my supposition accurate medically? By systemic I mean depression is a malfunction of systems, interacting, that we can define as alien,unwanted, interactions of our body and brain chemistry (for surely depression can affect the entire being, and so we find things like magnesium, or sunlight or better diet help, if not resolve) But the conditions which can cause my depression, are emotional or circumstantial even, very much more than environmental or physical health. (I learned this after too many years had passed, I was made to be unaware, unpleasantly made to be unaware, of a infant trauma i endured amazingly well, but which sank triggers deep into my psyche) Luckily - if by luckily you understand at enormous human cost* - I got through most of my younger years without resort to clinical medical intervention, such as by medication regimes, and I curl up in a fetal ball every time I hear even reference to another lamentable saga of medication experimentation (by the doctors, not patients) endured along the way to a viable life, so common among programmers. My question whether "disease" is first of all the appropriate word to describe depression, must come with a sister question: if disease is not a universally sound description of depression, is it so in some cases, even edge cases, and if we have stretched the definition, is there a underlying argument for why we stretched the definition, other than those afflicted so often feel accursed and afflicted as if by terminal disease? It seems to me, that because depression is a vital and axial point of interaction between brain, mind systems (reflexive brain body interfaces, e.g. exercise benefits almost always functioning) and body, is therefore a better taxonomy not necessary? The best description I ever heard, of the DSM, is that with only the effort of observation and tedious reference, you could probably diagnose any child with all the pediatric diagnoses therein contained. Whether strictly true or not, and I wish I could recall to whom that quip is attributable, but a Psychiatric doctor 5 , that certainly ought to strike home with anyone old enough ever to have had the pangs of wanting a family. I suggest that the computing community, is uniquely positioned, to develop a better and more innately intelligent, taxonomy, of psychiatric "disease" (if it must be so called) and that it might be right to "reclaim" a important but seriously, gravely, and frequently abused "discipline" from a profession almost a industry of commercial practitioners. * years and years after i learned what "survival rate" for cancer really means, I am still aghast that such a blatant semantic spin could be applied to something s incredibly important. The very idea that a huge, industrial scale, hard science in modern medicine, would willingly supplicate to acceptance of language so distorting, and liable to distort perception, remains beyond me, a assault on the senses I first gained benefit my first and earliest exposure to science as a discipline. * Beyond me, the personal devastation to loved ones, to anyone who cared for me, ever, was appalling. For only myself, I elected to end up in prison, rather than risk being committed, which would have created a probably fatal misdiagnosis that freezes me, i feel nauseous just saying this.. these people play with lives... in prison, i only found about two thirds were dumped there who probably should have been in hospital for mental health problems, and did some amateur lawyering, of which I am intensely proud, and one day want to figure out a way to encourage like efforts, because it sure ain't hard, law, only getting any legal system or judge to understand the black and white ink on paper thing, is actually hard. * I think many of us seek the rationale and intellectual uterine safety of computing, the warm appreciation of rationality and consistency that in particular low level programming can provide. My earliest observation of a sales floor, was that mental health must be inversely proportional to the immediately available intellectual structures, and that the semantic playfulness, to be polite, of my company's sales outfit, was the obvious explanation for whiskey under desks, and regular delivery of marching powders. Sometimes this drives the more creative to create enormous works, of varying success, in creating reflexive, consistent, homogeneous systems. At least I thought that efforts such as CLOS, C++ templates, were efforts at including the world, by type inheritance, and therefore insuring a hermetic and therefore emotionally safe, environment in the editor. (But then I purchased Design Patterns, when it came out, hardback, and loved it... but i knew i may have projected this thought onto it, as much as it may be a projection now, and by no means should I expect to be able to apply my own self meta cognition into the world, not before some very careful type definition, anyhow... *5 two school friends attained giddying heights, one Royal Colldge Psychiatry and General Medical Council (one of the boards anyway), the other a worldwide veep for a major pharma, having a psycho-pharma career taking him to that position. Neither will;speak of their experiences, both quit from such great heights, i sense about the moment their family was financially secure. One works with startups now, and I wish I could give my bottom of lunch box adoring endorsement, but both are privacy intense, for indisputably valid, obvious, reasons..

quinnkcq 10y ago

I've never heard that about magnesium, thanks for the heads up. It's worth a shot a suppose. Cheers

tremendo 10y ago
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201106/magnesium-and-the-brain-the-original-chill-pill https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry...

fusillijerry89 10y ago

Sorry man but I have to butt in here. The culture of hacker news-type thinking can be very toxic and lead to such thoughts as "I just wish there was a better way to figure out your deficiency than just popping some pills and wait to see what happens. A weekly blood test for vitamin levels combined with mood and health journaling would probably give me the kind of data I'm looking for, but that only seems to be available in science fiction so far." Notice how you are trying to find a solution based around technology. Why does the solution have to involve technology? I think hanging around on forums like this, or with engineers to often can blind us to solutions which don't require engineering. If all we have is hammer then nails nails everywhere!! We're all guilty of it. Let's just be aware of it when it happens and move on. Ready for the solution? It's very simple but tough to follow through with : Radically Change your diet. Eat plants mostly, eat within a time window (don't allow yourself to oversnack, etc.), don't eat shit, not even a little bit, cut it out 100%. Be extreme, this is the experimentation phase. Later you can be less extreme, but let's see how much a radical change to the diet will affect the body. This isn't a guarantee to fix vitamin deficiencies, but I will gladly bet that it will sure help a hell of a lot. Finally, I would like to add that another trap that we all fall into is trying to optimize a system by changing one thing at a time. Firstly, this doesn't actually work. Secondly, this is extremely slooooowww. If we want to experience change fast we have to be radical about changing our habits. If I am experimenting with anything in my life it's a good idea to try all sorts of different stuff. Diversify my experiments. Explore. If you are having vitamin deficiency issues and are not setting yourself up to be in the position to explore and experiment with diet, then you will have to wait for luck to come along before your issue can find itself a solution. Again, hopefully I don't sound like an ass, I am just trying to help, given that I make the same mistake a lot in my own life, and have screwed myself over too much to not try and speak up a bit on the subject. Feel free to be angry with me :) :(

projektir 10y ago
Please source or argue your claims. > Why does the solution have to involve technology? Because technology has the potential to be more powerful than other solutions. Your suggestion, and the direction of your post in general, sounds like moralism. Moralistic suggestions have more to do with virtue and privilege signaling than actual results. I am generally extremely suspicious of any advice that comes from a moralistic angle because it's noisy and mostly driven by logic in the nature of "bad things don't happen to people who live correctly". Unsurprisingly, the suggestion misses the fact that eating plants is not going to address something like a Vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D deficiencies, as far as we currently know, are caused by lack of sunlight and the use of sunscreen.