How Does Vitamin D Help Prevent Depression?

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How does Vitamin D Help Prevent Depression? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Chris from Instagram asks, how does vitamin D help prevent depression? Hey, it's jj and today I have Max Lugaver, the author of the New York Times best selling book Genius Foods, here with me to answer this question. Now, besides being an authority, he's also a filmmaker and a health and science journalist. So he was pre med in college till he took this introductory course in filmmaking and literally fell in love with storytelling. And lucky for him, he found a way to merge his interests. He also sings and plays the guitar and even released an album in 2012 called One Year later and went on tour. We'll be right back. Stay with.

Hey JJ Virgin here. Okay, real talk.

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Optimizing your vitamin D levels is crucial if you want to also optimize your mental health. It was very interesting. One large study of nearly 4,000 adults found that vitamin D deficiency was associated with a 75% increased risk of developing depression over four years. Now, correlation doesn't equal causation, but that connection remained robust even after the researchers controlled for other relevant factors, including pharmaceutical treatment for depression, other chronic diseases and physical activity. One way that vitamin D helps to support having a positive mood is that vitamin D aids in the creation of certain neurotransmitters. You might have heard of serotonin, which has been talked about in the conversation around depression because it's important for regulating a healthy mood. It's also crucially important for aspects of your cognition like executive function. And it was recently discovered that vitamin D actually aids in the synthesis of serotonin in the brain. So if you're leaving your body with deficient or insufficient levels of vitamin D, then you're probably handicapping your brain's ability to create adequate amounts of serotonin. So what I would suggest, since there is no universally accepted range for optimal vitamin D levels, I defer to a large study that found the lowest risk of all cause mortality when participants in the study had their vitamin D levels in a range of 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter. So I think that's a great range to shoot for. And you can use a vitamin D supplement. You can spend more time in the sun without burning, of course. And also keep in mind that people with darker complexions are going to need to spend more time in the sun to achieve the same vitamin D levels as people with lighter complex who are lighter complected. And finally, you also want to make sure that you're optimizing your magnesium levels. So having low levels of magnesium is independently associated with depression and anxiety and insomnia but magnesium is really important when it comes to activating vitamin D in your body. So you could be taking all the vitamin D supplements that you want spending time in the sun. But if you're not consuming adequate magnesium, which 50% of the population does not consume adequate magnesium, then you're actually handicapping your body's ability to actually activate that vitamin D. So make sure that you're, along with your vitamin D, consuming foods that are rich in magnesium. Almonds are a great example. Any dark leafy green is going to contain lots and lots of magnesium. And one of my personal favorites, dark chocolate.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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