Could This Simple Nutrient Have the Power to Reduce Your Stress?
Learning Goals
Learn about vitamin D, mood & stress
Discover vitamin D risk factors and how to test your own levels
Three ways to source and optimise your vitamin D levels
Reading time: 10 minutes
As winter rolls around here in New Zealand, and the shorter days and colder temperatures lend toward more sedentary lives, more time indoors and for many of us a flatter mood, I begin to think about interventions that can help support our minds and bodies until spring rolls around. With mental health diagnoses at an all-time high since the Covid-19 pandemic, and New Zealand just one of several countries with studies pointing to the emergence of a mental health crisis, the need for simple, cost-effective patient-led solutions to prevent anxiety, overwhelm and mood difficulties is more necessary than ever.
Vitamin D & Mood
A simple but effective tool open to most people to help protect against mental health challenges, especially in winter, is the assessment and optimisation of their vitamin D levels. Assessing your own nutrient status is a practical way that can identify and minimise potential factors associated with mental distress and you can remedy these with little risk and cost.
This helpful blog by Dr Karen faisandier explains vitamin D’s production via the action of sunlight on skin, and its enormous range of action within the human body, but its ability to preserve and protect mental health is particularly crucial for this time in history.
Vitamin D receptors exist in our neurons and glial cells - important brain cells - which allow vitamin D to attach to these cells and influence the production of neurotransmitters. When scientists looked inside models of the brain to see what role vitamin D was playing, they found it was contributing to improved production of serotonin and the regulation of the enzyme which breaks serotonin down for elimination. Both of these functions may help us to experience serotonin’s positive effects for longer - emotional stability, focus, happiness and calm. Vitamin D’s role in the brain may also help us sleep longer and more deeply - a lifestyle factor we know that protects against mental distress.
The influence on serotonin regulation and sleep may explain why individuals with vitamin D deficiencies are more susceptible to stressful events. A recent observational study undertaken in Rome showed that low vitamin D levels were one factor associated with higher levels of psychological distress during the Covid lockdown for people with pre-existing mood disorders. This means that although we cannot always control what happens to us, especially with regard to global events, we may be able to influence the degree to which these events negatively affect us by optimising our nutrient status.
Are you at Risk for Suboptimal Vitamin-D Status?
A test for Vitamin D is funded in a limited range of circumstances in New Zealand - such as suspected or actual bone disease, limb or bone pain in the elderly or when the clinician has strong evidence to suspect severe deficiency - such as those with malabsorption, dark skin (which needs more sunlight than lighter tones) and those on medications which affect Vitamin D production. Check your risk factors below:
Dark skin tone
Obesity - requires more vitamin D to maintain adequate levels or correct deficiency
Living in countries with low sunlight - there’s a 20-40% reduction in vitamin D levels in winter in counties with low sunlight levels
Gastrointestinal malabsorption e.g. Crohns, Ulcerative Colitis and IBS
Use of certain medications - this handy website helps identify what medications impair nutrient absorption
Kidney or liver diseases
The use of covered clothing, sunglasses and sunscreen
Unfortunately depression and low stress tolerance do not factor in this list of clinical indications for a funded test, but people with increased risk factors or simply wishing to measure their levels to protect mental wellness can undertake self-requested and self-funded testing at community labs within New Zealand, and many other countries offer the same. Check with your local lab for details.
Optimising Vitamin D
While there is sufficient research to show that not having enough Vitamin D can contribute to mood difficulties, we don’t yet know exactly how much we need for optimal mental health. But we know that being deficient or on the lower end of the range increases risk. We also know that for some populations (such as pregnant women) research points to blood levels at the higher end of the normal range (up to 125nmol/L) being better for health outcomes.
Fortunately, test results come back with a range (50-150nmol/L) so you can visualise your result on an imaginary bell curve and see where on the spectrum you lie. Correcting sub-optimal levels is easy and affordable, and can be entirely free if you commit to some regular daily lifestyle changes.
Get regular daily sunlight exposure. To increase your vitamin D levels with sunlight alone, you need daily exposure of 20% of your body’s surface, which is roughly equivalent to one side of your torso. This handy total body surface area table can help you work out whether you’re meeting your exposure levels per day.
If you’re struggling to hit the daily sunlight targets, are very low, and want to get your levels up quickly, vitamin D supplements are affordable and effective. Just remember that if you go down the supplement path, stick to safe levels of supplementation (1000-2000IU daily is the lowest safe effective dose) and recheck your levels after 2-3 months to confirm you’re responding and that you’re not exceeding the upper reference range (150nmol/L). If you have serious health concerns like kidney or liver disease, check with your doctor first.
Help maintain your levels with food sources of vitamin D including egg yolks, mushrooms, and fish. These might not be enough to quickly shift the needle on a deficiency but can certainly help maintain your levels once they’re optimised.
Whilst Vitamin D is not a panacea for mental health, optimising your levels may be an important, inexpensive, and safe tool for many stages of life, especially when stressful events (like pandemics!) come calling. Nutritional deficiencies can affect mental health - by becoming aware of this and learning simple ways to assess nutritional status, and interventions to address any shortcomings, you can play a proactive role in your experience of stress.
If you would like to find out more about the role of nutrition in your experience of anxiety or overwhelm check out the new course I have co-created with psychologist Dr Karen Faisandier below.
