Nick Page, in his mid-life crisis book, Dark Night of the Shed:
“Each man meets with God in the way that suits him best, and the way which will change him most profoundly.”
Daily Blog
A massive new longitudinal study (i.e. one taken over time) of almost 20,000 adults showed that taking Vitamin D supplements didn’t do anything to help prevent depression or improve mood in adults over 50 years old.
The specs: Half of the group took 2,000 IU of Vitamin D and the other half were given a placebo for roughly 5 years, and at the end of the study, there wasn’t any statistically significant difference in the risk of developing depression or improving mood between the two groups.
In short, it just didn’t work.
The researchers note that this was, by far, the largest and most rigorous study looking at Vitamin D and depression.
The takeaway: Vitamin D still has tons of health benefits*, but this is the largest, most definitive study of its effects on depression in older adults, and it’s a pretty damning indictment of its effectiveness.
Bonus takeaway: Studies like this are helpful for people who are told by health professionals that we can, basically, eat our way to mental health.
Yes, there’s evidence that food and vitamins can have some effect (for some), but in both my personal experience and that of my friends who’ve had depression/anxiety, food/vitamins/supplements haven’t helped.
In fact, the stress of trying to create a good “mental health diet” and the sheer monetary cost often trigger more anxiety.
That doesn’t mean it won’t work for you, but if you’re chugging vitamins, supplements etc, and finding yourself as depressed as ever, you’re not alone.
*I want to stress, though, that Vitamin D is still amazingly important for your body.
WebMd notes that there’s so much hard science about how good it is for us, that “it’s hard to know where accolades should start.”
It regulates your immune system, helping keep auto immune diseases at bay; it can help inhibit cancer cell growth, can lower high blood pressure, can strengthen your bones, and the list goes on.
So it’s great — just not for depression.
[photo: Anna Shvets, Pexel]
The journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health has a new study of studies with some pretty promising results.
Out of seven studies, conducted from 2003 to 2019, researchers found that 11 out of 12 strains (!) of probiotics helped ease symptoms of depression.
Theoretically, it makes sense, too.
Our gut bacteria affects our central nervous system, and this relationship is frequently referred to as the gut-brain axis.
In other words, what happens in your gut has a big effect on what happens in your brain.
Probiotics target the gut, so there you have it.
Interestingly, research showed probiotics didn’t have any effect on anxiety, so if you’re looking for help with your anxiety from these nifty probiotics, you won’t get help there.
Also, prebiotics alone didn’t do anything for depression or anxiety.
Personally, I take a soil-based probiotic every day because, outside of its effect on depression, probiotics are just good for you. I haven’t noticed the slightest effect on my depression or anxiety, but I’m me and these study participants are them.
[Photo: Pexels]
Here’s a new study you’ll want to bookmark, if you’re prone to being judged (by others and yourself) for a consistently anxious disposition, and think you can just think yourself out of it.
Short version.
There’s state anxiety and trait anxiety.
State anxiety is when you’re temporarily freaked out because of some sudden threat. Every human knows this feeling.
Trait anxiety is chronic anxiety that just manifests itself because. “Because” could be anything; in fact, with generalized anxiety disorder, victims usually can’t even name the “because.”
We often dread things we can’t even name or define.
Charles Spurgeon put it this way, in describing it: “There is a kind of mental darkness, in which you are disturbed, perplexed, worried, troubled – not, perhaps, about anything tangible.”
That’s trait anxiety and Spurgeon recognized it in himself.
Trait anxiety, like Spurgeon’s and millions of Christians’, is more troublesome than state anxiety, because trait anxiety is chronic and can lead to depression and other chronic health problems.
Well, scientists are now actually able to see the difference between trait and state anxiety in the brain.
Trait anxiety, according to a new study based on MRI’s, “correlates to permanent anatomic features… while state anxiety manifests with temporary reactions in the brain activity.“
In other words, state anxiety doesn’t involve a permanent anatomic brain feature, which is why it’s so easy for a chill person to re-chill after the lion attack.
But since trait anxiety is associated with permanent anatomic features, it’s extremely hard to re-chill even if the lion never attacked. The lion might not even be in the desert, but a part of your brain says it is. And that part is based on anatomy — not some stubborn refusal to chill.
So show yourself some grace, and may God help others to show us grace, as well.
Also, talk to your doctor. There are wonderful medications to help.
[Painting of Batman with possibly high trait and/or state anxiety, “Bat-Brush” by Guillemin].
John Stott, writing in The Incomparable Christ.
“Behind the quest for justice and human rights, for improved conditions in factory, mine and prison, and for people’s health of body, mind, soul and community, there lies the value of every human person, for whom Jesus both lived and died.”
Amen.
God is the maker of Donald Trump, of Louis Farrakhan, of every far-right militia member, of every far-left Antifa protester, of every person who defends a statue, and every person who tears one down.
And yet while humans condemn our opponents, trash them, and grow increasingly outraged, he simply says to them, “I love you. Come to me.” He will not demean or revile them.
And yet we do.
Garret Keizer, an essayist for Harper’s, writes in his book, Help.
“Everyone believes in sin….What everyone does not believe in, as nearly as I can tell, is forgiveness.”
This one seems pretty obvious, but it’s always helpful to find evidence for it, and a new study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry does just that.
The researchers found that exposure to 8 different early life stressors more than doubled the likelihood that adolescents would develop major depressive disorder.
This follows research showing that early life stressors also raise the risk for adult-onset major depressive disorder.
So what are the early-life stressors? Sexual abuse, physical abuse, death of a family member, domestic violence, and emotional abuse.
Interestingly, some early-life stressors weren’t associated with an increased risk of depression — poverty, illness, and exposure to a natural disaster.
Of course, this isn’t to say something like poverty isn’t often associated with developing major depressive disorder. After all, poverty and domestic violence often go hand-in-hand. It just suggests poverty, alone and independently, isn’t a statistically significant predictor.
Now, here’s something important for us to realize.
Christian parents often abide by the traditional, “If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger” thing.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We need to realize that. There are so many life experiences that scar and traumatize us for life, regardless of whether they put us six feet under.
We should throw that “If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger” axiom onto the trash heap of history because it a) excuses bad parenting and b) diminishes trauma and diminished trauma has lifelong consequences.
So if we want to help our children deal with their early-life stressors….. First and foremost, we shouldn’t do anything to contribute to them. And second, we must get help for kids or students quickly, if they’re exposed to them. There’s a small window of time between childhood and adolescence to address this before it develops into full-blown major depressive disorder, which is a tragedy.
Too often, parents think we’re setting our kids up for “success” in life by stressing early, awesome education. You know, “my kid can read The Wasteland at 3” kind of thing.
But the best thing we can do for their future spiritual, physical, and relational life is attending to their mental health.
J.I. Packer in Praying the Lord’s Prayer, which is an excerpt from Growing in Christ.
“When I say, ‘hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come,’ I should be adding in my mind the words, ‘in and through me,’ and so giving myself to God afresh to be, so far as I can be, the means of answering my own prayer.”
From A Grief Observed:
“Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer.
I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.”
From The Power and The Glory, boy, does tribalistic, political America and the church and myself need this.
Greene:
“When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity – that was a quality God’s image carried with it.
When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate.
Hate was just a failure of imagination.”
I like what Tim Keller says here — in essence, that Christ’s suffering proves that your suffering has nothing to do with God’s love for you.
After all, God loved his Son more than anything, and yet his Son still suffered.
So when you’re tempted to think that your suffering proves God doesn’t love you, remember two things: a) that Jesus suffered more than any human who has ever lived and b) that the Father, according to Jesus, loves you just as much as he does Jesus.
In that vein, he quotes a beautiful song by Edward Shillito called “Jesus of the Scars” which finishes thusly:
“The other gods were strong, but Thou wast weak
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.”
By the way, the playwright Thornton Wilder said it beautifully: “In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve.”