Depression and niacin

My wonderful friend Keith Lightfoot sent me a video link to a very engaging documentary.  The documentary was about vitamins and the drug/medical industry. Well worth watching when you have a hour or so to sit and relax.

This is the stuff I am taking

Anyway one of the people on the documentary make a comment about high doses of niacin is helpful with depression. Now as you would expect I have a good dose in my multi (not quite as high as I would have made it, but short of making my own supplement nothing is ever going match what my current thinking is).

Thinking that nothing tried, nothing gained, when to a health store. Was very impressed with the woman shop assistant. She was well versed in metabolic pathway's and in fact when asked if I wanted flushing or non flushing niacin I didn't know! Rather an unusual experience for me.

Anyway took the 500mg tablets, and take them twice a day with my normal multi's. I have noticed a distinctive difference. Can't quite put my finger on it. It is subtle...... I still get tired and when I am tired I still lethargic (which is a big issue in depression). However when tired I don't try to motivate myself (or tell myself how lazy I am being), I just accept myself for being tired and know that I can chill out and that is ok. When I am well rested I seem to be able to do stuff without working up the motivation. That is things occur naturally without me having to physic myself.

A analogue would be when you get your glasses prescription updated. You could already see well with your glasses (as compared to not wearing them). This is like the antidepressant in my case. But if you update your prescription the finer points come back into focus.

Lastly I have noticed a big difference in my mood the day after having a beer. I only have a drink on Friday night or Saturday as I know that the day after is a much more likely to be a slow or depressed day. Being a home brewer (I don't drink much and 500ml of beer has same antioxidant levels of a glass red wine) this can be rather annoying. However the day after having a pint is slower, but not really a big deal.   

So I will definitely be taking lots of niacin for the foreseeable future. Go try some yourself !  

Blog sabbatical - will start blogging again

Blog sabbatical is really a fancy name for - I had taken on to many projects and thus also dropped a few. It has been a completely unexpected adventure, right at my busiest time of year, but we have sold our slice or paradise and moving to a bigger slice...... exciting, unexpected and way to much time, effort and stress ! But we are very pleased. Again another move house onto section but this time instead of 591 square meters of weeds, invasive species and mud, we have 5000 squares of an organic citrus orchard (about 250 orange and tangelo trees, plus a feijoa hedge and a couple of figs and avocados).

Still things not yet unconditional, but working through the issues but really looking forward to our new adventure and developing the orchard into a more mixed orchard with lots of different fruit trees.

Also very busy at the university in the middle of very intense marking and tutoring about scientific writing, coupled with my Station of the Cross: Art at the Hamilton Gardens preparation..... so will endeavor to start blogging again.