Vitamin D Can Improve Mental Health

Medical Video: Vitamin D: The Miracle Supplement Video - Brigham and Women's Hospital

In addition to maintaining a healthy physical condition, maintaining a mental condition is a part that cannot be forgotten in living a healthy life. Vitamin D is one of the nutrients needed to maintain physical health and mental health. The brain, as an organ that influences how a person behaves, has several vitamin D receptors. This is why, adequate vitamin D will affect our brain or mind.

The importance of mental health

Mental health is closely related to emotional and psychological conditions. These two components determine how he thinks, feels, and behaves in daily life. In addition, mental health also determines how a person faces stress and socializes with others.

Although mental health is influenced by many things, a person's biological mechanisms such as genetics and brain work also affect a person's various mental processes. In addition, it is not uncommon for various physical conditions in us to cause us to think and behave abnormally or experience mental illness. One of them is depression.

Mental health disorders: depression

Depression is a mental illness that can be caused by various factors, one of which is a person's physical condition. Although it does not cause direct bodily dysfunction, depression is still categorized as a serious disease that can worsen a person's physical health. Depression can be triggered by conditions of stress or sadness caused by various social and health problems. Depression is characterized by changes in behavior that are easily recognizable, such as not looking happy and withdrawing from the social environment.

Depression is also the most common type of mental illness because it has a variety of risk factors, including:

Disease - hormonal disorders and chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease or cancer can cause a person to experience excessive sadness.
Unhealthy lifestyle - habits such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, obesity, and lack of physical activity cause a person to be more difficult to deal with stress.
Women - women experience more emotional disorders that cause depression.
Elderly - Various physical and life changes in the age range of 45-64 years cause a person to experience confusion and loss of self-confidence and cause depression.

How vitamin D can affect a person's mental state

The benefits of vitamin D in maintaining mental health have been studied over the past decade. The results of one study stated that low levels of vitamin D in the body are associated with the appearance of depressive symptoms in the elderly. While other studies also show that administration of vitamin D reduces the number of symptoms experienced by sufferers of depression. Depression condition caused Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) that occurs in winter is also associated with low levels of vitamin D in the body.

Vitamin D is one of the fat soluble vitamins needed at every level of body function. Every body tissue has receptors for vitamin D, including the brain. In the brain, vitamin D receptors are located in the same part of the brain that has a depressive effect. Therefore, vitamin D deficiency will have an impact on physical and mental health. Vitamin D also functions to activate the immune system and release dopamine and serotonin hormones that affect brain function and development.

In addition, vitamin D may have an anti-depressant effect that affects the brain. Vitamin D can affect the levels of the hormone monoamine needed by the brain. This is similar to how some types of anti-depressant drugs work to increase the hormone monoamine in the brain to overcome depression.

Although mental health disorders such as depression are caused by various things, vitamin D intake is still needed to improve brain function. Depression conditions can be exacerbated by the presence of brain hormone imbalances. By consuming vitamin D, it will speed up the recovery of the brain's work and ease the symptoms of depression.

Where can we get vitamin D?

Vitamin D needs can be fulfilled by consuming various foods, supplements, and synthesizing from sunlight. However, natural intake such as from food and sun synthesis will be much healthier because it has a very small risk of hypervitaminosis. Various food sources rich in vitamin D in addition to cow's milk, including:

Oily fish: salmon, sardines, mackerel
Red meat
Chicken's liver
Egg
Fortified food

Besides that in Indonesia, your body will easily synthesize vitamin D because it has plenty of sun exposure. Activity outside the home in the morning will make your body easily get vitamin D on almost every day of the year.

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