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Areas › Your body › Food, caffeine and fuel
Use it early in the day and use it consistently, since the timing is part of how it works. It is also worth asking whoever prescribes for you about vitamin D over winter, particularly at high latitude or if you have darker skin. Plan for the season before it arrives rather than after six weeks of wondering what is wrong with you.
There is a sign for them in the lifeless earth: We give it life and We produce grain from it (Quran 36:33). Ground that looks dead through the winter is not finished, and neither are you in the middle of a dark stretch.
يس
وَءَايَةࣱ لَّهُمُ ٱلۡأَرۡضُ ٱلۡمَيۡتَةُ أَحۡيَيۡنَٰهَا وَأَخۡرَجۡنَا مِنۡهَا حَبࣰّ ا فَمِنۡهُ يَأۡكُلُونَ
There is a sign for them in the lifeless earth: We give it life and We produce grain from it for them to eat
Qur’an 36:33read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
On the vitamin D half of this, keep expectations honest. Randomised trials of vitamin D supplementation in people with psychiatric conditions found improvement on some mental health and inflammation measures, but not consistently across outcomes. So it is a reasonable thing to test for and correct if you are low, rather than something to expect a lift from.
Jamilian H, Amirani E, Milajerdi A, Kolahdooz F, Mirzaei H, Zaroudi M, Ghaderi A, Asemi Z. (2019). The effects of vitamin D supplementation on mental health, and biomarkers of inflammation and oxidative stress in patients with psychiatric disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.. Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Morning light helps set the body clock, and a clock that has drifted late is common in both the winter dip and ADHD.
Light boxes can cause problems in bipolar disorder and in some eye conditions, so check before starting one.
What you feel does not stay in your head. Emotional states register in the body's immune signalling too, which is one reason a long stretch of unspoken distress can leave you physically run down.
Here is a question that costs nothing: has anyone in your family been told their vitamin D was low? It runs in families through genes, skin tone, where you live and how much time anyone spends outside.
When something has gone wrong across several systems, expecting one treatment to fix it is usually the mistake. Movement, processing what happened, changes to food and work on calming the body tend to add up in a way that none of them manages alone.