Vitamin D and Omega-3 are the two supplements that consistently appear to be super powerful in small studies and then fail to do anything significant at all in larger studies.
Pause for a moment and consider the mere plausibility of the claims in the first few paragraphs: The effect size for antidepressants is 0.4, but the effect size for Vitamin D is 1.8? Are we to believe that Vitamin D supplements have an effect size 4.5X larger than antidepressant drugs, and nobody noticed this massive discrepancy until now?
Effect size is also a favorite metric in this vein of supplement-over-pharma writing because it’s so commonly misunderstood and it’s so easy to find small supplement studies that have outlier effect sizes.
To put it in context, even common OTC pain meds can have effect sizes lower than 0.4 depending on the study. Have you ever taken Tylenol or Ibuprofen and had a headache or other pain reduced? Well you’ve experience what a drug with a small effect size on paper can do for you.
Please be very careful when someone tries to tell you that supplements are miraculous and pharmaceutical drugs don’t work at all. I know too many people who delayed trialing SSRIs for years due to internet driven fears and lost many years of their lives to depression based on content like this. People with cabinets full of dozens of supplement bottles that were chosen based on studies, too. Then they finally decided to try real antidepressant medications and wished they’d done it sooner.
As much as I wish we could all just cure depression by taking a simple Vitamin D supplement that has 4.5X higher effect size than antidepressant drugs, this claim just isn’t passable.
Pause for a moment and consider the mere plausibility of the claims in the first few paragraphs: The effect size for antidepressants is 0.4, but the effect size for Vitamin D is 1.8? Are we to believe that Vitamin D supplements have an effect size 4.5X larger than antidepressant drugs, and nobody noticed this massive discrepancy until now?
Effect size is also a favorite metric in this vein of supplement-over-pharma writing because it’s so commonly misunderstood and it’s so easy to find small supplement studies that have outlier effect sizes.
To put it in context, even common OTC pain meds can have effect sizes lower than 0.4 depending on the study. Have you ever taken Tylenol or Ibuprofen and had a headache or other pain reduced? Well you’ve experience what a drug with a small effect size on paper can do for you.
Please be very careful when someone tries to tell you that supplements are miraculous and pharmaceutical drugs don’t work at all. I know too many people who delayed trialing SSRIs for years due to internet driven fears and lost many years of their lives to depression based on content like this. People with cabinets full of dozens of supplement bottles that were chosen based on studies, too. Then they finally decided to try real antidepressant medications and wished they’d done it sooner.
As much as I wish we could all just cure depression by taking a simple Vitamin D supplement that has 4.5X higher effect size than antidepressant drugs, this claim just isn’t passable.