I can get real moody and down over life’s events and there’s plenty of them to yank you into a hole. How we think does make a difference and thought patterns are very hard to change, but if you work at it, they can be.
I’ve found that Niacin (B3) helps for many folks who are blue. It’s called the Happy B Vitamin and has made a difference for me when I’ve gone through grieving seasons of life. I always use a B complex to go with it since it’s good to have a base of balance in the B’s when you’re going to take more of one B vitamin.
Whether it changes the neurotransmitters (chemical balance) around I don’t now, but B Vitamins are definitely involved in many things and these days with all the junk food and stress, we don’t have enough of them. They are water soluble which means they aren’t stored in the body and they are important for a zillion functions in the body.
What I used is Nature’s Sunshine Niacin since it doesn’t cause the flushing:
http://www.theherbsplace.com/Niacin_250_mg._p_524.html
Along with a super B Complex:
http://www.theherbsplace.com/B_Complex_Capsules_p_464.html
Hope that helps. B vitamins have been linked with depression in a lot of research.
Here’s a site that says:
“The B-complex vitamins are essential to mental and emotional well-being. They cannot be stored in our bodies, so we depend entirely on our daily diet to supply them. B vitamins are destroyed by alcohol, refined sugars, nicotine, and caffeine so it is no surprise that many people may be deficient in these.”
Read the entire article here:
http://www.depression.about.com/cs/diet/a/vitamin.htm