Single-Micronutrient and Broad-Spectrum Micronutrient Approaches for Treating Mood Disorders in Youth and Adults

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Key points

  • Vitamins and minerals are involved in virtually every biologic process, so micronutrient deficiencies have broad effects throughout the body and brain.

  • Micronutrient insufficiencies affect most people, even in “well-fed” populations, especially patients with psychiatric disorders, including mood disorders in youth and adults.

  • Folic acid, chromium, and perhaps zinc may be effective adjunctive treatments for depression in adults but are not powerful enough to be monotherapies.

  • Broad-spectrum

Vitamins and minerals in health and disease

The technical term “micronutrients” refers to all vitamins and biologically active minerals required in trace and ultratrace amounts to sustain health. The term is often used more broadly to describe a variably defined group of dietary substances, including other bioactive nutrients required in “micro” amounts for a wide range of biologic processes (Box 1). In contrast, larger dietary quantities are needed of the macronutrients, which include carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and the

Treatment of mood disorders with single micronutrients

Kaplan and Shannon47 conducted a review of the evidence linking specific micronutrients to mood symptoms in children and adults. Based on clinical trials, as well as biochemical correlational studies, significant mood effects in humans were identified for a large number of vitamins and minerals (Box 5), and beneficial therapeutic effects have been identified for a small number of single micronutrients.

The study of individual micronutrients for treating psychiatric disorders is an endeavor that

Broad-spectrum micronutrient interventions

Broad-spectrum micronutrient strategies supply a wide range of vitamins and minerals, an approach that is likely to provide more pervasive and significant physiologic changes than supplying just one or a few micronutrients at a time. Sometimes seen as an implicit challenge to the conventional model used in medical pharmacology conceptualizing 1 drug having 1 effect (eg, the standard dose-response curve), a “nutritional pharmacology” approach views a multi-ingredient supplement consisting of a

Summary

The main findings on micronutrient treatments provide some encouraging data (Box 9, Tables 8 and 9). Several single-nutrient interventions show promise as effective augmentation agents for antidepressant treatments, but not as monotherapies. In contrast, broad-spectrum micronutrient interventions appear to have the potential to become a genuine monotherapy for mood disorders whose effects may be comparable to conventional antidepressant and mood-stabilizing agents.

Main findings on

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Julia Rucklidge, Bonnie Kaplan, and Cathy Field for their contributions to this field and also for their comments on an earlier form of this article.

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    Disclosures: Dr C. Popper is an unpaid consultant to Truehope Nutritional Support and to NutraTek Health Innovations.

    None of the agents discussed in this article have marketing approval for psychiatric uses by the US Food and Drug Administration.

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