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Comment by artifaxx | Hacker News Reader

If you are looking for ideas to protect yourself from depression http://examine.com is amazing. They back their articles with actual scientific studies on whether or not supplements work. Their articles on omega 3(e.g. fish oil), zinc, rhodiola rosea, and creatine are a great place to start for ideas to help deal with depression. I use all of these on a daily basis, and I found out why and how thanks to their suggestions. These are supplements that are safe and your doctor will likely support their usage as well when you ask them.

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Yes, Examine has a lot of good information. I've added a mention of it to the OP.

Thanks for being open to feedback, I know some people here are quite critical when it comes to supplementation suggestions and really anything medical. You clearly take the time to think and test this stuff out and improve your post, so I think this is something we could use more of!

Yea, I was already familiar with that site, I just didn't think to include the link. I used it a lot as I researched various supplements. The FAQ section of the /r/Nootropics subreddit has links to other useful resources. Also, the owner of Examine.com is an active member of /r/Nootropics.

I'm annoyed by the critical reaction to supplement suggestions (mainly because no one is being forced to get anything), but on the other hand, I understand the reason for skepticism or lack of confidence. What would be great, however, is a bias toward first looking into what's recommended, rather than just settling into blind blanket dismissal/rejection.

People expect the sources to have some sort of marketing scheme behind them. Examine.com is the exception by having well researched suggestions backed with actual studies and a status of being a reliable third party. I understand their skepticism, because of how much learning it takes to actually do supplementation safely and effectively. Most supplements just help based on placebo effect anyway, I aggregated the supplement effects studied on examine.com and 50% of studied effects were neutral. Only 8% of the supplement effects they investigated were more than minor, the numbers can only get worse when you consider publication and selection bias! So there is good reason to be critical, because the odds are against supplements helping enough to be noticeable beyond what a sugar pill can do.

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