Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Bipolar, My Thoughts About Medications

Did you know that most medications for bipolar disorder where stumbled upon by accident? Many were created for seizure disorder, and they accidentally discovered that they worked for bipolar as well. Even Lithium was first used to treat gout, not bipolar. Medical science still doesn't know how or why most of these bipolar medications work. So why should doctors be surprised when our medications don't work?

Has anyone stopped to consider that we are attempting to treat two conflicting conditions, depression and mania, that do not occur at the same time? Just as diabetes has extremes in blood sugar level, bipolars deal with extremes in mood and energy. Is it logical to think the same same drug should work to treat both mania and depression?

I don't know enough about pharmacy to comment much further on this topic. I still have hope that bipolar medications will someday evolve into more than just hit or miss treatments.

2 comments:

angel said...

Recently I started taking the amino acid L=Tryptophan, 500 mgs a nite. It helps your body to make melatonin, which gives you proper sleep/waking cycles and seratonin. I think many bipolar people have trouble assimilating this amino acid from food, and your body doesn't make it. Med clinic kicked me out when they found out I was taking it and said I would not need to come back, and my doc was real happy I found out about it. It has taken some getting used to being normal, still is, cuz being on the roller coaster is all I ever knew. If I stop taking it all the symptoms come back. Thought you might like to know...Ps. I am a naturalpath and studied biochemistry and applied nutrition, but it still took me more than half my life to discover this!

Amy said...

Thanks Angel-

I've been thinking about experimenting with some things like that.

Vitamin B seems to help when I am low on energy. I've also been hearing a lot about fish oil and might try that too.

Melatonin has been recommended to me for sleep, but doesn't work at all. I've got the 3mg tabs- maybe I need to take something stronger?

These things are all pretty experemental, but I'm willing to try just about anything.