Healthy Ways to Manage Bipolar Swings

I have been getting more and more off over the last week, feeling tired, disconnected, angry, and depressed. There have been triggers, but also something (we are not sure what) that is making the triggers worse than usual. So the theme of this week has been: What can we do to interrupt the downward spiral, or at least lessen the magnitude of it?

Cleveland Metroparks. Copyright Jeff Norris.

Last weekend on a particularly depressed day, my husband and son took me for a walk in the Metroparks. I was really resistant to it and it took a good half hour before I started to feel some joy again. They made sure we walked, but also had time to just sit in nature and hear the water rushing down the river.
 
We also made sure that I exercised at CrossFit three times last week. On Friday I was so angry when I woke up, and normally I would not go out in public, but Jeff got me to go to CrossFit anyway. I did feel better after the workout and it allowed me to manage later triggers in the day better because my anger did not skyrocket thanks to the exercise. Now today I woke up even more angry and also feeling physically sick due to all the junk food I ate yesterday. I finally got to CrossFit, assuming the same thing would happen as last Friday, but even just into the warmup, I could tell all my muscles were like lead and everything was just so hard to do. I got part way through the workout and stopped. I was pretty upset about that, but Jeff reminded me that even part of a CrossFit workout is normally a full work out for most people, and that I actually got there on a day when I usually would have stayed in bed. So, it is progress even if it is not as much as I had wanted it to be.

Right after CrossFit though, I felt pretty bad about ending my workout and was just an angry mess when we got home. So, Jeff talked to me, and got me to let him do the meridian work on my feet. He said the angry energy was literally burning his arms during the energy work. It did calm me down though, after I was done trying to resist it working. Then Jeff got me some food and tea and had also emailed my therapist. So, by the time my therapist called, I was doing much better and we could look at the situation and find out why it might have happened and I am looking forward to my appointment tomorrow.

Today I will still be lounging around a lot. I will make sure I don't go anywhere on my own because I don't want to end up getting fast food and making myself even sicker. I will have Jeff hide all the car keys tonight so I do not try and go to Dunkin Donuts in the middle of the night.

To some people these tactics might sound extreme or weird, but there are so many illnesses where you have to manage the symptoms, where you have to intervene to lessen the effects. What I don't think we talk about enough in mental health is that there are many non-pharmacological things you can do to stop or lessen a downward spiral. We also need to realize that we need understanding and compassionate people to help us because sometimes we can not do it on our own. If Jeff had not sat holding my feet even when I was arguing with him, I would not have been able to calm down. It took about five minutes of me trying to say this was not going to work until it did work. Even my workout this morning, I waited it out to see if it would help. And it did, because it kept me committed to my healthy lifestyle, got me out of the house, got me some exercise, and made it easier for me to calm down later in the day. Now, if I can just get in some family time, and meditation or art practice today, I think things will go even better.

Depending on the severity of your illness, managing it can be a full time job at times. It is not fun. It is tiring for everyone involved. You wish you could be like everyone else, but we rarely realize that everyone else has their issues too, we just don't know about them.

One of the things that has really been helping us add in simple things to help me is Mariel Hemingway and Bobby Williams' book Running with Nature (formerly The WillingWay). I will write a review on it soon, but basically it has many suggestions of how to calm your mind and feed your spirit, such as taking the time to sit and listen to nature, or meditation techniques. The book has made us much more mindful of the options we have for helping all of us be happier and healthier. 

So, just try anything healthy in order to help yourself manage the hard times. Even if you don't want to do it. Tell yourself you will try it for just five minutes and see what happens.

Blessings,

Rev. Katie

Whole30 Wrap Up: Creating a Powerful Body, Mind, and Spirit

Today is the last day of my Whole30. Finally! After trying Whole30 at least 5 times, I actually finished it. Woo Hoo!! Here is my Whole30 Wrap Up:

Why Did I Do a Whole30?

• I have a terrible relationship with food and I needed to change that. Normally I am just worried about loosing weight, but all the other weight loss methods that worked for me just had me eating low fat, sugar-free, ice cream, and bread all day. I lost weight but still had a bad relationship with food, and then a few years later I gained the weight back.
• What I eat helps regulate my bipolar disorder better than medications do. I needed to figure out what was best for my treatment plan.
• I wanted to have choice in my life rather than letting my illness take control of me.
• I wanted to finally stick up for myself and to say that I am worth this amount of work.
• For my family. I wanted my son to learn what is healthy. Not see that you eat healthy to be a certain size, but you eat, sleep, recover, play, learn, and grow spiritually so you can be play hard, learn more, and be strong.

What Were The Hardest Things About Whole30?

• Meal planning. You need a TON of food prepared in order to eat Whole30 because you really can't eat out anywhere. (Or at least I could not because I did not want to risk it.) Sometimes we ate the same meal for breakfast lunch and dinner. 
• The "Sugar Dragon." I craved sugar, dreamed about sugar, and a few times overate dates or sweet potatoes.
• Binge eating healthy food! I didn't know that if I had no options, I really would overeat veggies and meat. 
• Taking food everywhere. Every meeting, every dinner party, every play date for our son, we brought our own food.
• I am not cured. I have had Irritable Bowel (IBS) my whole life and really thought if I just ate Whole30 it would go away. It got better but didn't go away completly. There must still be more I am sensitive too. Also, my bipolar is much better regulated but I don't have more than 3-4 days where I am really stable. 

Two of our favorite books. Photo by Jeff Norris.

What Were The Best Things About Whole30?

• While I am not cured of IBS or bipolar, they are both significantly better. And, I no longer fear cutting out foods in order to get even more healthy. I always thought "I don't have enough willpower to be better." Whole30 made me realize willpower is a myth. I can do it if I have a good support system, we are better prepared, and I know I am worth it. It was not until week 3 that I really realized I could do this. I think you just have to force yourself to do it for at least 3 weeks before you know you can do it. 
• Cooking with my husband. We used to drive each other nuts trying to cook in the same kitchen. But this time we both were working towards the same goal and it was great.
• My son learned about being healthy and is actually interested in it! He remained almost completely Whole30 compliant, and he wanted to do it. Gone are the previous days of him complaining that he can't have pizza, bread, dairy, sweets, candy, and "eat what everyone else eats." He likes to just eat healthy. He wants to be stronger, faster, and better in school. He started CrossFit kids in the last few weeks and is really loving the whole healthy lifestyle.
• We had fun doing this together as a family. We cooked new things, ruined some dishes that made our son laugh at us, went to visit the farm where our meat comes from, worked out together, and we became far more encouraging of each other not only with eating but work, school, and life.
• I learned that my eating disorder is perpetuated by eating bad food. It Starts With Food, the book about Whole 30, has a great chapter on the science behind the addictive nature of processed foods. 
• Supplements, sleep, and other things had been suggested to me by my doctor for my treatment but it was so hard to figure out what helped, what was causing problems, because I just had so much bad food in my body. I have a better idea of what supplements help, how much sleep I need, and that there are still a lot more lifestyle changes to go before my treatment plan is compete. Now doing the Whole30, I know I can do all of these things. 
• I proved to myself that I matter. I did not cave and put myself last just to make other people more comfortable. I did not doubt my intuition on how best to care for myself. I gave myself power that I thought I did not have before.

"Measurable" Results From the Whole30

•  Mental Illness: Less Ativan needed, bit better sleep (still working on this), more stable moods, times that would have set me over the edge were not as bad, on the path to recovery from binge eating, happier, sense of self worth.
• Physical: Better at CrossFit and better at sticking with working out, lost weight and inches (I went down two notches on my belt), skin clearing up, eczema not gone but better, IBS not as bad.
• Family: We became closer as a family, we support each other more, healthy living has almost defined us and what we think is important, even our dogs are on a better diet.
• Spiritual: Much better connection to the earth, animals, and farmers who bring us our food. More gratitude, less waste, more understanding of how to help others who are working on being healthy, easier to stick to our ethics, more connected with the Spirit of Love around us. 

What Is Next?

•  Sticking with a strict Paleo base following the Whole30 concept of not eating a ton of Paleofied foods, and not using any refined sugar, and only small amounts of honey or maple syrup. 
• Whole30 has a reintroduction plan, but instead I will be eliminating some more foods to see what still bothers my stomach and I never want to reintroduce wheat, sugar, processed foods, etc...
• More focus on sleep, timing of eating, exercise, and meditation.

Overall, the Whole30 experience was great. True, sometimes I wanted to pull my hair out, scream, yell, and quit. However, the power you gain from doing something like this is so great. You become stronger in body, mind, and spirit.

Blessings,

Rev. Katie

Some of our most used items this month: It Starts With Food, Practical Paleo, Well Fed, and recipe for Slow Cooker Italian Pork Roast.

Raising Awareness: Non-Pharmocological Treatment

October 7-13 is Mental Illness Awareness Week. What do you think is one thing people need to be more aware of concerning mental illness?

I have so many things I would want people to be aware of. Of course one of the main things I would like people to actually accept is that mental illness is real. But the other thing I think we do not speak about nearly enough are all the non-pharmacological treatments for mental illness. I am eternally frustrated when I see people (adults and children) heavily medicated, on medicines that risk their life due to serious side effects, and no one tells them the other things they could try to do for treatment. Many non-pharmacological things work in treatment to either decrease the amount of drugs you need to take or some people don't even need prescription medications anymore.

Why do we make people go through this? Why do we not inform people of all the options they have? Why don't we give them the best chance at a stable life?

There is too much stigma around non-prescription treatments- assuming that if you can treat an illness through anything other than a pill then the illness is not real. But that is just not true. Heart disease is real and it can be treated with diet and lifestyle changes. Some forms of diabetes can be treated with diet and people can decrease or stop needing insulin injections. Diet is used in the treatment of epilepsy when medications are not working. Celiac disease is treated with a gluten free diet as are all other food allergies. There is no reason to think that because mental illness can be treated with things like diet, exercise, sleep schedule, meditation, supplements, etc... that it is not a real illness.

From NAMI's Facebook Page

Mental illnesses are chemical imbalances or damage in the brain and things like diet and exercise can change the balance of those chemicals or help repair the brain. For instance serotonin is often one of the chemicals that is out of balance, too low in people with depression. Sugar increases serotonin, but then it also produces a crash and creates mood fluctuations and that can create the chemical imbalance of bipolar. Not eating sugar and other simple carbohydrates can help balance serotonin so it does not have extreme highs and lows. Exercise helps in the treatment of ADD, depression, bipolar and more because it effects neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine and dopamine. Exercise also helps regulate the amygdala which is one of the parts of our brain affected in PTSD. Also, as Sharon Begley describes in her book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, meditation helps change our brain due to neuroplasticity (the ability for our brains to change, rewire itself.) Meditation has been successful in treatment of mental illness as well because it changes the pathways in your brain, this is especially helpful in PTSD and brain injury.

Nothing showed me just how easy it is to change our brain with things like food than an experience with my son.

We noticed my son was having emotional breakdowns. Crying over small things that, while annoying, were not things you would just fall apart for hours over. He is normally a totally happy and smiling kid who listens and is really easy to take care of. We knew something was wrong and we had already been researching diet and it's affect on mental illness for me and my husband has a gluten intolerance. We noticed when we cut out gluten we all felt better, but my son still had these breakdowns so we we started paying more attention to exactly what he was eating. We noticed that when he ate corn, a few hours later, he was a wreck! So, we cut out corn (even corn syrup), and he rarely has these episodes except when we eat out or he is at a friends house. No matter how hard we try to avoid it, corn is snuck into everything especially in the form of corn syrup. Even pre-made hamburger patties have corn in them sometimes so you may think you are just eating meat but you are not. We even noticed during school testing week that on the days our son had a breakfast of protein and carbs he was able to sit and focus longer for the test. On the one day I just gave him fruit and gluten-free pancakes, he had a hard time concentrating and sitting during the test so much so that his teacher asked me if he was feeling ok. I know that if he goes to a party or spends the day at the amusement park and we did not pack food for him, he will be sad, cry easily, and even withdraw to his room for hours. All because of the food he ate.

I recommend that all of this be supervised by your doctor and if you do not have a doctor willing to look at things outside of the medicine cabinet, then find a new one. It can be hard. For at least ten years doctors have been telling me "the research shows these things work" but they don't have enough experience to use it in treatment, telling me to experiment on my own. Not helpful! I finally found doctors this year who have enough experience and education on these treatments that they do use them.

If we as patients insist that we want to know ALL of our treatment options, we can make a difference. So I want to raise awareness to my fellow friends with mental illness and let you know that you have many options in your treatment plan. You have the right to insist that you are informed about them and are treated with them. We can demand more testing so that more doctors recognize these treatments as successful. Our lives are worth this fight.

Blessings,

Rev. Katie