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The problem, specifically, with disorders like bp is that many patients get their meds from a factory style setup with the county or the like. They literally figured five minutes a person. Nobody ever ask about my diet. I got impatient looks when I *insisted* on asking questions. I don't know that pdocs are that well versed in nutrition. Nor did they ask about things like sleep, stress, and the like. They might ask how you were doing, but were thinking more of answers like "I"m okay" over I'm not sleeping. That would just probably get you yet another pill, never mind ask about why you might not be sleeping.
The group I attended (the DBSA Depressives and Bipolar assn) wasn't connected by doctor, you just chose to come. WE did talk about stresses and problems, and others like unacceptable side effects. And people were encouraged to tell them pro they needed to discuss it. If said pro didn't want to, the rest who'd had the problem were there. When I had a talk therapist for a short while, she did ask about daily life, sleeping, appetite and foods and general stress as factors which had to be taken into account.
The best thing we as patients can do is take note of sleep, eating and the rest so we know that something isn't right. And find organizations like DBSA which can help us find better ways.
Well, most pdocs only have 15 minutes, so I can see where that instruction would need to come from elsewhere. perhaps. pdocs barely have time to asses whether your meds need changing.
Well, most pdocs only have 15 minutes, so I can see where that instruction would need to come from elsewhere. perhaps. pdocs barely have time to asses whether your meds need changing.
In my case, the county had decided that psychologists were too expensive, and done away with the job, along with the few talk therapist they'd had. It was the pdoc at your appointment or nobody. I wrote out my medical history with surgery and absorbtion limits and so forth, so they could keep it with my records. He didn't want it. If you could pick yourself up off the couch and get there, you must be doing okay was the mantra.
Its just plain malpractice when as a patient you are taking a drug which is causing things like suddenly fainting without warning, and the DOCTOR says off handedly it can't be this... and when you say but I'm not 'normal' inside, so there's no way to know, and all they do is push their pills and get rid of you for another few months.
Most people are not going to need more, or don't want more. But when I woke up, sleeping on the couch with the tv on and could barely sit up, then found a pan on the stove, boiled dry and hot I drew a line. I also went to my medical doctor but the pdoc dismissed her too. She supported me backing out the meds. I decided I would remove all the likelys and back the whole mess to less and the scary stuff stopped. But my mind got clear too, and I realized how heavily over drugged I was.
If pdocs don't have the time then SOMEONE trained in the physical effects and the problems they make needs to be available IF they are giving these pills out like candy. No doctor to see for problems, no pills get dispensed.
I found that most of the 'symptoms' I was having which I got the pills for were made far worse with the meds, and taking more just made it much much worse. Its my body chemistry, but NOBODY listened. I'm stubborn enough to say no more and stop them but I don't buy that the person who's so much in a stupor they can't remember where they are is 'better'.
I just wonder how many people have done something to themself, or died, or some purely medical doctor is trying to figure out why but doesn't have the whole picture. These mass systems MUST be responsible for ALL results no matter the hastle. Patients shouldn't have to feel like they're turning the roulette wheel each time they take a pill.
Nutrition alone cannot cause or cure bipolar, but it is part of the program any good Dr. would stress. Nutrition, exercise, sleep, managing stress, things everyone would be healthier to be mindful of are more critical to pay attention to with BP (and other illnesses).
I didn't say nutrition would cure BP. But it makes very little sense to put someone on medication, send them to therapy, etc. if you haven't also addressed their diet. Given how little training most doctors have on nutrition in general and influence Big Pharma has on them, it doesn't surprise me how much they downplay the power of nutrition on health in general. I don't think they want to acknowledge just how much diet matters.
I didn't say nutrition would cure BP. But it makes very little sense to put someone on medication, send them to therapy, etc. if you haven't also addressed their diet. Given how little training most doctors have on nutrition in general and influence Big Pharma has on them, it doesn't surprise me how much they downplay the power of nutrition on health in general. I don't think they want to acknowledge just how much diet matters.
You & Jen actually agree here & should get married. Haha, j/k.
My mother had manic depression her entire adult life...until my father and I found her hanging two years ago.
She was on lithium for the vast majority of that time until there started to show damaging side effects of the drug to part of her insides (can't remember if it was kidneys or liver).
She thought she could just stop taking her lithium (which helped her through a 35 year career at the railroad - a union job which had it not been, she probably would have lost that job several times over because of hospitalizations over the years), but she was wrong.
I wish the hospital would have kept her the week before when they released her, and I wish the last time she was hospitalized it didn't ring up a $70k bill, of which she was hit with 10 percent of...
I think she wanted to end it all because she didn't want us, her children, to be left with nothing because of another hospitalization or two that would have hit her financially again.
Yes, manic depression (bipolar) illness is very real.
My mother had manic depression her entire adult life...until my father and I found her hanging two years ago.
She was on lithium for the vast majority of that time until there started to show damaging side effects of the drug to part of her insides (can't remember if it was kidneys or liver).
She thought she could just stop taking her lithium (which helped her through a 35 year career at the railroad - a union job which had it not been, she probably would have lost that job several times over because of hospitalizations over the years), but she was wrong.
I wish the hospital would have kept her the week before when they released her, and I wish the last time she was hospitalized it didn't ring up a $70k bill, of which she was hit with 10 percent of...
I think she wanted to end it all because she didn't want us, her children, to be left with nothing because of another hospitalization or two that would have hit her financially again.
Yes, manic depression (bipolar) illness is very real.
No, it's not rhetorical. But let's face it. The health care industry has a habit of taking a collection of symptoms that they don't know the cause of, and then slapping a name on it so they can produce a class of drugs to treat it. Lithium helps to level a person's mood. But do you know how it works? I don't. What's funny is that neither do the people prescribing it. The symptoms of BP are very real. But that's not best argument for proving that a disease is real. If I tell you I have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, etc. and you had never heard of heart disease, would you immediately say I have one disease? Only if you could connect all my symptoms to same underlying cause. And that's the problem with BP. We can look at the symptoms a person with BP displays. But if we don't know what's causing all of them, how can we even say they're all part of the same disease?
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Haha, j/k. 
