BP can improve with age

[adel_ezz]

Hi comrades

Everyday posts of suffered people refer to others saying BP has no cure or worsens with age. I wish to assure you that in medicine nothing is definite let alone the brain diseases. OK cases exist where the patient illness deteriorates, but also the head of a big psychiatrist hospital told my parents he has witnessed many cases even the majority of the cases which recovers indefinitely as they grow older or that according to his phrase the illness becomes weaker like getting elderly  

In this regard, I wish to refer you to 2 articles in psyccentral with an h after c which you can google
1. emerging bipolar therapies
2. bipolar disorder may be outgrown

these articles are not the last, everyday new drugs appear, new therapies, approaches to the disease.
Don't lose hope

[yarrow]

There is strong evidence that treatment with lithium not only preserves gray matter (the brain cells you think with), but actually increases it in those with bipolar disorder:

http://www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/news/default.aspx?id=420&

Many, many previous studies have pointed to this.

[lindahand]

Even if the odds are against us we must remain hopeful that we will be the exception to the rule. I've been told by a few psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses that medication is only 60% of the issue, the other 40% we have control over by exercising, eating right, and going to therapy to deal with our stresses. It may be the reality that over time things will get worse, but what good does it do to us to focus on that? There is also some evidence that drugs like Lamotrigine and Lithium have protective effects and lengthen the time inbetween episodes. That may be enough to tip the scales in our favour.

Antidepressants can be really bad for bipolar. I believe Wellbutrin caused me to ultridian rapid cycle and two pdocs have told me that I will probably cycle in and out of episodes for the rest of my life. But so far I cycle mildly with medications. I really have to watch my stress, but things aren't nearly as bad as they predicted they would be. And I am having more periods of normal inbetween. I am working part time which they said would likely never be possible. I am going to prove them wrong, and if I am wrong and things do get worse at least I had hope to hold onto for many years.

What I am saying is that the doctors are wrong a lot of the time. They use statistics as absolutes and I truly believe that by zapping hope they create a negative situation that makes relapse all the more possible. If you believe your fate is for cycles to increase over time, it makes it more likely that will be the outcome. What I am not saying is that if cycles do increase as you age it is somehow your fault. Sometimes this illness does bite us in the butt and clip our wings. Even during the worst it is that grain of hope that keeps you alive. If you don't have hope though you have nothing, and I believe that is one of the biggest lies depression tells us. There is always hope. Statistics be darned, there are exceptions and I am going to try and live my life like I am one of them.

[adel_ezz]

thank you for making life so bleak.

However apart from future therapies, i read that unless you are BP in origin without the intervention of drugs, then you are not classified BP. Simply because the majority of the patients manifest the illness after taking drugs. I mean most of them. For example my 1st mania occurred only after an AD not before and was diagnosed OCD before. But of course after my 1st mania life changed. And most the patients have similar experience.

I suppose these pdocs telling you this they read it from the literature not out of their own experience. Because the literature assumes that bipolarity is some kind of faulty genes not only chemistry imbalance in the neurotransmitters. For example the mixed states (a situation where the energy is high whereas the mood is low) occurs NOT naturally but due to either abuse of AD's whereby the mood and energy after an euphoric state start to become out of phase by what is called cycling so you eventually end up by widening the gap between them or by taking - while depressed - something (not an AD) that boosts up your energy. MEANING is not a property of the person but due to outside intervention.

Bipolarity in my view is kind of hypersensitivity that is very sensitive to circumstances or drugs or alcohol etc.. stresses, it's a quality of the person that shouldn't be touched even under mild depression otherwise you open the doors of hell. People rush to pdocs right away once they feel not well. It's a private trait of yours i.e. a distinguished property that should be respected and not try to alter it

anyway the one who told us this is the head of the main psychiatrist hospital in Egypt and surely he witnessed hundred of cases.

[run4you]

While I agree you shouldn't give up hope, the psychiatrists I've gone to have all said that the illness deteriorates your brain over time (yes, like your comparison to getting elderly, your body begins to break down progressively). While they have said some cases can stay steady, they said it's not common.

Of course, maybe your therapies overseas are different than here in the US, but that doesn't appear to be the case over here.

This is just with current therapies, so hopefully in the future it won't be the case.

[Anuket]

Glad to hear a positive voice out there!  I agree, that there is much evidence for hope -- both on a personal level and in the area of research. Thanks adel_ezz.