If you know me at all, you know how I have agonized over the cause of my depression. Spiritual, emotional, chemical. I beat up myself mercilessly thinking it's all my fault. But . . .
When I was young I had "dizzy spells." When I was pregnant with one of my kids those "dizzy spells" turned into full blown grand mal seizures. I have been thinking a lot lately about how some of the most effective mood stabilizers are anti-seizure medications. Wellbutrin cannot be taken by people with a history of seizure. There is a new magnetic treatment for bi-polar that can cause seizures -- so anyone with a history of seizures cannot use it.
So tonight I went online to see if there is a correlation between seizure disorders and bi-polar -- and voila -- I found this! You can't believe how comforting this is to me. I have just felt the Lord leading me in this direction -- this was the first link that popped up! Maybe now I can stop beating myself up and actually learn to manage this. I'm probably just ruminating on this subject a lot more lately and sounding so crazy because I haven't been on any meds for a while -- I'm not always THIS bad. But since joining CF -- you guys have only known me as crazed
and unmedicated. LOL Anyway -- here is the article that set me free -- I think! Blessings!
There is some relationship between seizures and bipolar disorder all right, we just don't know what. Consider that 4 out of the 6 medications that have clearly been shown to be "mood stabilizers", with lithium as the "gold standard" for that class, are antiseizure medications (Depakote, carbamazepine, lamotrigine, and topiramate; as opposed to lithium and Zyprexa -- that's all 6. Some people would count verapamil, a calcium channel blocker blood pressure medication). Many bipolar researchers refer to the "kindling" model of bipolar disorder, borrowed from epilepsy research as a model for the way seizures -- and bipolar disorder -- behave. Bipolar disorders have appeared after head injuries, like seizures. And estrogen can make bipolar disorder worse (reference pending: discussed with a hormone/mood specialist at recent conference in San Diego), just as it can make seizure disorders worse. I have basically come to think of some versions of bipolar disorder as "slow seizures" in the emotion centers of the brain. See that proposed way of thinking in the Moods section of the Brain Anatomy portion of my website.
When I was young I had "dizzy spells." When I was pregnant with one of my kids those "dizzy spells" turned into full blown grand mal seizures. I have been thinking a lot lately about how some of the most effective mood stabilizers are anti-seizure medications. Wellbutrin cannot be taken by people with a history of seizure. There is a new magnetic treatment for bi-polar that can cause seizures -- so anyone with a history of seizures cannot use it.
So tonight I went online to see if there is a correlation between seizure disorders and bi-polar -- and voila -- I found this! You can't believe how comforting this is to me. I have just felt the Lord leading me in this direction -- this was the first link that popped up! Maybe now I can stop beating myself up and actually learn to manage this. I'm probably just ruminating on this subject a lot more lately and sounding so crazy because I haven't been on any meds for a while -- I'm not always THIS bad. But since joining CF -- you guys have only known me as crazed
and unmedicated. LOL Anyway -- here is the article that set me free -- I think! Blessings!There is some relationship between seizures and bipolar disorder all right, we just don't know what. Consider that 4 out of the 6 medications that have clearly been shown to be "mood stabilizers", with lithium as the "gold standard" for that class, are antiseizure medications (Depakote, carbamazepine, lamotrigine, and topiramate; as opposed to lithium and Zyprexa -- that's all 6. Some people would count verapamil, a calcium channel blocker blood pressure medication). Many bipolar researchers refer to the "kindling" model of bipolar disorder, borrowed from epilepsy research as a model for the way seizures -- and bipolar disorder -- behave. Bipolar disorders have appeared after head injuries, like seizures. And estrogen can make bipolar disorder worse (reference pending: discussed with a hormone/mood specialist at recent conference in San Diego), just as it can make seizure disorders worse. I have basically come to think of some versions of bipolar disorder as "slow seizures" in the emotion centers of the brain. See that proposed way of thinking in the Moods section of the Brain Anatomy portion of my website.
