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Manic depression

Category: Illness or disabilaties

Type

Involuntary

Introduction and description

Bipolar disorder or manic–depression is a psychiatric condition defined the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood - the manic phase - with or without one or more depressive episodes – the depressive phase. These events are usually separated by periods of "normal" mood; but, in some individuals, depression and mania may rapidly alternate, which is known as rapid cycling:

Mania

Mania is the signature characteristic of bipolar disorder and, depending on its severity, is how the disorder is classified. Mania is generally characterized by a distinct period of an elevated mood, which can take the form of euphoria.
People commonly experience an increase in energy and a decreased need for sleep, with many often getting as little as 3 or 4 hours of sleep per night, while others can go days without sleeping. A person may exhibit pressured speech, with thoughts experienced as racing. Attention span is low, and a person in a manic state may be easily distracted.
Judgment [Reasoning ability] may become impaired. People may feel out of control or unstoppable, or as if they have been "chosen" and are "on a special mission". Sexual drive may increase. The manic phase may also be accompanied by hallucinations and visions, inspiration and extraordinary creativity.
Whereas the Reasoning function may be impaired, the Perception function may be considerably heightened and in some people huge bursts of creativity are experienced. As we shall see in the examples, many of the most famous writers, playwrights, artists and composers were manic depressive

Depression

Signs and symptoms of the depressive phase of bipolar disorder include persistent feelings of sadness, anxiety, guilt, anger, isolation, or hopelessness; disturbances in sleep and appetite; fatigue and loss of interest in usually enjoyable activities; problems concentrating; loneliness, self-loathing, apathy or indifference; loss of interest in sexual activity; shyness or social anxiety; irritability, chronic pain (with or without a known cause); lack of motivation; and ‘morbid suicidal ideation’. These symptoms include delusions or, less commonly, hallucinations, usually unpleasant. A major depressive episode persists for at least two weeks, but may continue longer.

Overall

Those with the condition generally look forward to the ‘high’ but dread the ‘low’, as we shall see.

About 4% of people have experienced bipolar at some point in their life. It is equally common in men and women and is found across all cultures and ethnic groups. The onset of full symptoms generally occurs in late adolescence or young adulthood.

What truly characterises manic depression is not so much the mood swings, which we all get from happy to sad for example, but the extreme nature and length of the mood swings - often "violent" or "jarring" states of essentially uncontrollable oscillation between euphoria and extreme melancholy. In effect the emotions are swinging on an uncontrollable pendulum.

When the left gets activated they are logical, with the ability to Reason and their Memory works fine, but they are low… oh so low, depressed and fearful, paranoic or angry and the Composer function takes all these signals as a cue, and starts to send the poor person images that correspond to his apparent mood. And so he or she gets demons, nightmares and bad dreams. This can be a time of pure terror, if it gets really bad, but it can also be a time when all that input from the manic phase gets analysed and properly documented in language. Beethoven writes down the music he has found. Edgar Allen Poe writes his poems.

Robin Williams

Then the right suddenly kicks in and Reason goes out the window, the person becomes creative and happy, euphoric even, but all the reasoning and behavioural functions which have accumulated on the left side are inaccessible, so they become irresponsible, childish, they do mad and daft things, but they are so happy that it hardly seems to matter to them. They lack fear, they lack aggression, and they are filled with inspiration, which if they can remember it, is a source of huge creativity and productivity. The Composer fills them with images and ideas, intuition and understanding. They feel one with the universe. Suddenly they ‘know’ because they are in complete touch with the Composer, who uses this buoyant happy empathetic mood to give them all sorts of positive input.

Manic depression for the person who can do nothing with all these ideas is simply awful and understandably many people seek treatment, but for the gifted, why do we treat it?

If we could find some way of making the down troughs less terrifying for them, then think what special special people we have here.

Brain damage type

Spike Milligant

There are a huge number of organs of the brain being affected by this condition, but it is not damage to these that is the cause but disruption. Something has got out of balance going from one extreme to the other, which means that there has to be a source of disruption – an organ that when damaged causes disruption to all these.

What is key here is the cycling of the functions from mania and positive reactions, to depression and negative reactions. Like the swinging of a pendulum. Left to right. Left brain, right brain. The left brain is the depressive side, the right brain the manic side.

And from the evidence I have gathered the culprit appears to be damage to the corpus callosum – for more details see Corpus Callosum and bipolar disorder

Thus the cause is Brain damage, but to a specific part of the brain – the bit that connects the two halves of the brain - see Brain split. One moment the person is positive creative imaginative but a bit childish [right brain] and the next they are depressive and effectively cut off from all positive spiritual input [left brain]. The bleakness of losing contact with your Higher spirit can be catastrophic.

Causes of damage

If the immediate cause is damage to the Corpus Callosum, what caused this damage?

The ultimate culprits may be any one of the causes described in the section on Brain damage and include the following

Catherine Zeta-Jones

Pharmaceuticals and other drugs

The eHealthme site collects the Adverse Drug reports submitted by doctors to the FDA and SEDA in the USA. It then summarises them for ease of use. We originally provided a direct link to Bipolar disorder listed on this site and the pharmaceuticals that can cause it, but the eHealthme website is frequently reorganised and thus the links get broken. Thus in order to find out which pharmaceuticals are implicated in Bipolar disorder

Follow the LINK to the eHealthme website
Using the ‘All conditions’ index find the appropriate entry. As at October 2016, there were 10 entries for bipolar disorder, caused by spelling differences eg there was bipolar bi-polar, bi polar, and bipolar disorder
Now scroll down until you get to the section marked ‘Drugs that could cause ”

The list shows you all the drugs implicated in CAUSING Bipolar as well as the number of people who have made a complaint to their doctor and had their case reported by him. Note that it is up to the doctor whether he reports or not.

As of October 2016, about 950 pharmaceuticals were in this list. For example according to eHealthme

On Oct, 19, 2016: 78,255 people reported to have side effects when taking Seroquel.
Among them, 1,254 people (1.6%) have Bipolar Disorder:

In other words these are the number of people who might have become manic depressive from Seroquel - it was the cause of their illness.

eHealthme case study report: Information of the patient in this study: Age: 52;
Gender: male; Conditions: Pain Of Skin; Drugs taking: - Lyrica (pregabalin): used for < 1 month; Side effects have: severe bipolar mania; Comments from or about the patient: my mania is getting worse using Lyrica

Viral infections, Parasites and Bacterial infection

Viruses can cause brain damage in general as such they are also implicated in bipolar disease, so can parasites and so can bacterial infection.

Bipolar Disord. 2014 Aug 11. doi: 10.1111/bdi.12244. An observational study of inflammation in the central nervous system in patients with bipolar disorder. Stich O1, Andres TA, Gross CM, Gerber SI, Rauer S, Langosch JM. 1Department of Neurology, Albert Ludwigs University, Freiburg, Germany.
…….Paired cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum samples from 40 patients with BD were analysed using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to detect the concentration of antibodies against the following neurotropic infectious pathogens: Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii), herpes simplex virus (HSV) types 1 and 2, cytomegalovirus (CMV), and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). The specific antibody index (AI) was calculated, and an AI > 1.4 was considered to be evidence of intrathecal specific antibody synthesis. Twenty-six patients with pseudotumour cerebri served as controls.
Eight out of 40 patients with BD displayed specific intrathecal antibody synthesis against at least one of the tested neurotropic agents compared to only one patient in the control group (p = 0.061, not significant). Of these eight patients with BD, no significant prevalence of any particular neurotropic pathogen was evident. Five out of 40 patients with BD showed oligoclonal bands in the CSF, suggestive of a chronic immune reaction in the central nervous system (CNS). PMID: 25109751

Vaccines

There are a number of ways that vaccines can cause bipolar disease. Some contain mercury in the form of Thimerosal, and heavy metals are known to cause brain damage. But they can also cause problems as a consequence of the agent, if it is a live virus, the adjuvant and the excipient.

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) separates the central nervous system (CNS) from systemic blood circulation by a continuous capillary network. The barrier's capillary endothelium has tight junctions which prevent passage of large molecular weight, water soluble, highly polar molecules. The barrier thus protects the brain from toxic substances. BBB dysfunction is a significant contributor to the pathogeneses of a variety of brain disorders. Although we have listed various pathogens that are the possible culprits to the actual brain damage, ultimately they would not be there if it was not for destruction of the BBB.

Vaccination results in several toxic substances being injected directly into the blood supply. If the immune system can act before it reaches the blood brain barrier, then brain damage may not result, but if the recipient is in any way immunocompromised through stress, tiredness, drugs or illness then the barrier may be destroyed and the contents of the vaccine - pathogen and all - will enter the brain and brain damage will result. The BBB is known to be destroyed by heavy metals and nanoparticles, vaccines may contain an aluminium based aduvant.

..... injection of aluminum adjuvants in an attempt to model Gulf War syndrome and associated neurological deficits leads to an ALS phenotype in young male mice. In young children, a highly significant correlation exists between the number of pediatric aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines administered and the rate of autism spectrum disorders. PMID: 23609067

Mel Gibson

Heavy metal poisoning

Most heavy metals have been implicated at some time, however, the two most prevalent appear to be lead and mercury.

Med Hypotheses. 2014 Jan;82(1):97-104. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2013.11.016. Epub 2013 Nov 21. Uptake of environmental toxicants by the locus ceruleus: a potential trigger for neurodegenerative, demyelinating and psychiatric disorders. Pamphlett R. The Stacey Motor Neuron Disease Laboratory, Department of Pathology, Sydney Medical School, The University of Sydney, Australia. Electronic address: roger.pamphlett@sydney.edu.au.
Damage to the locus ceruleus, with a subsequent decrease of CNS noradrenaline, occurs in a wide range of neurodegenerative, demyelinating and psychiatric disorders. The cause of the initial locus ceruleus damage remains unknown. Recently, inorganic mercury was found to enter human locus ceruleus neurons selectively. This has led to the formulation of a new hypothesis as to the cause of these disorders. PMID: 24315447

Hypoxia

which itself can be caused by numerous events and illnesses, such as difficult births or endothelial dysfunction

Toxins

Rosemary Clooney

A large number of toxins from pesticides to insecticides are implicated in at least some cases of bipolar. Note that the key finding in the following example paper is the effect on neurons

C R Seances Soc Biol Fil. 1979;173(1):147-52. [Effect of organochlorine pesticides on the ocular electric response of the white mouse]. [Article in French] Carricaburu P, Lacroix R, Lacroix J.
The injection of DDT or HCH resulted in a decrease of the amplitude of b-wave of electroretinograms without any modification of its latency, whereas a-wave remained unchanged. In conclusion, we may say that organochlorous pesticides do not act on photoreceptors or synapses, but they act on bipolar and ganglionnar neurones. PMID: 90547

Nutritional deprivation

Vitamin imbalance, mineral imbalance, and imbalance of essential fatty acids as well as amino acids both during gestation, after birth, childhood, and during adult life can result in the development of bipolar disease. In the following example, the pharmaceuticals appear to have caused the deficiencies, which in turn caused the decline from anxiety into bipolar.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the nutrient intakes of people with mood disorders. …A cross-sectional survey using 3-day food records was carried out in 97 adults with bipolar or major depressive disorder to compare nutrient intakes with Dietary Reference Intakes and British Columbia Nutrition Survey (BCNS) data. Blood levels of selected nutrients were compared to reference ranges. ….Compared with the BCNS, a larger proportion of the sample was below the estimated average requirement for thiamin (26% vs 8%), riboflavin (21% vs 4%), folate (64% vs 27%), phosphorous (12% vs 1%), and zinc (39% vs 15%; all P < 0.0001), as well as vitamin B(6) (25% vs 16%) and vitamin B(12) (27% vs 8%; both P < 0.05….. Types of medications were associated with nutrient intakes, as lower intakes of thiamin and phosphorous (P < 0.05) were found with antidepressant use, higher calcium and iron intakes (P < 0.05) were associated with antianxiety medication use, PMID: 22331690

Mike Tyson

Traumatic injury to the brain

Any form of brain damage fom concussion to head banging, to accident can cause bipolar. There are several observations to support this.

Dental amalgam fillings

which have leached mercury into the system, badly executed dental practise can exacerbate this problem [see heavy metal poisoning above].

Extreme emotion

High levels of emotion, including anger, fear, grief, trauma and so on can cause bipolar disease. The very very high level of what is in effect electrical energy caused by high emotion when the brain is still forming, for example, can damage organs in the brain permanently. In children with this problem, there is a real need to find the cause, as the high levels of emotion may be caused by other factors - everything from severe abuse to nuritional deprivation.

Stress in general seems to play a very big part in the onset of bipolar disorder. Stress in childhood seems to be particularly significant. There have been a number of studies that suggest that between a third and a half of adults diagnosed with bipolar disorder report traumatic experiences in childhood.

What is traumatic to one child can appear trivial to another, so a sensitive child is going to come off far worse than one with a more robust constitution. Events stemming from a harsh environment and insensitive treatment of sensitive children seem to figure very prominently, it is rarely the child's own behaviour that leads to the illness.

In the UK, public school must be a fairly major causatory factor in many a child’s problems in earlier times.

Treatment

Dusty Springfield

You cannot treat or cure Manic depression but you can manage it. And there are two approaches

Symptom based medicine

The symptom based approach currently used by the medical profession is based on pharmaceuticals, one of which is used not to treat the depressive phase but the manic phase! And this is lithium. There is also increasing use of sodium valproate. These and other drugs such as the anti-psychotics have an impressive record for producing hallucinations and out of body experiences.

Treat the cause

One of the obvious things to do is to find the cause and address this if possible.
Thus if the cause is heavy metal poisoning then natural forms of chelation therapy might be used, if the cause is a virus, fight the virus, if the cause is nutritional then food can be used to redress the balance.
Emotional problems are best tackled using suppression based activities such as the relaxation, music, love, exercise etc.

How it works

Spiritual experiences occur via Brain damage, see this section for a full explanation.

It may also be helpful to refer to the Model of the Mind and the generic description of How spiritual experience works

References and further reading

A list of 'famous' people with manic depression can be found on Wikipedia - List of people with Bipolar disorder I have my doubts about this list, Wikipedia seem to have included people who have suffered solely from depression, which is not the same, and even from grief. Some people on the list were actually suffering from the effects of alcohol, drugs or prescription medicines. So the list is not reliable, but it includes celebrities who say they have or have been diagnosed with manic depression, which makes it perhaps of more interest, because it is clearly no longer a stigma to be labelled with this illness - a wonderful step in the right direction.

see also Neurologic adverse events following vaccination Prog Health Sci, 2012, Sienkiewicz D., Ku?ak W., Okurowska-Zawada B., Paszko-Patej G

Observations

The following people are theoretically supposed to have had manic depression, I have excluded from the list all those for whom I have observations. The links take you to Wikipedia where details of the circumstances of their bipolar condition is described in more detail

** = brought on by drug use/mis-prescription of pharmaceuticals

* = brought on by grief and/or trauma

*** = brought on by head injury

**** = brought on by alcohol abuse

Became manic depressive

Kurt Cobain **
Jean Claude van Damme **
Ray Davies *

Mike Tyson ***

Carrie Fisher **
Connie Francis *

Mel Gibson ****

Dusty Springfield **

Ike Turner **

Axl Rose *