Bipolar Disorder And Side Effects Of Lithium – Treating Bipolar With Lithium Therapy

There are a lot of people suffering from bipolar disorder in the United States today, and the numbers keep rising. The condition is very dangerous because it has you switching back and forth between extreme moods in a way that you cannot control by yourself, and in a way that could lead you to harm yourself or someone around you whom you love or who loves you.

Treating bipolar disorder these days is also getting easier than it used to be at one time. However, before any psychologist or psychiatrist ever embarks on treating a patient, they have to diagnose the condition properly first. You see, bipolar disorder is just one of many other psychotic conditions that are known to severely affect your personality. If a lot of care and attention is not taken, you could be misdiagnosed, and you could end up worse off than you are because you got the wrong treatment or medication for your set of symptoms.

Added to the foregoing, you have to realize that some bipolar disorder medications have side effects that could be harmful. A careless or carefree diagnosis may worsen your condition if you were suddenly and needlessly to be exposed to the side effects of one of the drugs that are used to bipolar disorder.

Let us take a look at lithium therapy, for instance. The substance lithium carbonate has been proven and used for a long time to treat patients suffering from bipolar disorder. It has the effect of shortening or delaying both the manic and the depressive episodes of bipolar disorder. This medication takes only about two or three weeks to become effective, but you are going to have to be taking it as directed by the physician for that duration. Also, you must see to it that you take your lithium treatment at a time when you are ‘normal’ on your manic-depressive scale. This way, you may never get the mania or the depression.

Catch time: lithium has side effects. Lithium carbonate causes increased thirst in several bipolar patients, and nausea. Into the bargain, you may have to deal with increased urination, vertigo and lightheadedness, muscle weakness, and loss of appetite. Worse still, after prolonged use of lithium carbonate as medication for bipolar disorder, you could end up with kidney damage.

Win Bipolar Disability Benefits

With all of these, it becomes risky to consider lithium carbonate therapy as treatment for bipolar disorder in children. However, after a few tests, the doctor may consider it safe to commence with the treatment. If the child’s kidneys are in particularly good condition, there may not be that much harm done.

Lithium has been used in the treatment of bipolar disorder since the middle of the last century. In particular, lithium carbonate and lithium citrate are well known mood stabilizers that can help to alter the rhythmic cycling of the brain. If the doctor says it is ok, you had better believe it.

Nursing Care Plan For Bipolar Disorder – Using Balancing Diet And Physical Activities As Home Treatments

I will warn you here, there are no guarantees with any medical treatments that will cure bipolar disorder. The best that conventional medicine has to offer for the treatment of bipolar disorder is lithium. Lithium and lithium salts have a soothing effect on your nerves that smoothen or stabilize your moods and impulses. This is all good, except that lithium also has side effects.

The adverse effects that come with lithium therapy for the treatment of bipolar disorder are insomnia and loss of appetite, whereas you will also experience increased thirst and urination. You will tend to feel dizzy and nauseous a lot also, and experience a great deal of muscle weakness. On the long term, lithium has been known to cause kidney problems, and sometimes, eventual kidney failure. This is why a lot of health and medical professionals never prescribe lithium for bipolar patients suffering also from kidney problems.

For eons, the Chinese treated their patients with only one philosophy: the balance of energy in their body. Even after conventional medicine got to them, they continued to use this form of alternative medicine to treat their various illnesses. It involved simply the belief that you could not get sick unless there was imbalance in your system following actions you have taken, or poisons that have been introduced into your body.

Even for mental illnesses, this worked then, and it still works now. What you need to do when you have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder is to try to rediscover your balance. This is possible without any extra cost to you if you will just stop to eat the poisons you have been shoving down your throat, remove yourself from the poisonous environment you have been in, and start to exercise to get the poisons out of your system.

The best home remedy for bipolar disorder is a diet of herbal tea and a lot of seafood. Seafood is known to consist of the substance Omega-3 that has the same soothing effects on your mood as lithium does, without any of the adverse effects of it. The herbal tea compliments this function and allows you to be able to think more rationally and calmly in unfavorable situations.

Couple the above with a lot of physical activity and you will find that you are better able to deal with the issues that normally will trigger off your manic or depressive episodes of bipolar disorder. If you are also able to stare down the memories that set off your condition, you are that much better off.

The catch is to regain your physical and mental balance in spite of whatever happens. Again, you aren’t going to be spending a lot of money to make this happen, and you don’t get to subject yourself to any abusive or invasive medical processes for treatment, which makes this home remedy that much better.