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Speaker 1: Welcome to you. Stuff you should know from house stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant that makes this
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. I'm Jerry's here too. So it's
Speaker 1: all good. The original gang. That's going pretty good. Man,
Speaker 1: How are you? I'm great? Good, Okay, then let's get
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, do you have a good set up
Speaker 1: for this one? It's sorry now, No, I think it
Speaker 1: kind of speaks for itself. I mean it's bipolar disorder.
Speaker 1: Like we it's been around long enough, and I think
Speaker 1: it's been um exposed enough. People have been educated enough
Speaker 1: that you know, anything I do would just seem jackasses. Uh.
Speaker 1: While we were just talking before we hit record about
Speaker 1: whether not we know anyone who has bipolar disorder, and
Speaker 1: I think most people probably know someone. You might not
Speaker 1: even know it, but um, I definitely like I had
Speaker 1: a very specific friend in college. You had it, and
Speaker 1: that was you know, it was like twenty, so it
Speaker 1: was you didn't know about that stuff when you were
Speaker 1: twenty at least I didn't. So it was very weird.
Speaker 1: And that's first time I've ever heard the term. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he fit the profile as far as being
Speaker 1: super up and uh, full of life and energy one
Speaker 1: moment and then super down and very troubled to say
Speaker 1: the least. And this was these are words I'm using
Speaker 1: from my twenty year old self. You know, I just thought, man,
Speaker 1: he's like he's super super happy or now he's super down.
Speaker 1: But that's this sort of a rudimentary way to describe it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean that is bipolar to order in
Speaker 1: a nutshell, And that's why they used to call it
Speaker 1: manic depressive disorder too. Yeah. When did they stop that?
Speaker 1: I think maybe in the nineties. It seems like to
Speaker 1: me it sounds about right. Um, and you're you're not
Speaker 1: too far off from everybody knowing somebody with bipolar disorder,
Speaker 1: because apparently about five point seven million adults in the
Speaker 1: US are diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and I think three
Speaker 1: percent of the population worldwide is estimated to suffer from it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you said adults. Um, it can manifest itself in children,
Speaker 1: but generally, UM, teenage, mid teenage years and up is
Speaker 1: when you're going to first start seeing signs of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty five from what I understand in general. Um,
Speaker 1: And as you said, Chuckers, like the the condition of
Speaker 1: bipolarity UM is characterized by intense, frequent swings from very
Speaker 1: very happy to very very sad. And it's much beyond
Speaker 1: the average person's mood swings. Because I mean, like if
Speaker 1: if you're fifteen years old and you're listening to this
Speaker 1: and you're like, well, sometimes I'm unhappy and then other
Speaker 1: times I'm said, that's normal. Um, this is far beyond normal.
Speaker 1: Like where you are in either case, like you say,
Speaker 1: super up or super depressed. Um, it's nowhere near what
Speaker 1: you are normally. And in some cases of the most
Speaker 1: severe bipolar disorder, there is no normal. It's either totally
Speaker 1: one way or totally the other, and the person suffering
Speaker 1: from it to swings back and forth, maybe over the
Speaker 1: course of a couple of weeks, UM, and lives like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh sadly, UM, Like we have a couple of stats
Speaker 1: about the effects. We'll get too early here. H you're
Speaker 1: less likely to have a job if you are bipolar.
Speaker 1: That seems really high. Yeah. Um, ten times more likely
Speaker 1: to abuse alcohol or drugs, which is as a cyclical
Speaker 1: effect because alcohol and drugs are really rough on you
Speaker 1: if you have bipolar disorder. Well, yeah, they can trigger
Speaker 1: a swing one way or the other. Yeah. I saw
Speaker 1: that in my friend actually in college fu. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: of bipolar patients, uh successfully commit suicide out of who
Speaker 1: try it, and those numbers are startingly high. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very high. That's start startlingly startling. Okay, um, so
Speaker 1: let's talk about this. What's the what is I've already
Speaker 1: kind of given a rough overview, but let's dig into
Speaker 1: the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Yeah. They're basically, um, they
Speaker 1: characterize two swings, mania and depression. If you're having a
Speaker 1: manic episode, you're gonna be a great mood, You're gonna
Speaker 1: be high on life, you're gonna have a lot of energy.
Speaker 1: You're probably gonna be talking really fast. And it's called area.
Speaker 1: So what log area? What's that excessive talking? Talkativeness? Oh yeah, um,
Speaker 1: just really fast thoughts like everything. What was that movie
Speaker 1: with brad Cooper and de Niro, Oh, Silverlings Playbook? No,
Speaker 1: the other one, and you're gonna say that, although that
Speaker 1: is what other movie of those two been in together,
Speaker 1: the one with um where you take a pill and
Speaker 1: you can like tap into more of your brain, which
Speaker 1: is de Niro. Isn't that too? Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: the name of that movie. I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a very good movie, but exceptional or amazing
Speaker 1: or I can't remember. This is at the point when
Speaker 1: people are yelling into their car stereo, including Bradley Cooper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like, you idiot. Yeah, And I can't believe I
Speaker 1: just forgot about Superlians Playbook because that directly covers this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what I was talking about was the manic He
Speaker 1: was almost mannek in that other movie where just ideas
Speaker 1: all that I'm at a hyper speed and he just
Speaker 1: couldn't do them fast enough. So that's characteristic of a
Speaker 1: manic episode. Sorry, Bradley Cooper. Uh, you're distracted, you don't
Speaker 1: maybe need as much sleep, you're restless, you're puritable, you
Speaker 1: might want to have a lot of sex. Like everything's
Speaker 1: just uh, magnified, I think, yeah, and with a manic episode,
Speaker 1: they're often like all of this is often accompanied by
Speaker 1: a sensation of euphoria. So most people who suffer from
Speaker 1: bipolar disorder don't go seeking treatment when they're in a
Speaker 1: manic state, right, because they can like that. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: some people a manic state, you can have all these things,
Speaker 1: but it's instead of accompanied by euphoria, it's accompanied by irritability, uh,
Speaker 1: quickness to anger. So it's not all it's not all
Speaker 1: fun and games for everybody. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: if you're in a manic episode and you're bipolar, you're
Speaker 1: you enjoy the manic episodes way more than you enjoy
Speaker 1: the depressive eppisodes. Yeah, and I think both are super
Speaker 1: rough on friends and family because in the manic state,
Speaker 1: you you don't know quite what you're gonna get, you know, right, well,
Speaker 1: like you may you engage in um very risky behavior.
Speaker 1: You may make a bunch of risky investments, may buy
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. Um, it can go so far
Speaker 1: as to uh, you can have psychotic symptoms. So in
Speaker 1: a manic episode where you're displaying psychotic symptoms, you may
Speaker 1: think you are God or totally UM, infallible, untouchable, can
Speaker 1: do no wrong, and then that can feed into the
Speaker 1: symptoms of you know, engaging in very risky behavior. You
Speaker 1: can even hallucinate like full on see things. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can suffer from delusions and hallucinations. So the d s
Speaker 1: M says that if you have a certain number of
Speaker 1: manic symptoms UM for at least one week, then that
Speaker 1: is considered a manic episode. So that has kind of
Speaker 1: changed apparently with the d s M five. This is
Speaker 1: ds M four stuff. With the d s M five,
Speaker 1: they um really kind of they I think that the
Speaker 1: prevailing idea was what's with this whole um bipolar other
Speaker 1: otherwise specified, not otherwise specified. It's just a total cop out,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in a minute. But the idea
Speaker 1: that there's like this, you don't fit this one or
Speaker 1: this one, so you fit this generic third. Actually I'm
Speaker 1: glad that's changed. I think they've kind of dug into
Speaker 1: diagnosing even more. We changed some of the thresholds and
Speaker 1: exclusionary criteria and now um it's a it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be a little more laser guided UM. But one of
Speaker 1: the ones, one of the things they did change was
Speaker 1: that for example, UM, I think as little as five
Speaker 1: days of an episode is enough to constitute a diagnosis
Speaker 1: rather than like a week or two weeks or something. Right,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, yeah, um. And then you have hypomania,
Speaker 1: which is sort of like mania light UM, just a
Speaker 1: less intense version of mania. UM. So that's the mannic swing.
Speaker 1: The depressive side of the coin uh is exactly what
Speaker 1: you think, but like amplified by a million. Like you're
Speaker 1: not just sad, you feel despair, and your sluggish and
Speaker 1: you can't focus, and you're restless and you're irritable. Um.
Speaker 1: These are where the suicidal thoughts are coming. So it's
Speaker 1: it's not your garden variety depression that you might feel
Speaker 1: on a day to day basis, because we all feel
Speaker 1: that that's right. And you might also experience UM mixed symptoms,
Speaker 1: which is called a mixed episode. So for example, you
Speaker 1: might have UM like a lot of intense energy, but
Speaker 1: you might also be suffering from feelings of utter despair,
Speaker 1: which sounds like a horrible combination. Um. And basically you
Speaker 1: can take stay any mania and then add um just
Speaker 1: some some of the depressive like suicidal thoughts managed suicidal thoughts, right,
Speaker 1: that would be a mixed episode, right, and then you
Speaker 1: have something called rapid cycling, which is uh, when these
Speaker 1: swings are presenting themselves. Do you know what d S
Speaker 1: M Five says? Like, Uh, I couldn't find that it
Speaker 1: had a lot of um changes to the rapid cycling.
Speaker 1: I think that what they found was that UM drugs
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily respond to drugs very well. And they've
Speaker 1: they've kind of started to understand rapid cycling a little more.
Speaker 1: But I don't know what they changed with the diagnostic
Speaker 1: criteria for that. Well, here they characterize it by a
Speaker 1: year of at least four episodes of mania, hypomania or depression. Right,
Speaker 1: so like if you have four episodes in a year,
Speaker 1: you've you've got rapids. Apparently that's rapid. I think it
Speaker 1: can be a lot more rapid than that. I think
Speaker 1: like that's the minimum to be considered rapid cycling. Alright,
Speaker 1: So what are the different types of bipolar disorder today?
Speaker 1: There's definitely bipolar one, which is essentially your your life
Speaker 1: is going from one end of the spectrum to the other.
Speaker 1: There's not periods in between really where you're um, where
Speaker 1: where you're stable. Right, that's the most severe obviously, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have bipolar to which um the sequel that's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: That means you have at least one episode of depression
Speaker 1: and one at least one hypomanic episode, but you could feel,
Speaker 1: you know, somewhat stabilized in between, which is a big
Speaker 1: differentiation apparently between one and two. Um. And then, like
Speaker 1: we said, there used to be bipolar disorder no, not
Speaker 1: otherwise specified the cop out right, and it was there
Speaker 1: was a lot of people who were just kind of
Speaker 1: fitting into this and weren't necessarily getting the right diagnosis.
Speaker 1: And I guess they've expanded the criteria um for bipolar
Speaker 1: one and two, and then they've also kind of looked into, um,
Speaker 1: massive depressive disorder uh and then said, well, you you,
Speaker 1: this has some aspects of mania as well, and that's
Speaker 1: technically a bipolar disorder too. So they kind of did
Speaker 1: away with it a little bit, I think as they
Speaker 1: thought they were looking bad. Yeah, it's so hard to
Speaker 1: category I mean, I know, they take a lot of heat.
Speaker 1: It's tough to categorize mental illness because it's so different
Speaker 1: for everyone, and well, a lot of people criticize the approach.
Speaker 1: The basis of the d s M is tell me
Speaker 1: how you're feeling, which is flawed in and of itself
Speaker 1: to begin with, because subjective reporting is just completely unreliable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you can't take a blood test. And and then
Speaker 1: secondly to to to further subjectively interpret those subjective self
Speaker 1: reports uh into supposed you know criteria and then saying well,
Speaker 1: you have XX and X, but you don't have X,
Speaker 1: so technically you're not bipolar, which means you don't have
Speaker 1: your insurance won't cover these meds that you need. The
Speaker 1: whole system is very screwed up, which is why they're
Speaker 1: hoping to do things like create blood test that's say, ah,
Speaker 1: you have bipolar one, and it's because of this UM,
Speaker 1: these neurotransmitters are messed up, so you will respond very
Speaker 1: well to this specific dose of this medicine. I don't
Speaker 1: think we're more than ten years fifteen years away from it,
Speaker 1: but it's it's gonna be a long, horrible ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen years for people who are suffering the most from
Speaker 1: bipolar disorders. That can't come fast enough. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: the final um unless that's gone away, to psyclothymia, is
Speaker 1: that's still around, that is the least severe, and that
Speaker 1: is um at least two years of hypomania and milder
Speaker 1: depression swings. And I think also that's I believe it's
Speaker 1: still around, but I think it's um it's changed a
Speaker 1: little too. And I think that um. Apparently the child
Speaker 1: psychologists of the field said, you guys, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of um exuberance and even mania symptoms that are totally
Speaker 1: normal in adolescents. So let's let's tighten this up a
Speaker 1: little bit because we don't want kids to be diagnosed
Speaker 1: with bipolars because their parents think that they're hyper. Right.
Speaker 1: Put my fifteen year old on lithium exactly. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I think that they managed to kind of change the
Speaker 1: criteria for cyclothymia, saying this is just above the normal
Speaker 1: threshold of mood swings. Yeah. Um. So, like we said,
Speaker 1: they don't know or I don't know if we did,
Speaker 1: they don't still know what causes it directly, um, nor
Speaker 1: do they know how the drugs that treat it are. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot of like try this out.
Speaker 1: It's like we know spaghetti will start to stick to
Speaker 1: a refrigerator. We don't know exactly why, but let's strow
Speaker 1: it at the side anyway, but what they do know
Speaker 1: is that genetics can play a role. You are gonna
Speaker 1: have an increased likelihood to develop it if someone in
Speaker 1: your like if your parents had it, let's say, but
Speaker 1: they also have these odd outliers, like you could be
Speaker 1: a twin and your twin has bipolar disorder, but you don't, right,
Speaker 1: So it's just sort of a mystery still. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like they that it does have people are
Speaker 1: genetically predis post and then an environmental factor can trigger
Speaker 1: their bipolar disorder, like a really rough childhood or a
Speaker 1: bad life event or something really really good. But a
Speaker 1: sudden swing in normalcy and a person that is genetically
Speaker 1: predisposed um to bipolar disorder is what can kick it
Speaker 1: off in your life. Yeah. Um, other we already talked
Speaker 1: about drugs and alcohol that can definitely trigger um seasonal changes.
Speaker 1: I think we've talked about seasonal effective disorder SAD. Yeah, SAD,
Speaker 1: which I think I think most people experience a little
Speaker 1: bit of that, right. But again, if you're genetically predisposed
Speaker 1: for the way I see it, and this is totally unscientific,
Speaker 1: but just from researching this, it seems like you you
Speaker 1: have there's a normal baseline for brain chemistry. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's not a thin line. It's like a pretty good
Speaker 1: sized block. And it's easy to also get outside of
Speaker 1: that one way or the other right, and when you
Speaker 1: are outside of it, you have the symptoms of bipolar disorder.
Speaker 1: And if you're bipolar one, you're just constantly going from
Speaker 1: the top to the bottom of that block. And that
Speaker 1: sounds very scientific and needs to understand the block. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe not scientific, but easy to understand, okay.
Speaker 1: And then if you if you say, have bipolar two,
Speaker 1: you can exist within that normal range, but you can
Speaker 1: be knocked out of it, but your brain chemistry is
Speaker 1: already predisposed to having bipolar disorder by virtue of being
Speaker 1: able to overproduce or underproduce certain neurotransmitters. That's it, I
Speaker 1: think will ultimately be the understanding of it. Well, I know,
Speaker 1: they definitely tie a lot of mental disorders to either
Speaker 1: too much or not enough uh dopamine and serotonin. Like
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely brain chemistry going on, yes, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's yeah, they think that that's the basically the
Speaker 1: basis of it is just fluctuations in brain chemistry like
Speaker 1: super low serotonin during manic and depressive episodes is charted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and apparently sarotonin's one of the brain one of the
Speaker 1: narrow transmitters that are like, everybody calmed down, let's just
Speaker 1: keep things stable here. That's what sarotonin is. And you
Speaker 1: can have too much dopamine, which can result in both
Speaker 1: mania and depression. Yeah, and I think too much is
Speaker 1: also present in psychosis too, so hallucinations delusions, that's why
Speaker 1: you can have those during such a tough thing to
Speaker 1: try and study, you know. Yeah, I'm reading that. I
Speaker 1: started that book. John Ronson, the great John Ronson, who
Speaker 1: listens to our show, by the way, writer of Men
Speaker 1: who Stare at Goats, oh neat. Yeah, he's a fan.
Speaker 1: And hey John Ronson his his book The psychopath Test.
Speaker 1: Let's started reading that. Yeah, it's super interesting. So far.
Speaker 1: Is it uh, semi historical fiction? Is it nonfiction? Is
Speaker 1: it totally fiction? It's sort of a look at how
Speaker 1: the industry, the mental health industry, tackles mental health. So
Speaker 1: it's not fiction. Yes, that sounds like it's up my alley. Then, yeah,
Speaker 1: I should have said nonfiction right off the bat. You're like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make you guess. Yeah, I will let you. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'll let you borrow it after a fenshion Actually how
Speaker 1: about that? Okay, and then I will take you up
Speaker 1: on that right after these messages. All right, So I
Speaker 1: guess we can talk a little bit about how it
Speaker 1: has treated medication wise. Um, it is a long term
Speaker 1: illness that is is basically looked at as a uh
Speaker 1: even a lifelong illness for most people, something you have
Speaker 1: to deal with, uh forever. Yeah, Um, medication wise, lithium
Speaker 1: since the nineteen seventies has been the go to. Uh
Speaker 1: it still is. It's a mood stabilizer and it's gonna
Speaker 1: help out with both sides of your mood swings and
Speaker 1: apparently which it works for you, right, And I like,
Speaker 1: like you said, that's the go to and it typically
Speaker 1: like people tend to respond to that. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a go to for a reason, not just because it
Speaker 1: was first or that there's a Nirvana song he he
Speaker 1: was bipolar, right, sure? Um, and uh, there are alternatives
Speaker 1: to lithium because not everybody responds to it. Not everybody
Speaker 1: has a good reaction to it. With even somebody who
Speaker 1: does respond well to lithium, UM, they have to keep
Speaker 1: a pretty good eye on your lithium levels in your
Speaker 1: blood stream, so you have to visit the doctor quite
Speaker 1: a bit. The whole point of I guess the rigamar
Speaker 1: role that you will go through when you're diagnosed with
Speaker 1: bipolar and say I want to combat this with meds
Speaker 1: UM is basically shooting blind and using a pragmatic approach
Speaker 1: to medicating you into saying, Okay, you're reacting well to
Speaker 1: this one, Let's try a slightly lower dose and see
Speaker 1: what happens. And with lithium in particularly, they keep an
Speaker 1: eye on it through through blood tests. But with all
Speaker 1: meds using used to treat bipolar disorder, they're going to
Speaker 1: really kind of like, um, try everything. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: still like how you feeling, Yeah, tell me how you're feeling,
Speaker 1: not let's do this uh test to read on the
Speaker 1: screen how you're feeling still yeah, you know uh. And
Speaker 1: again part of the reason why is because they don't
Speaker 1: quite know how some drugs work. They just know that
Speaker 1: they do work for some people, but not everybody. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anti convulsants is another UM another one that they use,
Speaker 1: and it's also a mood stabilizer and I think that
Speaker 1: calms down the when your brain is the parts of
Speaker 1: your brain at least that are ramped up and overacting. Right.
Speaker 1: One of the ways that it affects that is by um,
Speaker 1: increasing the amount of GABBA in your brain. You know,
Speaker 1: gabba kind of What does that stand for? Again, it
Speaker 1: stands for gamma amino beautyic acid. Obviously, well done, thank you,
Speaker 1: It's been a while since I tried to pronounce something hard. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: you can use the anti convulsants sometimes, even with lithium. Again,
Speaker 1: it's can be a cocktail of drugs that you're on. Right,
Speaker 1: depending on what works for you. A typical anti psychotics
Speaker 1: can help. Um. They usually use those after they've tried
Speaker 1: the lithium. I think they tried lithium first, unless you're
Speaker 1: a teenage girl or a pregnant woman, right. Um. And
Speaker 1: then uh, the antipsychotics work because um, they affect the
Speaker 1: amount of dopamine in your brain. And again, high levels
Speaker 1: of dopamine can lead to psychotic symptoms, which is why
Speaker 1: they call the drugs that treat those anti psychotics, right. Um.
Speaker 1: And then benzodiazepine a k A. Relaxants. I think those
Speaker 1: are used less, probably because uh, they're addictive or can
Speaker 1: be addictive. Yeah, and then least the short term used
Speaker 1: and they yes, they use them to promote healthy sleep.
Speaker 1: To um, Like you said, one of the symptoms, especially
Speaker 1: of mania, is just going without sleep, like you got
Speaker 1: too much to do and you don't even need it,
Speaker 1: so you don't sleep. Um. And one of the I
Speaker 1: guess the presence of gabba or low amounts of gabba,
Speaker 1: which is a neuro transmitter that's involved in getting sleep.
Speaker 1: I believe staying asleep too, um kind of underlies this
Speaker 1: idea that your sleep cycle is off and it's either
Speaker 1: the result of your bipolar disorder or it's helping to
Speaker 1: cause your bipolar disorder. Either way, they found that promoting
Speaker 1: healthy sleep. For example, there is a thing called dark therapy,
Speaker 1: which is no exposure to artificial light after dark for
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time can help promote healthy sleep
Speaker 1: and can help stabilize bipolar disorder symptoms. All that makes sense, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the like it always kills me when I see people
Speaker 1: on Facebook at like three am saying on Facebook that
Speaker 1: they have insomnia, Like, well, you've got a little shiny
Speaker 1: bright screen in your face, start by putting that down
Speaker 1: and see what happens. Um. So yes, So with there's
Speaker 1: all these little clues out there, Chuck that, like so
Speaker 1: many pieces of the jigsaw puzzler on the table, they
Speaker 1: just haven't been fit together yet, you know. But it
Speaker 1: seems like there's, um, there's a kind of a hornet's
Speaker 1: nest out there. I wondered, can you live with bipolar
Speaker 1: disorder without medication? And apparently there's a big divide in
Speaker 1: the bipolar community, like there's pro med and anti med
Speaker 1: And I've seen comparisons between talking about like religion or
Speaker 1: politics or meds with bipolar people. It's all the same,
Speaker 1: like you want to avoid those things to keep things friendly. Um.
Speaker 1: But I've seen that some people are like, yes, you
Speaker 1: can live without meds, but you probably can't get too
Speaker 1: stable without meds. And you get the stable, then maybe
Speaker 1: you can. But um, there's practically no way to get
Speaker 1: the stable without the help of medications. So people who
Speaker 1: have bipolar story will be like, I've been med free
Speaker 1: for a year, which is great because it means that
Speaker 1: they have managed to fight off episodes and triggers, but
Speaker 1: they've done that through other therapy to not just avoiding treatment.
Speaker 1: Because if you avoid treatment, not only does the does
Speaker 1: does your condition get worse, it gets harder to treat. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: the episodes supposedly definitely get worse. Yes, you go. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: there are all kinds of therapies that you use along
Speaker 1: either in place of your medications or along with and
Speaker 1: we won't get too much into these because we've gone
Speaker 1: through most of them before, but cognitive behavioral therapy of course,
Speaker 1: family therapy, group therapy e c T. We did. We
Speaker 1: did a whole show on e c T, didn't we. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did. That was a good one. Yeah, electro convulsive
Speaker 1: therapy and UM. One that I hadn't heard of, social
Speaker 1: rhythm therapy. I hadn't heard about this either, but it
Speaker 1: makes utter and complete sense. Yeah, and that has to
Speaker 1: do with UM. I think getting your yourself and your
Speaker 1: body on a set schedule is much better for you
Speaker 1: if you have bipolar disorder, not only just sleep, but
Speaker 1: just regular regulating your your day and your schedule. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I don't think anybody's suggesting that bipolar disorder is
Speaker 1: a mind over matter type situation, like I think there
Speaker 1: are very few mental illnesses that are that more clearly
Speaker 1: demonstrate the brain based understanding of mental illness than bipolar disorder.
Speaker 1: Like your neurotransmitters and the chemicals in your brain are
Speaker 1: out of whack. It's as simple as that. UM. What
Speaker 1: these other non medication therapies seek to do, especially the
Speaker 1: UM the interpersonal and social rhythm therapy and coignitive behavioral therapy,
Speaker 1: is to get you to confront this thing, to confront
Speaker 1: your condition and learn to understand it. Like, understand what
Speaker 1: your triggers are. Understand that you have to have X
Speaker 1: amount of hours of sleep or night or else you
Speaker 1: may end up in like a manic episode. Understand that,
Speaker 1: like you just can't drink whiskey. Maybe you can have
Speaker 1: a beer like every couple of weeks or something, but
Speaker 1: you can't touch whiskey because you'll end up in like
Speaker 1: a manager a depressed Like, there are triggers out there
Speaker 1: and for you personally, these are your triggers and if
Speaker 1: you avoid them, you can stay in that stable range
Speaker 1: and and learn to live with bipolar disorder. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: super interesting. Yeah, alright, so right after this break, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about whether or not there's a link between
Speaker 1: creativity and bipolar disorder. Hey, Chuck, we've got a pretty
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Speaker 1: u f F. Alright, buddy. There has long been um
Speaker 1: debate on whether or not creative people are either more
Speaker 1: likely to be bipolar or bipolar can lead to creative genius. Yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't we talk about do we do an episode on that?
Speaker 1: It wasn't in a Thinking Cat? I think it was
Speaker 1: in Can this Thinking Cat Make Me a Genius? Episode? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Trans magnetic stimulation Yeah yeah, yeah, Um, yeah, there's there's that.
Speaker 1: It's that latent inhibition kind of thing for schizophrenia and creativity. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's definitely like a laundry list of very
Speaker 1: creative people throughout the years that suffer from bipolar, from
Speaker 1: Beethoven to Jimmy Hendrix who wrote Manic Depression, Sylvia Plath,
Speaker 1: at Garlin, Poe excel Rose is on the list. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Graham Green Dickens, did I say, Dickens, No, but you
Speaker 1: just did Francis Ford Coppola, Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he really had a terrible episode after um did
Speaker 1: Smile ever get released and it it just flopped? Well,
Speaker 1: it got released recently. I never got released at there,
Speaker 1: So something happened that set him off. I guess the band,
Speaker 1: the rest of the band members wanted to go in
Speaker 1: a different direction. Well, he was obsessed with the Beatles too,
Speaker 1: and trying to be better than the Beatles. And I
Speaker 1: mean Smile was up there was pretty good. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it never got released in maybe that's what
Speaker 1: triggered his episode and started the dark years. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this was long before anybody understood anything like this. Is
Speaker 1: prior to the advent of the use of lithium for
Speaker 1: bipolar disorder. Oh yeah, they didn't come around to the seventies. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: I have a thing that I like to read. It's
Speaker 1: a little long, but there's this great article from Slate
Speaker 1: called what does it feel Like to Have Bipolar Disorder?
Speaker 1: And it was written by someone named Mills Baker. Uh
Speaker 1: And it kind of backs up a lot of what
Speaker 1: we're feeling here, but gives you just a little insight
Speaker 1: since uh, we're not. Since we can't talk firsthand, we'll
Speaker 1: let Mills Baker do it. See mine please. I think
Speaker 1: only in their extremes, armenia and depression actually unintelligible to
Speaker 1: ordinary folks. That is, at their utmost intensity, they're unlike
Speaker 1: anything a normal person experiences. UM, But at most times
Speaker 1: they're not at all so different from the maximally intense
Speaker 1: moods that everyone knows, just more so, longer lasting, and
Speaker 1: disconnected from normative causes. And that seems to be one
Speaker 1: of the big points. Is basically what he's saying is
Speaker 1: that it's not so different maybe than feeling manager depressed yourself,
Speaker 1: but it's way more intense, it lasts for way longer,
Speaker 1: and there's may not be a cause, right and not
Speaker 1: to I don't have bipolar sort of, but it would
Speaker 1: seem like it's too a debilitating degree, like it affects
Speaker 1: the rest of your life negatively. Yeah. Um, bipolar is
Speaker 1: less about short term mood instability than about long term
Speaker 1: mood cycles. Uh. Instability is a part of it, but
Speaker 1: not the only part. Second, the cumulative effected these cycles
Speaker 1: on the formation of a personality significant, so after a
Speaker 1: childhood of radically of radically changing interest and attitudes. On
Speaker 1: such a timeline, one develops a certain excitability, flightiness, distractability,
Speaker 1: or perhaps that's just me again. It's different for everyone,
Speaker 1: but it is a major part of being bipolar, the
Speaker 1: personality that is shaped by a lifetime of intense, fluctuating moods.
Speaker 1: So he's taken just a more macro approach. It's gonna
Speaker 1: make you who you are. You can't just look at
Speaker 1: the bad mood or the upmood. It's gonna basically form
Speaker 1: your personality over the years. Yeah, I would imagine. Uh.
Speaker 1: To know what it feels like is to know the
Speaker 1: quality of that uh phenomenon logical experiences a bipolar person
Speaker 1: encounters that an unaffected person does not. I don't think
Speaker 1: there are many of these going berserk, being creative, having
Speaker 1: an awful temper, not being able to trust my own
Speaker 1: emotional reactions. These have a certain weight when I list
Speaker 1: them out. Uh, they can even sound unique. But everyone
Speaker 1: loses it. Everyone has moments of charisma and creativity and success,
Speaker 1: strength and achievement, and everyone struggles with himself. You may
Speaker 1: not hallucinate, which this guy does, by the way, but
Speaker 1: I can bet you understand what it's like for your
Speaker 1: mind to misbehave and react insanely. If you haven't yet
Speaker 1: lost control of your life, just wait. Uh. And for me,
Speaker 1: the most enduring way that bipolar feels different is in
Speaker 1: how I cannot trust my reactions. I thought this part
Speaker 1: was really interesting. When someone says something to you and
Speaker 1: you recognize it as an insult, for instance, as abuse
Speaker 1: or abuse, you your react to anger is appropriate and
Speaker 1: you can commit to it, or you can make some
Speaker 1: determination based on your values and your reason and choose
Speaker 1: a different course of action. I can't even trust the
Speaker 1: person in that the person even insulted me, So I
Speaker 1: can't trust my emotional perceptions or reactions. So that's got
Speaker 1: to make you just feel way out of sorts if
Speaker 1: you can't even you know, feel like you're trusting your
Speaker 1: own emotions, right like if you that's one that's the
Speaker 1: one thing that you have is your how you're feeling
Speaker 1: about any given situation that makes up your personality and
Speaker 1: large part and if that seems flawed to you, that untrustworthy. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then finally, that is the strangest thing about how
Speaker 1: it feels after the dust of the actual disorder settles
Speaker 1: more than a decade in Uh, this guy is talking
Speaker 1: about his twelve year I think since he was diagnosed
Speaker 1: after more than a decade in the open, insanity has
Speaker 1: abated and visits only briefly. The idea that I'm a
Speaker 1: secret artist is absurd. What's left is a more less
Speaker 1: normal life in which I have to emphasize mental hygiene
Speaker 1: like prioritizing regular sleep, for example, and which I always
Speaker 1: feel doubt about what I think and feel, as we
Speaker 1: all probably should anyway. Yeah, so he seems and he's
Speaker 1: on medication, and uh, it seems like he has a
Speaker 1: healthy attitude about it. I think it's interesting to hear
Speaker 1: people talking first person about mental illness. Well, it's I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's a lot easier for him to talk about
Speaker 1: it now too, that he's got it licked. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: you know, coping with it at least. So you got
Speaker 1: anything else? I got nothing else. This is a good one.
Speaker 1: Hopefully it helps some people. Yeah, thanks to Mills Baker
Speaker 1: for being open to Slate about the disorder. Thanks to
Speaker 1: Slate and Mills, Mills and Slates. If you want to
Speaker 1: learn more about bipolar disorder, you can type those words
Speaker 1: into the search part how stuff works dot com. Uh,
Speaker 1: it will bring up a very good article and a
Speaker 1: bunch of other stuff too. Uh. And since I said
Speaker 1: very good article, that means it's time for listener mail. Josh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this a shark correction. Really. Yeah, remember
Speaker 1: how we um talked about sharks basically perfected themselves and
Speaker 1: haven't changed in millions of years? Yeah? Oh yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I was like, we haven't talked about sharks forever, Now
Speaker 1: I remember yet. Yeah. Well, there's some brand new findings,
Speaker 1: which is pretty excited in Jake Hayes from New York
Speaker 1: City Sitnizsen. I really enjoyed the Darwin in Natural Selection episodes, guys,
Speaker 1: and thought you might find this recent study published in
Speaker 1: the journal Nature. Uh. That is interesting given the example
Speaker 1: you gave about sharks. Apparently, contrary to the theory that
Speaker 1: they have barely changed over the past hundreds or millions
Speaker 1: of years, they may have evolved significantly actually from their
Speaker 1: ancient ancestors and may not be the living fossils we
Speaker 1: thought they were scientists that thought that shark gills were
Speaker 1: an ancient system that predated modern fish. However, a newly
Speaker 1: discovered fossil of a shark that dates back million years,
Speaker 1: so it's a remarkably different gilt skeleton than modern shark. Uh.
Speaker 1: This fossil provides evidence that shark gills have evolved over
Speaker 1: time and that it is actually modern day fish that
Speaker 1: may be the ones with the old GIL systems. The
Speaker 1: new GIL system may have changed over time to help
Speaker 1: sharks sprint after their prey or pry open their jaws
Speaker 1: to eat larger things. So uh, he said, he just
Speaker 1: came across this article and I saw it all over
Speaker 1: the place. Of course, like you know, two weeks after
Speaker 1: we recorded. I think it was even like a day
Speaker 1: or an hour or something. Yeah, I think you're right,
Speaker 1: But it's pretty cool info. And that is uh. Once again,
Speaker 1: Jay Hayes from New York City. Nice, thanks a lot, Jake.
Speaker 1: We appreciate you. And I think a few other people
Speaker 1: let us know about it too. Yeah, um, but none
Speaker 1: but Jake was from New York City, so we selected him. Uh.
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Speaker 1: York City, we want to hear about it. You can
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