Bipolar Weight Gain

This won’t be the first time I’ve written about my extensive body issues. It’s something I have dealt with since I was a child. My parents had to take me to the “Husky” department at SEARS for my clothes. I was completely traumatized, and it never got any better from there.

It started with starving myself. Eventually, I would both starve myself and abuse laxatives. It served my purpose at the time. I lost a bunch of weight, but I was doing irreparable damage to my body. I just didn’t know it yet.

There were times when I could have considered myself to be thin. My weight dropped pretty low a couple of times. The irony was, it didn’t matter because, at any weight, I looked in the mirror with self-loathing and called myself fat. Upon doing some research for this article, I stumbled onto this information. I thought it was very enlightening.

·         Weight gain is clearly caused by medications used to treat bipolar disorder, some more than others.

·         This weight gain can be so large as to have its own serious health consequences, so we need to take it very seriously.

·         Physical activity and diet can help prevent this weight gain, and sometimes reverse it but simply telling patients to eat right and get exercise as a means of coping with the weight gain medications can induce is pretty close to an insult and generally simply attempts to shift the responsibility for the problem to the patient. It takes more than this simple advice.

·         Weight gain may be, just may be, associated with causing mood problems that look like bipolar disorder. If this was true people could “look” bipolar from weight gain, and weight gain caused by medications for bipolar disorder could make mood problems even worse! This obviously bears some examination.

In my early, to mid 20’s I was still not eating on a regular basis, and I added obsessively exercising to the game plan. I would watch TV, and every time a commercial came on, I jumped up and started doing sit-ups or using my weights.

The whole thing was getting out of hand.

I kept up with the starvation and laxatives off and on throughout my 30’s. I knew it wasn’t working anymore, but old habits die hard.

I’ve never gotten back down to high school weight. I just can’t seem to focus on a routine of 3 meals a day. Nearly every day, it’s between 3:00 and 4:00 before I realize that once again, I forgot to eat all day. I like to wait to have dinner when my husband gets home, and that can be as late as 9:00 PM. I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life, and I am so ashamed. I hate being in public and around people I know.

I wish I could go back to age 12 or 13 and start all over. I love my parents, but they never really did much to educate me or help me set healthy goals for myself. I’ve gone around and around with different diets or lifestyle changes, and occasionally I would find one that would work for a brief period. Due to my depression, I expect to see numbers change on that scale by the hour. I have to keep myself from obsessively weighing myself, so I keep the scale where I can’t readily see it. No matter what, when the depression hits, the first thing that falls by the wayside is my diet and exercise program. At this stage in life, I’m depressed much more often than I’m not, so these are not great odds.

You would think at my age; I could get it through my head that everything I’ve tried in the past didn’t work. Usually, I’m so deep into a depression that it doesn’t matter what I tell myself. I’ve already been set up to fail.

This is something that I want young people, especially young girls to know. Spending all of your time finding ways to keep from eating is so bad for you in more ways than one. I’d give anything to go back and tell young me what happens to us due to our terrible habits. I cry at least once a week for the me I used to be. Even at a young age when I weighed about 140 pounds, I thought I was huge. What I wouldn’t do to be that size again.

I’m trying to hold myself together and figure out what I can do to make things better. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to shift blame here. I’m the one that messed myself up so badly. I even tried to resort back to starvation in my 40’s, and it only made things worse. I need to accept it doesn’t work and move forward.

So, the next step is surgery. It’s not something that I’m looking forward to, but I’m starting to believe it’s the only answer. How much does bipolar disorder relate to what essentially boils down to body dysmorphic disorder? In my case, the two go hand in hand.

I would love to look in the mirror and have some semblance of self-esteem. Maybe one day, I’ll get there. For now, I’ll keep trying to move forward and find some answers.

Source – PsychEducation.org

Updated - Migraines and Bipolar Disorder

Since the age of twelve, I have been experiencing painful migraine headaches. I’m pretty sure that at the time, my parents just chalked it up to the braces on my teeth. It seems completely valid to me now. I just knew that I took a lot of Excedrin.

The older I got, the worse the headaches were. At the age of nineteen, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I spent a lot of time wondering if there could be a connection. Now, at the age of forty-five, I’m certain there’s a connection. Upon my research for this article, I stumbled on some interesting articles. The connection between migraines and bipolar is so strong that over one-third of people living with bipolar suffer from migraines.

I think my migraines are typical. Everything is either too bright or too loud. Not to mention the various smells that can trigger it. I can’t take scents like burning wood, cigarettes, bonfires, burning leaves, along with many perfume scents make me instantly feel like I want to vomit. That explains why I’ve been using the same body spray for more than twenty years. It’s the only one that doesn’t cause a negative reaction.

Migraines affect about 1 in 7 (14%) persons diagnosed with bipolar disorder, who are 3 times more likely to experience migraines compared to the general population. The risk of developing migraines is not the same among all types of bipolar disorders. A study by Low et al found that in the subgroup of patients with bipolar-II disorder, the lifetime prevalence of migraine was 65%.   (I’ll just note here, I’m bipolar-II.)

In the same study, the overall lifetime prevalence of migraine among all patients with bipolar disorder was 39.8% (43.8% among women and 31.4% among men).

I’ve missed out on some very important events in my life due to migraines. I harbor a lot of guilt because of that fact. As far as treatment, I’ve tried many. None of them seem to work out for more than a few months, if at all. I vomit nearly every time now, and the pain will travel from one side of my head to the other. I have thrown up more in the last ten years of my life than in the entire rest of my life.

Individuals who suffer from pain and are diagnosed with a mental disorder, such as bipolar disorder, have been found to experience a worsening of psychiatric symptoms. In addition, health care professionals may at times fail to give complaints about physical health problems serious consideration among patients with serious mental illness. (A point that I touch on in my book, which several people told me was a lie) These patients are also less likely to recognize or monitor their comorbid medical conditions compared to the general population. In addition, they have an increased likelihood of experiencing conditions that cause pain, and a lower probability of receiving adequate care.

For example, people diagnosed with bipolar disorder have an increased prevalence of depression, which has been linked to greater pain sensitivity. Chronic pain in persons diagnosed with bipolar disorder is associated with impaired recovery, greater functional incapacitation, lower quality of life, and increased risk for suicide compared to individuals without pain.

Thanks to migraines, many people no longer like me, or they’re pissed off because I missed an important event. I wish I could make people understand how a migraine feels, just once.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve been exploring food allergies. I

have a gluten allergy, and I was doing so great with it, but I’ve never been very good at taking care of myself. Gluten only knocks me on my butt when it feels like it. It’s not a 100% of the time situation, and when it doesn’t, I guess I start getting delusions of grandeur and keep eating it until I’m officially sick.

I’m writing this blog because I want people to gain some understanding of what I go through on a regular basis. I’m not faking, and I’m tired of being told that it’s all in my head. YES! It is…that’s the whole point! I live in constant fear that something is going to set me off. Of course, I have superhero scent abilities. I can smell anything, and most of the times, it’s not good. That leads immediately to a headache.

For now, I think I’ll go back to eating right and exercising because this headache every single day thing just isn’t working out for me.

*Source – Treatment Center of America

**Source – PracticalPainManagement.com