Posted by Elainep on March 5, 2005, at 15:20:04
In reply to Re: Cyclothymia mood stabilizers, posted by Quincy on March 5, 2005, at 1:06:04
Hi Quincy
Your symptoms sound so creepily similar to my daughter's that I wanted to reply. I've written elsewhere on this post, see the whole set of
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20050131/msgs/451955.html
But what I want to ask you, before you continue to see a counselor or seek out a psychiatrist, is some lifestyle questions.
You see, my daughter eventually was diagnosed with a severe vitamin D deficiency and she never had to see a psychiatrist at all in the end.
So what I want you to ask yourself is, do you see less sun than you did as a child, or 5 years ago, for any reason? Do you have an indoor lifestyle? Do you have any other symptoms like a sore back or (I know this will sound kind of weird) a clicking jaw? If you've travelled to another time zone, has that brought on a 'low' incident? Do you have any scoleosis (curved spine) or other structural skeletal anomolies?
If you think you're not a very sunshine kind of person, and you don't eat much oily fish or egg yolks on a regular basis, you could be suffering from vit D deficiency, even if you eat vit D fortified foods (which are generally fortified with vit D2 rather than D3).
Regardless, it might be worth checking this connection out, before you take anything else any further. If you follow the thread I gave in the ref above, you'll find a whole lot of references I've posted that refer to the fact that vit D deficiency is becoming widespread in the population again, and one of the symptoms is depression. Cyclothymia is what what my daughter had, she'd be okay for a couple of weeks, then come down again for 3 or 4 days. It was definitely a pattern with no triggering incidents that we could see. AND it happened at the end of the summer, not in the middle of the winter like SAD is supposed to express itself. It turned out she just hadn't been getting enough sun (for years) and had a major deficiency. I should also say that I have a minor vit D deficiency myself , despite seeing an awful lot more sun than my daughter. I'm neither sun seeking nor sun avoiding.
So if you're wanting to check out alternatives before you go the whole hog of medication, please check out my other posts and read about my daughter's story.
Good luck
Elainep
poster:Elainep
thread:9730
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050304/msgs/467026.html