Happy Holidays

Happy holidays to everyone who celebrates a holiday at this time of year!  The countdown is on for me.  We open our presents on Christmas Eve, tomorrow night, and I have nothing wrapped and work still to do on two gifts.  I threw my back out five days ago, which has really made things challenging.  It is healing very slowly, probably because I am using it too much.  But you know, back injuries are really a catch-22, they need some activity but not too much, it is hard to get the right mix.  Last year I wrapped my presents about 3 hours before we opened them, and I think it will be much the same this year.

I have eliminated the tiredness I mentioned in the last post.  In the early fall I cut back to a maintenance dose of 8 Empowerplus capsules per day.  Any more was feeling like too much.  When I realized in November that my thyroid was probably getting slow, I tried raising my dose to 10.  It worked like a charm!  I felt good again.  Before my period I still had the sluggishness return, and raising my dose to 12 for a few days helped with that.  I will stay at 10 to 12 over the winter, it may be that my thyroid or some other system needs more then.

My activity level is so improved, even compared to last spring, that I have to remind myself to take stock every once in a while.  Things like laundry, which used to be an exhausting two day enterprise, are now just background activity while I am busy with something else.  Things that used to seem overwhelming I now do without a second thought.  When I wrote my one year anniversary post, I wasn't sure if the improvements would continue.  They are, and I can't wait to see where I will be in five years!  It is a complete change from the slow road to nowhere that I was on with meds.

Routing Depression

Readers of my last post may have noticed a grumpy tone in my writing.  I would say that for 2 or 3 days around then I would have qualified as clinically depressed.  I kept catching myself in typical depressed thoughts, which I haven't had since my last few days of depression in March.  I would give you an example, but fortunately I've forgotton them now!  My Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) practice soon fixed that, however.  As soon as I became aware of what was going on, I was able to stop it without any real effort at all.  That is the great thing about CBT, once you have practiced it and seen how inaccurate those depressed thoughts are, then it is easy to clear them up when they come back.

Why was I depressed at all?  Well, I don't think it is reasonable to expect to never be depressed again.  The main thing is to recognize it and turn it around early.  Physically, I am still getting protracted withdrawal before and during my period.  I think something is going on with the hormones at that time that increases the detox.  Plus, I still get a pre-menstrual migraine, which was pretty bad this month.  The low tyramine diet has eliminated all my other migraines, but that one remains.  Although I only take Advil for my migraines now, I think even that causes a bit of protracted withdrawal as well. 

The depression is gone, but for several days now I have been dead tired by 5:00 pm.  This is reminding me of how I felt before my thyroid was diagnosed, so I am thinking I should get it checked again. 

Also, I have been very busy.  I embarked on this homemade Christmas gift foolishness, so that is taking a lot of effort.  But you know, I am pulling it off.  My family is used to me flaking out of projects, so I am thinking they will be surprised. 

And, I have come up with an idea that I like for my own business.  I mentioned last spring that this is what I wanted to do, and I think I finally have an idea that has legs.  I will get more serious about it after the holidays, and I am thinking it will probably be a year before I can launch, but it is great to be planning and working on something again!

It Takes As Long As It Takes

I have been reading a lot of frustrated posts on the Truehope message boards lately about how long this process is.  Today I am frustrated too.  I set myself an ambitious plan to make a few Christmas gifts, and I realized this morning it is just not going to happen.  I will probably only get one of the three done.  I am still too tired and weak to spend the long hours at the sewing machine that would have been necessary.  So, that is disappointing.

When I started Empowerplus in May 2009 my only real goal was to stop the decline I was in, and to be stable without drugs.  That goal has been met.  What I didn't expect was the huge physical toll withdrawal would take.  It is frustrating to always have to curb my activity because I am still having protracted withdrawal symptoms after all this time.

But at the same time, I'm aware that I've set the bar a lot higher these days than it used to be.  I may not be at the sewing machine, but I am busy with other crafts most of the day.  I was sore when I started hand stitching; now I can stitch for hours without pain.  I was sore when I started knitting again; ditto.  So I guess I know that perseverance will pay off in the long run.

Even my attention span is improving.  The other day I worked all day on the SAME PROJECT.  That is really saying something.

And, let's be clear.  My protracted withdrawal symptoms only come after some new type of exertion now.  It is only when I raise the bar.  Sometimes it feels like I am fighting for every millimetre, but I can't deny the trend is there.  Plus, I have planned to make Christmas presents before, and I have never done it.  So one is an infinite improvement over none.  My old therapist in California used to say, when I felt like was going nowhere fast, that recovery takes as long as it takes, and she was right.

How Did I Get Here?

Bipolar is a physical illness.  I believe moderate to major depression is too.  I do not believe you can cure them just by changing your thoughts any easier than you can cure cancer by changing your thoughts, although you do hear about rare cases where that happens.  But that's rare, and usually a physical intervention is needed.  For bipolar and depression, I believe the best physical intervention is a micronutrient approach like Empowerplus.

However, I do believe it was poor thought choices that made me sick in the first place.  It would be easy to blame it all on my thyroid, because bipolar is a symptom of Hashimoto's.  I probably had my first hypomania when I was 10, that I remember, and my first depression when I was 11.  Long before puberty.  I don't know if the Hashimoto's would have already been active then.  You do read about infants and toddlers with hypothyroidism, so it may be possible.

I do recall that at an early age, 8 or 9, I became attracted to the idea of being "jaded."  I liked that "been there, done that, bored with it all" aura that some people had.  It struck me as a way to be interesting, and I wanted to be like that.  Gradually I stopped taking pleasure in things.

A movie score would have a dramatic minor chord there.  I really think now that was the beginning of it all.  Probably the hallmark of my long adult depression was a complete inability to appreciate anything.  I was living in the beautiful San Francisco Bay area, with the sunshine and the sea air and flowers all year long.  I knew someone else who had recovered from depression, who told me that he loved just going for walks and seeing all the flowers.  I went for walks and looked at the flowers and I felt nothing.  I looked at them and knew intellectually that they were beautiful, but they did not make me happy.

Daily exercise, by the way, in the sunshine and sea air, also did nothing to improve my mood.

So, I had periodic depressions in high school and university, and very productive periods that made me successful in school and work.  The two years leading up to my breakdown at 35 were progressively more and more stressful.  I had a fairly heavy travel schedule that kept me physically off balance, and an increasingly more adversarial work environment.  Looking back, I see that a lot of that was my own fault.  I saw slights where none was intended, and I consistently looked at the negative side of the situation.  You may not be able to control the situation, but you can control your reaction to it.  I always saw things in the worst possible light.

When you are feeling bad it is your spirit sending you clues that things are not right.  If you ignore the clues they get bigger.  It took many years of seeing things in a negative light, and ignoring my feelings and physical symptoms, for things to collapse totally.  I do believe that my brain has always worked a little differently, which is why I was hit with bipolar depression instead of heart disease or cancer, but it was my own thoughts that created my physical illness.

That is why I think Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and meditation are such an important part of recovery.  Physical help such as Empowerplus will only get you so far if you have a negative thought pattern, which I believe is the root cause of illness.  Learning to feel our feelings, and accept the guidance that they are giving us, is crucial to long term success.

Low Tyramine Diet

I'm just checking in today to let you know that things have significantly improved since I figured out that the MAOI Parnate was still active in my system.  I've gone on a low tyramine diet.  This was quite a change for me, because once I did the research I realized that practically everything I was eating was high in tyramine.  So no wonder it was a problem.  I've eliminated cheese, cold cuts, aged meats (yes, the good stuff), bananas, soy sauce and chocolate.  It was hard for the first few days, but once I saw that a lapse was immediately making me ill, it became easier.  And, I keep telling myself that it's not forever.

Coffee is off the table again too, for now.  I'm getting used to drinking chai.  It doesn't have the same buzz, but I guess that's the point.

Anyway, it is quite a relief not to be getting sick all the time with no idea why.  It's nice to be able to get out and about again.

Parnate is the Problem

For about a month now I have been having funky allergic-type reactions to a whole new set of foods that never bothered me before.  It has been very frustrating because I never knew what would set it off.  Well, I have figured it out!  It's the Parnate.

Parnate is an older type of anti-depressant, an MAOI.  I was on a high dose, 60 to 80 mg, for over a year.  Parnate has a lot of drug and food interactions.  Everything I have been reacting to this past month is on the list of things to avoid with Parnate.  Aged meats, bananas, chocolate, soy sauce -- all have given me reactions.

It is quite a relief to have an explanation for what is happening.  And it is good to know that it is not really allergies.  So now I have a list of foods and drugs to avoid, and hopefully things will calm down around here.

I have been on Empowerplus for 17 months, and it is pretty wild to consider that old drugs are STILL releasing in sufficient quantities to be giving me reactions like this.  And really, this is a new situation, it seems like the Parnate is just now starting to release.  It's kind of strange to have all these time bombs ticking away inside me.  But, now that the problem is identified, it will be easy to deal with.

Thyroid Update

Excellent news at the doctor this morning!  My thyroid is running normally without the help of medication of any kind.  Back in June I stopped taking my Synthroid all together, and after 5 months my thyroid is doing well, with my TSH at 1.8.

I have Hashimoto's Disease, an autoimmune disease that attacks your thyroid and makes it irregular but generally very slow.  I was on Synthroid for many years, and Cytomel for a while, but I never felt any better.  Even before my blood test this month I could tell that my thyroid was doing fine just by the way I feel.  The chronic exhaustion is gone.

Before I started Empowerplus I was taking 0.125 mg of Synthroid daily.  When I had the weird allergy attack/thyroid storm in December 2009, after 7 months on Empowerplus, I cut it back to 0.075 mg.  In April 2010 my TSH was 1.9.  6 weeks later it seemed like I was still taking too much.  I switched to half a pill, 0.0375 mg, and got another blood test.  Before I could get those results I had another weird allergy attack/thyroid storm and ended up in the emergency room.  There I learned that my latest test result was a TSH of 1.0, a dramatic drop despite reducing my Synthroid dose.  That was when I decided to stop the Synthroid completely.

Now that decision has proven to be correct.  Obviously the Empowerplus is supporting my thyroid so much on it's own that extra medication is not necessary.  Considering that I feel so much better now than the Synthroid was ever able to achieve, I'm feeling pretty good about that!