The Alternative Health Gazette

Bipolar Disorder: Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle

While bipolar disorder is not a health condition that you can self-treat, there are some simple measures you can take to help minimize your episodes and effectively manage your disorder on a long-term basis.

Controlling stress levels is a vital management technique. This can be done with ease by creating a sensible routine for yourself and augmenting this with some healthy habits, including exercise, a healthy diet, and regular sleep habits.

According to several studies presented within the last several years, those individuals who experienced disruptions in their normal daily activities especially in their sleeping and eating habits found themselves more susceptible to developing new episodes of mania and depression. They were also more vulnerable to experiencing more relapses in their symptoms. Experts agree: those who maintain a predictable routine handled their bipolar symptoms much better.

An individual with this disorder should develop skills to cope with stress. While the majority of us think of stress as being exposure to bad situations, there is such a thing as “good” stress. Events that give you joy can be just as difficult to manage as traumatic, unpleasant events. Exposure to stress can intensify both manic and depressive episodes.

Research shows, in fact, that in 60 percent of the cases, the first time a major depressive or manic episode occurs it was immediately preceded by a significant stressor. Moreover, the more mood swings a person experiences, the more vulnerable he is to developing future relapses. Not only that, but relapses may diminish the effectiveness of medication.

Because you are an individual and react differently to circumstances, you’ll discover that there are certain activities that may be chronic stressors in your life. Learn to identify these, pay attention to your ideal life rhythms, and then create a list of what you consider to be your triggers. Ideally, it would be great to share this list with your family and close friends; they can help you in trying to maintain a low-stress environment.

An important aspect of a daily routine for anyone with bipolar disorder is the necessity of keeping some semblance of an adequate sleep routine. Individuals with bipolar disorder appear to have a central nervous system that “commits errors.” The body’s hypothalamus regulates our internal clocks. In individuals who suffer with bipolar disorder, this clock is difficult to regulate. Once the rhythms are disturbed and it doesn’t take a great deal to disturb the rhythm of a person with bipolar disorder it triggers a set of reactions. Disturbed patterns then affect the individual’s schedule for not only sleeping and waking, but a host of other routines as well.

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