bipolar illness

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It was a particularly beloved patient who asked me if I had any advice about improving creativity. She believed, as many people do, that it is a side effect of treating (even a relatively minor form) of bipolar illness. A lot of research back in the days of lithium, one of the first really robust treatments for bipolar illness, strongly suggested it just wasn’t so. Read more on Will Bipolar Treatment Kill Creativity?…

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I recently started seeing a patient whose previous psychiatrist ran him through absolutely every antidepressant drug that his (expensive) genetic testing suggested he would respond to. He had no improvement with any of them.

I will admit to having been an enthusiastic supporter of genetic testing not long ago. The science was sound on paper. Read more on Bipolar Genetics…

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Sexual harassment has been making the news lately.  Dozens of powerful men in Hollywood (especially) and business and government are being accused of misconduct by vulnerable young women (and men in some cases).

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can result from any trauma. Car accidents, animal attacks, a bad fall — not just sexual assault or war.

A high-school student doing a report for school recently wrote to me asking about PTSD.  I thought my answers might be of interest to others, so I’m sharing them with you. Read more on Student Questions About PTSD…

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I find a lot of things I like in the New York Times. This article resonated with me as few others. First, there is the purpose of the human profiled.  Changing medicine into data science?  God save us all.

Sometimes I feel the best thing I do for a patient is to be human.  Just to have the pretension (a pretension which I do not take lightly) of being one human being in a room with another human being, trying to make them feel better.  This does more, I think, to make most of my patients “better” than all of the pills I have spent years studying about. All those years studying normative use of medications on large populations of humans.  And they work enough to please the powers that be.

Read more on Human Beings Are Not Computers…

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Natural treatment of obsessionality. “Estelle, you’re such a little worrier.  Yes you are.” When I was little, I never understood why my Auntie Charlotte always addressed me this way.  I did know that my family had “adopted” her which seemed to give her the right to “adopt” me.  Her orthodox Jewish family had rejected her because she wanted to marry a guy who had been married before, even though he was very Jewish. I was not supposed to know or care about such things.  But I did know she was the first person in my life to tell me I worried too much about things that didn’t need worrying about.

Read more on Obsessions…

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This story found me in the headlines: Colts’ Jim Irsay discusses addiction.” I had never heard of and would not have been able to cite the name of the owner of the Baltimore Colts. I certainly am no fan of professional football.  I have reviewed recent problems in other posts. It seems to me that football — seemingly more than other sports — breaks brains, heads, bones and lives and may foster drug addiction to boot. Read more on Baltimore Colts Owner Jim Irsay – Too Rich To Need Help?…

Filed under Diagnosis, Sports, Substance Abuse by on . Comment#

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I recently got hold of a copy of Dr. Atkins’ Vita-Nutrient Solution; a book by the same Robert C. Atkins, M.D. who invented the “Atkins Diet” –mainly known as the low-carb diet.  I was impressed by his general erudition and review of the literature.  He had even visited with various luminaries of alternative medicine.  Here was a guy who was capable of writing a pretty complete vitamin and mineral prescription for almost any chronic illness that was part of an internal medicine practice.

In a section titled “My Own Transformation,” he tells how, when he was devoted to mainstream medicine, he found a diet that worked for him and for most folks.  He had found it in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which is perhaps the most mainstream medical journal that exists.  He wrote his first book about that diet.  He was shocked when a consensus panel from the American Medical Association was critical. After all, he had been relying on medical literature which had been reviewed by peers and validated in every way that academics respect and deserve when they have done work.  He started questioning these professional “edicts” and found himself squarely in the world of nutrition-based therapeutics. I have believed for a long time that most psychiatric disorders, maybe all, are the result of a genetically transmitted limitation of the ability to metabolize nutrients.  There is plenty of evidence for this. Read more on Yes, Virginia — Cannabis IS Medicine…

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Amazingly enough, I have avoided writing about Charlie Sheen so far.
I do not believe his story to be that unusual — just different from others in a matter of degrees.

Charlie SheenNo, he is not my patient and I have not officially examined him.  I have figured out that the writers of his show seem to have done a lot of basing the character he plays on — well, him.

His creative and limit-pushing exploits seem to be a little more over the edge than most.  My guess — and it is a guess at this point — is that he, like other actors (seems to me David Arquette has complained of “racing thoughts” in the not too distant past), is probably what we call a “dual diagnosis;” that is, underlying bipolar illness with some substance abuse associated.

Read more on Oh No! Not Charlie Sheen Again!…

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