Thyroid and Bipolarism

[kelrivas]

Nancy you had an interesting post here regarding personality changes and thyroid....I was just going to post on something similar...weird timing...

I do event planner for pharmaceutical companies in my spare time worked at a conference about bipolarism for doctors recently...I noticed that many of the symptoms of bipolar mental illness point to classic thyroid issues and it is beginning to be discussed that the two might be intertwined in some... and the trouble is no one seems to have a decent answer about how the two might be related...I was listening to some of the leading experts in the field here in California and you should have seen the debate about the issue and the lack of "ok now what do we do with this info?"

I saw a DVD movie presentation about a person who was misdiagnosed for a long time as just having depression. The character in the movie was a mirror reflection of myself when my thyroid meds are off...this troubled me and I began to read more on the net...what I found was rather disturbing and I would like to know what some of you think as it truly pertains to Nancy's post about personality issues, and our common challenges with thyroid disease...

Some of the websites I read were:
http://www.psycheducation.org/thyroid/introduction.htm
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig/BP_pharm.html#thyroxine
http://thyroid.about.com/b/a/209037.htm

thanks
Kellie

[kelrivas]

Is everyone afraid of this topic? I thought for sure I would get someone to comment :(

Kellie

[Demokat]

Kellie I think it's a relevant topic. My sister has Lyme disease, which was made worse by an underactive thyroid. She was depressed as hell, but once she started Armour, her mood improved greatly.

[kelrivas]

This is interesting. For me Armour increases my irritability when it is off and depresses me when it is low, however I can not take it all by itself...I am a raving witch...

I am beginning to think that food has a bigger part of this than I ever realize . When I stick close to my diet and not deviate my moods are better, but too low of carbs and I am grumpy, too much and I am depressed...

There should be more research on this topic...its scary to think so many people out there are being treated as bipolar when maybe much of it is thyroid and diet issues...and vise versa...how much of it is mental illness...
Kellie

[Nancy LC]

Sorry, I don't always see new posts right away.

There's a huge link between mental illnesses and gluten sensitivity. I'd find that more likely than thyroid. If you read "The Gluten File" you'll find research about that.

With thyroid it isn't extreme, at least not in my experience. My personality changes but not to an extreme that would be considered disordered. And hyperthyroid doesn't make me manic or feel invincible, just impatient and irritable.

[sanlee]

Hi Kellie,

Thyroid and depression have been linked for a long time. Psychiatrists used to prescribe T3 for bipolar (when it was still called manic depression) and other forms of depression fairly often, but I think that's out of favor now (probably shouldn't be!)

Good luck in finding more info :-)