Keys
Five Keys to Mood
In Mood Mapping Dr Liz Miller describes five keys to mood:
Surroundings
Physical Health
Relationships
Knowledge
Personality
When things start to go wrong in any of these areas of our lives we are likely to find it increasingly difficult to be in the moods we want to be in.
When things are going well in all these areas of our lives we are likely to find it easier to be in the moods we want to be in.
The article below was written some time back while thinking about physical health as a key to mood.
A change of emphasis – Thinking again about glands and moods
It is important to know about causes and triggers for mood disorder.
Recovery is most successful when we first tackle the triggers – essentially, what is causing the ‘episodes’/’relapses’ (as the medical people describe the blips we have). We have to tackle the triggers to gain the stability we need to move on.
Traditionally, moving on is about getting back to work, repairing damaged relationships (if it is not too late to do so) and learning to live with the bipolar disorder label for the rest of your life. However, the label stays no matter how well you become, even when you may feel fully recovered. The change we are suggesting here is that; after you have identified and dealt with some of your triggers, to regain that essential stability, it is not time to move on! It now seems this may need to be the time to look for the root causes and in particular identifying if there may be a physical cause of your troubles that has been overlooked.
If your mood disorder has been primarily caused by a physical health problem, then sorting this out is essential to stop your difficulties from returning.
Researching the links between glands and moods
We have a lot of glands in our bodies and each one has a role to play in helping us to have the right mood for each situation and life event. Any gland failing to work as it needs to may manifest as a mood disorder and these days it is likely to be labelled as bipolar disorder.
Have you ever wondered about your parathyroids. We have four of these tiny glands in the neck. It only needs one of the four to be producing too much parathyroid hormone to impact on our energy levels and impact on our moods. The parathyroid glands are just part of our endocrine system. It is unlikely to be the main factor in mood control for most people, but if you have one or more faulty parathyroid glands, will your doctor know about this and will they look for other physical health triggers? It is more likely at this time that they will label you with a mood disorder, meaning that the physical causes are unknown. For most parts of the NHS this results in focus on mental health with almost no further consideration of any diagnosis or treatment for physical health.
Some people have more than one faulty parathyroid gland. The cure is simple: remove the faulty glands which for a surgeon are easily recognised as these are the enlarged ones.
At www.parathyroid.com there are many photographs of faulty parathyroid glands that have been removed. In this example all four glands have been removed from one patient. The smaller/least-faulty gland was returned to allow the patient to recover from many of their physical and emotional troubles.
55-year-old female
Parathyroid Hyperplasia
Pre-op Calcium 11.3
Pre op PTH 116
Three out of four parathyroids affected is rare. The chances of more than one parathyroid gland being faulty increases if you have ever taken lithium tablets.
We need to know about the causes, else the mood disorder returns.
If you have been labelled as bipolar, please do not do what I did and spend 14 years working on understanding and eliminating triggers, while ignoring the causes.
In this article I only mention one physical health issue that can lead to mood problems. There are hundreds of other possibilities and it is important to at least rule them out. If you quickly want to find out more about parathyroidism then I can say the site I found most useful in 2011 and in 2012 was: http://www.parathyroid.com/diagnosis.htm
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Rethinking Bipolar
