Bipolar disorder with minimal medication… from an 'expert' by experience……………. Useful search option >>>
October 6, 2020 Leave a comment
In 2014, I created ‘How to Mood Map’, based on Dr Liz Millers Mood Mapping as part of a project for the NHS in Lincolnshire, UK.
There is a link below so you can download and make use of my pdf.
Please let me know if you find this useful.
January 29, 2018 Leave a comment
Brain Health – It is what we all need.
I hope you can join us at Folks & Fables Cafe, Long Acre, Bingham, Nottinghamshire NG13 8AF
March 23, 2022 Leave a comment
“Do you know Joe Blogs?” (not real name)
“Yes. He is, kind of, famous/infamous.”
“He was trying to guilt trip people into activism…”
“I find this upsetting. I was accused of this. It affected me so badly emotionally and physically that I had to drop out of the local group completely. I am alone now.”
To “guilt trip” is a meme. Like all memes it came into existence at some moment in time. Why has it spread? What is its purpose? Who benefits from these 2 words put together? Why would an activist ever try to ‘guilt-trip ‘anyone? It makes no sense. Guilt-tripping would be a way to divide and drive away the people whom we are so desperate for help from. It seems it is a meme that works to divide and weaken communities.
I found out yesterday that people did not like to read things from me like, “I got up at 4am and finished this blog post by 5am” – That, to me was/is a fact… It says something about my mood… lack of stability… need for stability… I am certainly not asking others to get up at 4am and become emotionally unstable.
Four 4 basic moods [Anxious / Busy / Calm / Down]:
“…and I called him out on it.”
“Please never do so again. If someone is saying they are working hard and looking for help, even if it is making others feel bad, please recognise that is mainly the problem for the person whose Anxiety drives him/her into the Busy quadrant.”
Others may be able to move more quickly from Anxiety to a Down-mood or a Calm-mood or be able to remain Anxious. Your typical activist has lost this ability and will rarely feel any Calm/Calmness until after a period of being Busy/very-Active.
Some people do not know, or cannot remember how to move from Anxious to Calm without first being Busy….
“You should perhaps try and connect with him.”
“It can be hard to connect with activists. They are so often close to exhaustion from such long periods of being Busy and very little Calm in their lives.”
Every activist seems to be looking for help. I am reminded of Billy Joel’s
There’s 2 minutes of instrumental introduction. The second verse contains,
“Give a moment or two to the angry young man… With his foot in his mouth and his heart in his hand… He’s been stabbed in the back, he’s been misunderstood… It’s a comfort to know his intentions are good… And he sits in a room with a lock on the door… With his maps and his medals laid out on the floor….”
“Does that sound like your friend, Joe Bloggs?”
January 2, 2022 Leave a comment
We had an epidemic of poor nutrition, high blood sugar and over use of pharmaceuticals. People around the world were waking up to that and grouping together to help each other have better health. This movement towards better health was stopped in its tracks early in 2020 by illegal ‘lockdowns’, where healthy people were told to stay in their homes. This deprived many of sunlight and exercise. Exercise? Yes, for example Park Run was stopped. For many nutrition worsened as they shopped less often and had less fresh food. Governments pretended that nutrition did not matter and politicians laughed at the fact that vitamins C and D can be used to prevent colds and ‘flu.
So a pLLandemic was created. Not by a virus from Wuhan but by governments and mainstream media.
Now, there is a far greater threat to our health and that comes in the form of police brutality and what may follow on from that.
Above is a still image of Constable NE2546 just after he has kicked a member of the public in the head for fun. Seriously, this monster has been caught on camera committing a serious crime. I intend to report this crime, even though doing so may put my life at risk if other police come for me for telling the truth.
Police brutality is causing mental challenges that can only be resolved by eliminating police brutality.
Around the world millions of people are living in fear of the police. Our regular friendly ‘bobby-on-the-beat’ is fine and still how most in Britain like to think of our police force. The trouble is our police may no longer be our police as so many of them no longer seem interested in our welfare.
These are not protestors the police are pushing around. These are New Year Revellers. Most are sober law-abiding citizens including children and pensioners.
What has this to do with bipolar disorder?
Bipolar is essentially a reaction to anxiety – an escape from anxiety into depression or mania. Into a Down mood or a Busy mood.
When we witness injustice / atrocities we become enraged. That is a mood of higher energy and negativity. To get out of that mood we can either stay negative, decide there is nothing anyone can do and be Down, else we can be positive, decide we can do something and get Busy, doing that something.
Down-Mood or Busy-Mood.
Busy… Typing this blog-post, then sharing it widely, then finding out how to report a crime, then reporting it and perhaps asking others to report it.
By taking action my mood does not have to stay at an extreme. I can then be calm and sleep. Yes, I will wake fearful of a knock on the door. Maybe Constable NE2546 will come after me. Yes, maybe it’ll be best if many people report this crime as he won’t be able to kick every one of us.
It needs to be done to stop to what is happening. It is too like black and white film I have seen of how the NAZI took over in Germany about 90 years ago.
If you have not watched the video yet, please do so and see if you then have the same feeling of outrage I have been experiencing and maybe you will join those of us who oppose tyranny. Please.
Police Kick Protester In Head & Assault Crowd on New Year’s Eve – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l7KM-21U30
I am okay with people saying that rapid-extreme shifts in mood after seeing terrible things happen is a ‘bipolar thing’ but not that it is a disorder. This is normal/healthy. It is the police, here who are being abnormal and such actions are unhealthy.
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July 7, 2021 1 Comment
We tend to react to stress by changing our mood to allow us to take the actions needed. Actions to protect ourselves and/or actions to protect those we love.
However much stress we experience, we will still be in one of the 4 basic moods described in Mood Mapping. (If not familiar with Mood Mapping please download my free ‘How to Mood Map‘ pdf.)
The names of the moods have changed over the years. Personally, I have settled on; Anxious, Busy, Calm and Down as the names for these 4 basic moods. Yes, we may have many sub-moods and feelings, but as humans we will we either choose to be in one of those moods or end up in one by default.
“…starfish on a beach in hot sun”? How do we react when we see our friends in danger?
We may:
Now, if your friends are NOT aware they are in danger and a change in behaviour could help them massively, then you may well appear crazy and risk being (re-)labelled as bipolar. In the analogy, a starfish may be unaware it is in danger or perhaps not want to be thrown back into the surf.
The downside of a busy mood is that if I (or you perhaps) get stuck in one then we can appear manic to others as it tends to look like an obsession with excess focus on one challenge to be overcome.
I have a very good friend, I’ll call G and he’ll know it is him, who insists that we can always choose our mood. I love that idea and always believed it until an incident I describe in SP/SS that convinced me that we can indeed always choose our moods (and perhaps actions) until we stop believing we can choose. That debate never ends as ultimately it is what we believe and our attitude that will shape all our futures.
Whether I choose to be a rescuer at my own expense or whether this is a role that has been thrust upon me, I cannot tell. I just know that I prefer ‘Busy’ rather than ‘Down’ or ‘Anxious’, while a little Calmness now and then ensures I am not getting stuck in a mood.
If you have read and understood the above then you are ‘my kind of person’ so please do stay in touch… and can I help you?
April 24, 2021 Leave a comment
Listening to, or watching, mainstream media (MSM) in 2021 seems to be increasing people’s level of fear. This messes with our mood/emotions, which in turn can weaken our immune system. As I said in an earlier blog, avoiding MSM can leave space for new even more frightening memes from social media to take hold.
I am therefore recommending some older memes from before the 2020/21 gloom (remember a meme is any idea that can be accurately copied, and I’d say these two fit that description)
“There’s something special about you.“
“Your body is designed to adapt to this planet.“
If you…
…then please take notes, ideally with an old-fashioned pen and paper, from one of the best ever lectures on how to get well and stay well… with minimal medical intervention. It is 60 minutes. He starts off saying about ‘God’ – It is okay, it is a talk about health not religion, its just John’s way… stick with him… he’s great!
Remember: What happens to each of us depends a lot on what we each believe. Believe we have the intelligence within us to adapt and thrive when we ignore the crazy new ideas and stick with what has always worked.
August 12, 2020 1 Comment
After about 11 years med-free = no prescription medications at all, I accepted a prescribed antipsychotic drug to help me sleep. I have found that I sleep a little more when I take this, yet each day I am so very tired and doing (what seems to me) to be far too little.
I have met with a nutritional therapist who has suggested that my troubles may be largely due to excess toxins. If this is so, then I need a way to get these toxins out of my body (and especially out of my brain). Can this be done?
Perhaps the best hope is with a product called ToxaPrevent(R). This film explains about toxins in the body and how ToxaPrevent may do exactly what I need it to do.
The instructions I have are to take both the powder (for detoxing from upper digestive system) and the capsule(s) (for detoxing from lower digestive system) 30 minutes before each meal.
I have just taken first dose of each, so now to cook, eat and see how I feel later.
March 13, 2020 Leave a comment
As Bruce Lipton points out, corona-viruses cause the common cold as well as ‘flu.
We have probably all been infected by corona-viruses, when catching colds, most winters, as tends to happen in our early years. As our immune system matures, if well-nourished and not too stressed we rarely catch colds or ‘flu.
The amount of harm any virus can do to us is related to our cortisol levels (as well as our nutritional status (i.e. have we been eating real food and taking any essential supplements such as vitamins C & D)).
To keep cortisol low; avoid stress and ideally spend time with friends or family and most especially we others who have a keen interest in health and longevity.
Here is a link to Bruce Lipton’s words being read by a man on a boat!. Why man on boat? …because I do not know yet how to link from here to his original article.
December 2, 2019 Leave a comment
Sleep and Mood are so much linked. I was told this again and again while in hospital in ’97, ’98, ’99.
How to sleep well and monitoring hours slept was a big part of the self-management courses I started attending in June 2000 and went on to teach for the next few years.
I became so good at glancing at the clock every time I woke that I could plot how long I was sleeping to the nearest few minutes and did this for about 12 years. This helped me manage medications and gradually reduce the amount I needed.
It was sometime after coming off all the medications that I came to appreciate the habit I had of looking at the clock the moment I woke, any time, day or night, might be less than ideal.
Just recently I have adopted a new way of sleep monitoring. It is not so precise yet, for me, is very easy. I’d like to share with you.
How I am monitoring my sleep these days
How much influence caffeine has on sleep varies a lot from person-to-person. Many people cope easily with lots of caffeine as teenagers, then by 30, 40, 50 years old suddenly find that coffee late in the day disrupts their sleep. Timing of caffeine intake has certainly been a factor for me for decades.
I was not sleeping well for the first half of 2019, then decided to record every time I had any caffeine. I log how much and at what time for coffee, tea, dark chocolate and cocoa. The immediate effect was that I consumed a little less caffeine and within days I was sleeping better.
I did not plot these results until a few months after moving house and finding I was waking too often in the night. Then the idea of plotting my first drink of the day came to me. This tells me a lot about my sleep because one way I manage my mood is to go to bed when I am tired which most nights is about the same time. Then because I almost always make a hot drink within minutes of getting up, I had near enough been recording my getting up time.
It was a visiting friend who said they were unable to tolerate the chemicals from new carpets that prompted me to keep my bedroom window open all day and all night. The graph reveals a step change from the first 24 hours I kept that window open.
Here are just a few of the things I find influence my sleep:
October 26, 2017 Leave a comment
Last month I shared’ “I am in agreement with others who study recovery from mood troubles that a first step is to have a long trial of no wheat and no cow’s milk/cow dairy” and, “Being half-hearted in eliminating wheat (usually barley and rye products too) and dairy rarely works.”
I was already avoiding all dairy produce. Within a few days of clearing my house of all wheat containing foods and choosing not to eat any of these anywhere, my gut discomfort mostly disappeared. I was no longer being woken by gut pains.
Was this the cure for my sleep and mood troubles? Not all, as soon as the gut pain went the mild tinnitus I had been experiencing became far worse. Waking in the early hours the whistling sounds in my ears was as bad as almost any gut pain. Along with the whistling a feeling I used to only get if standing near a microwave oven or laboratory magnetic resonance equipment was now troubling me in my own home. Different people have different responses to microwaves and powerful magnets. For me, this feeling has always been like my head being crushed sideways in a vice.
Moving my bed downstairs eased both the whistling and the crushing pain. A few nights later putting the mattress on the floor helped more. Then removing the mattress and sleeping on a thick blanket on the concrete kitchen floor helped even more. By now, every time I went upstairs the whistling and crushing pain returned.
Using my laptop I could tell that the whistling and pain was related to the number and strength of WiFi signals in different parts of my house. I spoke with some of my nearest neighbours who agreed to turn their WiFi and a WiFi enabled printer off overnight. This helped and the first night with that printer off was, for me, one of the longest and most refreshing sleeps this year.
This did not solve my troubles. Day-after-day I just seemed to be becoming more electro-sensitive. It was not just WiFi. I needed changes to the wiring and ways I was using electricity in my own home.
I am continuing to investigate local sources of the man-made radiation and how to reduce their effects on my wellbeing. I need to do this so that I can again use the upstairs of my house.
What about my dairy and wheat experiment?
Other than tea with milk on 3 occasions, I have been 100% free of dairy produce, which has helped enormously with my breathing.
I had zero wheat/oats/barley/rye for 34 days, then had a portion of chip-shop chips, which I normally avoid as I consider the types of fat and deep frying process to be detrimental to health. I think these chips were contaminated with gluten as many chip-shop chips are. That evening I had a tiny glass of beer. I slept well, but woke feeling dreadful. The next evening I finished the 500ml bottle of beer. I did not sleep well. I was awake from 12:30am and felt extremely unwell. I won’t go into detail here about my next 12 trips to the toilet over the next 24 hours, other than to say these were very much non-standard.
I had kidded myself that the German beer would be free of gluten. It was not. I now saw the allergy advice on the label was very clear. “Barley: contains gluten”.
Why do we keep on wanting dairy and wheat/barley/rye even when again and again we have proved, to ourselves, these are damaging our health?
I used to say that my desire was largely driven by habits and social pressures as most people around me continue to consume these many times every day.
There is also the calming/relaxing effect from morphine like compounds from partially digested dairy and wheat.
After what happened over the 35 days I am thinking about one more ‘advantage’ of consuming wheat: It was only when I stopped both dairy and wheat consumption that my electro-sensitivity became so bad as to almost totally disable me. As soon as I consumed the contaminated chips and clearly labelled beer the tinnitus and crushing pain lessened, with my new obsession with protection from man-made Electro-Magnetic-Fields (EMF) subsiding.
It is like with physical pain when our attention is always drawn only to the greatest or most acute pain. I am wondering if others have noticed what I have. Already being free of all prescribed medications/drugs and then avoiding the morphine-like-compounds associated with dairy and gluten, my brain increasingly noticed the man-made radiation ‘soup’.
This has left me with another question: How many bipolar diagnosis are linked in some way to exposure to EMF, WiFi and now perhaps ‘smart-meter’ radiation.
Thinking back to my own hospitalization in 1997, mobile (cell) phones were still a rarity in the UK. In the 5 days leading up my hospitalization I was away from home and had borrowed a mobile phone, which I used excessively, holding it pressed up against my ear. Prior to this I’d had very little contact with mobiles. I certainly am not claiming that mobile phones alone can cause severe mood disorders. I am suggesting mobiles and other sources of EMF may be contributors to many, if not all, modern psychiatric troubles.
What do you think?
I am going back to zero dairy and gluten. I am also admitting that the risks of gluten from beer are too high for me at this time.
I’ll close, as I did a month ago, by saying that the first step in recovery from almost anything would seem to be getting out of denial and accepting we may need to do something radically different. On Friday, I have called a group together to discuss the effects of EMF and what we can do to better understand its effects and how we may each need to respond to the increasing number of sources and the strength of these new sources, such as the role out ‘smart meters’.
June 8, 2017 Leave a comment
Does HCLF cause mood troubles? Does HFLC help to eliminate mood troubles?
A bit of a generalization here:
This does not prove anything as there are probably hundreds of other factors. It is probably just as true that countries that have more televisions per capita have higher rates of depression. This does not show TV causes depression but may, at most, suggest some weak link between affluence and more mood troubles.
Healthy brains are made mainly from healthy fat and healthy cholesterol. In whatever way we might choose to deprive ourselves of healthy fat and healthy cholesterol we will run into brain health troubles. Choosing not to eat cholesterol does not seem to be a problem. If eating good food a healthy human liver will make healthy cholesterol as needed. (Recent research indicates that almost any cell in the body can also make healthy-cholesterol if it is a well-nourished cell.) Depriving ourselves of essential fats (and I believe, going very low on some of the non-essential fats) will lead to brain deterioration and mood troubles.
Energy: The bulk of the energy in our food and drink always has to come from either fat or carbs. (It has become clearer-and-clearer that getting more than about 20% of our energy from protein damages the liver, kidneys, may even increase the likelihood of diabetes) We need to think, ‘fat or carbs?’ This is a decision I believe most people need to make.
The S.A. Diet has for a few decades been high in unhealthy fats and exceptionally high in unhealthy carbs. This is a lethal combination for both the body and the brain.
I have been teaching about diet for a long time and used to warn people against all sorts of things that I now tend to suggest people investigate eating more of, such as saturated fat (although I stress the importance of this being from organic farming). Examples include butter if you like the taste of it or coconut oil for the strict vegans. Moderation is still important, as you have to stick within what your digestive system, liver and blood vessels can handle in any one hit.
What have I seen in people around me? Those consuming higher levels healthy fats and very little of the least healthy (highly processed) carbs are both physically and mentally fitter and are better at the sort of thing Tom Wootton talks about, which is to be able to function well almost regardless of emotional upsets.
And me, personally? It has been a long road, in which I have used many tools and done a lot of experimenting on myself. I am convinced that consuming quite a lot of healthy fat every day has been doing me good. It is, for me, just one of hundreds of dietary and other changes I needed to make. What does not work for me is when I add refined carbs on top of my high-ish-fat plant-based meals.
Example: So far today…
[I like chocolate – I don’t eat chocolate everyday, else, for me, it can become an addiction!]
How important is it to get onto HFLC or at least make a decision about how to eliminate the most unhealthy of the carbs? I think an even more important meme to keep in our heads, whether or not we have been said to be bipolar, is,
“The most important decision we make each day is what we put in our mouths.”
The more I think about this the surer I become that it is so true.
As a last thought on this subject for now: I find that each day… what I eat that day;
…the next day.
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As I often do, I am going to finish by saying that just because medical people said I had a mood disorder and I no longer take any prescription medications that does not mean it is easy to stop taking these. Getting the right food undoubtedly helps, just be aware there are so many other lifestyle changes that may also be needed before any changes of prescription medications. Make sure you have the best doctors you can find and talk with them.
May 1, 2016 2 Comments
Yesterday, in ‘Psychology Today’, my good friend, Tom Wootton posted a useful short article called, “Bipolar Treatment Is More Than Just Tools To Lower Intensity”
Here are a few words from it; “I see too many people who have never learned yet convince themselves that they know how to drive. When their mania gets stronger than they can handle they don’t even have the good sense to put on the brakes. And then, when someone else puts on the brakes for them, they go back to imagining that they know how to drive. Their repeated failure to actually learn the necessary steps is just reinforcing the false notion among everyone around them that it cannot be done.”
In the work I have been doing I have found car and driving analogies to be really useful. It fits with the picture millions of people have of recovery, or even everything about life being a journey.
Most people reading this will have passed a driving test after many hours of instruction from a tutor with a great deal of experience. How many of us have done such intensive training for managing our moods and our long-term well-being?
March 5, 2016 Leave a comment
Dear reader,
I am glad you found my answer to your question of, “When taking Carbamazepine I have heard it said to only have bottled water to avoid chlorine that that may interacts with Carbamazepine – is this true and important?” As you say, it is worth sharing these thoughts on Carbamazepine and other psychiatric drugs, as others may also find this discussion useful so I will post what I was saying here:
Answer:
It is worth looking at the side-effects of carbamazepine in the link below. I have heard hundreds of stories of weird interactions like the one about chlorine and carba… These may or may not have some truth in them but 99% of the time such ideas are trivial. The drugs are toxic so, in the very long-term, the more we take the sicker we get.
How to help your mum?… The food she is having is likely to be cheap rather than good, so maybe check on what supplements she is having to make up for some of the deficiencies. E.g. Any sort of omega-3 supplement? Omega-3 being good for the heart, brain and joints.
Drugs
All drugs have lots of side-effects. A simple way of looking at psychiatric drugs is that they are;
It is the less energy bit that explains how they work. If you think of a mood map, then less energy takes us down and out of the anxious quadrant and into the ‘low’ quadrant. The drugs work when the dose is low enough to take the edge off the anxiety such that we can;
The trouble with this approach include;
These troubles are all obvious, but the other two troubles that make the drug route pretty useless are;
So, when you read the side-effects of carbamazepine… really, pretty similar to most psychiatric drugs. These drugs are never going to be part of a cure unless short-term and matched up with talking (listening/talking) therapies.
http://www.drugs.com/sfx/carbamazepine-side-effects.html
I have to add that it is almost always dangerous to come off any drug quickly. Change has to start with better lifestyle and that usually needs to include better nutrition.
August 6, 2015 Leave a comment
Bipolar In Order – 223 pages – Tom Wootton 2010 – 5 Star Amazon Review
Bipolar In Order is based on a very simple premise: we can learn and grow to the point that we see bipolar as an advantage in our lives. (Most of the following appears on the amazon UK site where I added my review)
Wootton takes on the treatment, basic misunderstandings, and assumptions that are in the way of achieving Bipolar In Order. Living with bipolar and depressive conditions is never underestimated in Tom Wootton’s books. By examining all states of depression, mixed states, and mania unflinchingly and deeply he arrives at conclusions that challenge the current paradigm.
The author insists on a higher level of Insight, Freedom, Stability, Self-mastery, and Equanimity as end goals that are achievable. Asked time and again why someone would resist treatment, Wootton states that the most important thing to offer is a life worth living! Expecting someone to park their brain in the garage like an unused Ferrari is not an appealing treatment model.
Rather than receiving the training, therapy, mind skills and behavioural control that is the foundation of real stability, current models of “avoidance therapy” try to mask and remove symptoms that will never go away. Living in fear of the wide ranging states of consciousness and mood that those with mental conditions experience is not a life worth living. Confronting these conditions head on, identifying one’s strengths and learning self-mastery is a more viable solution proposed by Bipolar In Order.
Book Review:
Bipolar in Order is Wootton’s best book yet. It is a distillation of his unorthodox views of what it means to be bipolar. Bipolarity brings with it a wide range of moods and emotions, from suicidal depression to ecstatic mania and everything in between. Conventional wisdom advises bipolars to maintain their moods somewhere in the middle, flattening out their emotions so that they are neither too high nor too low. Wootton shifts the paradigm: it is not the feelings, but our response to them that is the problem. The feelings actually enrich our lives and deepen our humanity. Using introspection and the other tools outlined in Bipolar in Order, Wootton believes that bipolars can learn to control their outward behavior, allowing them to enjoy the entire spectrum of their emotions.
First UK review:
Essential reading for anyone working in the mental health field
“I very much enjoyed reading ‘Bipolar In Order’ and this is one of the books I now show to people when I am training ‘Understanding Mood and the Bipolar Diagnosis’.
My own journey has a lot in common with Wootton’s approach of building a team and moving on with life without waiting for all troublesome feelings, thoughts etc to go away.
This book is a must for anyone working in the mental health field to understand just how differently it is possible to view mood disorder and how successfully difficulties can be overcome by someone with hope, determination and realism.”
March 6, 2015 2 Comments
Glutinous Bipolar – Gluten and Bipolar Symptoms
It is 16 years since I was last detained on a psychiatric ward, 15 years since I learned how to self-manage and stay away from psychiatrists. It is now more than 4 years since I last took any psychiatric drug.
Today, it feels like I am ‘back to square one’ with words from a 1960’s song in my head.
“Lock me away and don’t allow the day, here inside, where I hide with my loneliness…”
Everything was going well, so why am I feeling this way?
It was cold and dark with a bitter wind. I was walking back to the train station when I got some bad news on my phone just as a welcoming fish ‘n’ chip shop came into view. I had promised a friend I would not eat chips. I went in and bought a sausage instead.
Somehow I convinced myself that any gluten in the sausage would not matter. This was not good food for me, but it was hot and seemed to be what I needed to deal with the cold and bad news. Was this self-harm? Were things going too well? Could it be my “inner saboteur” getting the better of me?
After more than a month with no gluten at all, with minimal pain, great positivity and plenty of sustained energy, just an hour after eating the gluten… my world was starting to fall apart.
Three days of misery followed with stupid coffee drinking and loads of dairy produce. Three days of binging, increasing gut pains and foggy and confused thinking.
Was it always gluten? It is 19 years since I was prescribed medications to calm my guts, but it was one of these that made my insomnia worse and led to the psychiatric drugs. These sedated me and in many ways made my life easier, but all the time they were allowing more gut damage to occur.
Each new doctor said it was all in my head and nothing to do with my gut, so I had to figure it out for myself. Now it seems I can only survive and thrive if I can learn from my mistakes and so avoid gluten regardless of what life throws at me.
Roger Smith (in the UK)
Rethinking Bipolar 