When we first began marketing QuietMinds Nutritional Supplements, we considered using the Greek tragedy/comedy masks, traditional symbol of the acting profession, as our logo.

In ancient Greek theater, actors would exchange masks to mark a change in character. Unfortunately, for someone suffering from ever-changing emotions that are characteristic of bipolar disorder, these changes are a reality and not a temporary state.

What are common bipolar symptoms?

Bipolar symptoms can take a person through alternating states of depression and elevated mood or mania, that are experienced in a repeating cycle. These cycles may take place either slowly or rapidly. One mood often predominates while the other is experienced infrequently.

Typically, elevated moods manifest in increased confidence and well being. A desire for pleasurable activity, higher energy levels and a decreased need for sleep can progress to racing thoughts, excessive talking, flights of ideas, distractibility, impulsivity, impaired judgment, irritability, and risk-taking behaviors.

The depressed phase includes fatigue, sadness, and pessimism. A person may feel hopeless, with lowered self-esteem. Life loses its glow and loss of pleasure or lack of interest in activities formerly enjoyed makes struggling through symptoms of bipolar very challenging. Thoughts of “ending it all” are common.

It may be difficult to understand how someone can go from feeling so good to not caring if they get out of bed in the morning. The easiest way to understand bipolar symptoms is to realize that the emotions and moods experienced at the time are real to the sufferer.

What can be done to balance or correct symptoms of bipolar? Prescription drug treatments include lithium carbonate, valproic acid, carbamazepine, and lamotrigine. Additionally, anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic medications may be necessary to counter other effects of the prescription meds.

Or you can consider QuietMinds Nutritional Supplements!

Research is shedding insight into brain disorders and as our understanding of mood disturbances and cognitive deficits grows, an increasing correlation is seen between deficiencies of nutrients and brain imbalances. In fact, it has been discovered that people with bipolar symptoms are more vulnerable to nutrient deficiencies.

Many people who have become loyal QuietMinds Nutritional Supplements consumers were seeking complementary therapies to treat both body and brain, recognizing that these two are inseparably linked. Nutrients are the building blocks for sound physical and mental health, and, indeed, the brain is the most nutritionally sensitive organ in the body, needing raw materials in the form of QuietMinds Nutritional Supplements for synthesis of chemical messengers. High-dose multivitamins such as those found in QuietMinds Nutritional Supplements may improve mood.

In a recent trial, patients were put on a nutritional supplement like QuietMinds in conjunction with their prescription medications. Symptoms of bipolar depression and mania were significantly reduced and most of the patients were able to decrease their medication dosages by 50%. This research is not unlike the hundreds of reports that pour into our offices at QuietMinds, LLC.

A nutritionally-oriented practitioner or a holistically trained doctor or nutritionist can provide valuable insights into appropriate uses for QuietMinds Nutritional Supplements. It is important to discuss any treatments with your doctor. Management of bipolar symptoms is important so that you can return to the person you were meant to be.

What does Bipolar disorder cost a person?

Perhaps a clarification is in order. What does BP cost a person when it is unacknowledged and untreated? What does it cost when admitted to and effectively treated?

The costs of treating BP can range from paying a deductable or co-payment if a person has medical insurance for medication and doctor visits to wading through the side-effects of so-called “regular” or official medicines for this condition.

The cost of treating BP with a natural cure can cost a person less than $80 a bottle for QuietMinds Nutritional Supplement.

The costs generated by untreated BP are countless. The price paid in that scenario is too high.

I know this from personal experience.

Coming from a deeply religious background, it was hard for me to accept the diagnosis of BP. The fields of psychology and psychiatry have been looked at with deep misgivings in some parts of the Christian world. This was certainly true when I was in college at a prominent Christian liberal arts university in Southern California in the 1980′s.

Bipolar disorder has cost me countless relationships and opportunities. Of course, I can’t blame all of my heartaches on this disease, but BP makes every little personal character flaw and struggle in a person’s life that much worse and that much harder to deal with.

There are three areas or bases to cover when something is persistently going wrong in a person’s life. There’s the counseling base, the spiritual warfare base, and the physical health base.

A person really needs to cover all these bases in an organized fashion to correctly diagnose and address deep and persistent personal struggles. Call this a type of “three-legged stool” approach to healing.

BP has cost me severely. And it’s time to quit paying the exorbitant “fees” generated by untreated BP.

This is why I use QuietMinds. The cost for not doing so is too high for me to continue to pay.

Some time ago I ran across this article which I found to be very insightful and sound. I’ve saved it and now offer it for your information.
Admin.

Your Brooding Teen: Just Moody or Mentally Ill?
First signs of mental illness often occur during a time of typical teen turmoil.

By: Roni Caryn Rabin

One reason parents may not recognize depression in their teenagers is because depression expresses itself so differently in teens, experts say. Changes in sleeping and eating habits are a red flag, as with adults. But while depressed adults are sad and melancholy, depressed teens are angry and irritable. Adults may say they don’t enjoy things anymore; teens may still enjoy activities but not look forward to them. They often say they’re bored, and can be indecisive, giving a lot of “I don’t know” answers.

Sharon Fawcett, a mother of two teenagers in New Brunswick, Canada, had struggled with depression herself for almost a decade, so she was always on the lookout for signs of the illness in her daughters. But, she said, she completely missed the disease in her younger daughter.

“Jenna started telling me she was depressed when she was 14, but to me, she was just laying around and being lazy, and using this as an excuse,” Fawcett said. “I thought: she’s not depressed, she’s angry and she’s moody. I just thought it was the stereotypical adolescent moodiness and negativity.

“The thing that confused me about my kids — and I’ve heard other parents say this — is how they can be so happy when they’re out with their friends, and as soon as they come home they’re depressed and angry and not speaking with us. I’ve learned since then that kids reserve their anger for the people they know they’re safe with.”

For a while, Fawcett attributed her daughter’s dressing in black, listening to heavy metal music and hiding her face behind long bangs and a hooded sweatshirt to teen fashion and old-fashioned rebelliousness. But by the time Jenna was 16, she had developed acute social anxiety, had difficulty concentrating and was refusing to go to school. She missed 100 days of school one year and failed most of her courses.

The dramatic change in performance for the girl who had been an honor student finally convinced Fawcett her daughter needed help. She consulted the family pediatrician, who referred her to a psychiatrist for a combination of talk therapy and medications, which have been very effective.

“The school failure was the most obvious identifying symptom,” Fawcett said.

A clear red flag

Experts agree that irritability and moodiness that keep a teenager from functioning normally for more than two weeks should be clear red flags. Ditto for withdrawal from activities and social isolation from friends. Other warning signs parents should look for are substance abuse, which is often a form of self-medication, and cutting, or self-injury, which can be a precursor to suicide.

“Parents will often let this go at least two weeks or more because they’re convinced it’s just a phase, even though if their child had a rash, they wouldn’t ignore it,” said Koplewicz.

The good news, he said, is that teenagers respond to targeted treatment, such as psychotherapy either with or without medication.

“The nice part is that we see dramatic turnarounds with kids, often in four to eight weeks. We believe wholeheartedly that we can change the trajectory for these kids if we nip it early.”

Roni Caryn Rabin is a health writer who lives in New York City. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsday and Real Simple magazine, among other publications, and is author of the book, “Six Parts Love: A Family’s Battle with Lou Gehrig’s Disease.” She teaches journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
© 2008 msnbc.com

Now, except for the use of psychotropic medications, we obviously agree with what Ms. Rabin presents. We feel, however, that an orthomolecular trial of proper formulation of vitamins, minerals and amino acids should really be worth a try, before subjecting any teen to the possibilities of psych-meds that may produce gut wrenching side effects that may last for weeks, months or even years.

Living with bipolar disorder can be a nightmare at times. The feeling of complete loneliness and isolation often times can make the fight to get through those highs and lows of a central nervous disorder almost unbearable.

No one, it seems, understands your pain of manic depression. No one understands the darkness associated with depression. No one understands the racing thoughts that torment you within a manic episode.

Finally, after you have weathered the storm and you reach stabilization, you out of the darkness and able to bask in the sun once again. But then you come to another hurdle – the stigma of society. Mental illness, including bipolar disorder, while discussed more openly now than in past years, is still looked upon with hesitation and judgmental eyes.

This can be all the more painful because it often feels as if the focus is misplaced. Instead of celebrating the victory, and recognizing the stress which you have fought through to get to this point in your life, those of us with mental illness are often forced to defend ourselves for the actions and behavior during our worst bipolar extremes. No one wants to hear about your psychotic life and how you became stabilized, but they want to discuss and dissect those periods of emotional stress and darkness from which each of us worked so hard to move away.

Do not get discouraged.

Focus on where you’ve been, what you’ve survived, and the journey of positive mental health and the emotional normalcy you now enjoy.

Accept that no one will truly be able to understand the path you have walked. You have fought your demons. You have conquered a chemical imbalance in your brain. Give thanks to those who have stood by you through the battle, continue to have faith, and put all negative influences and people behind you.
The climb out that deep chasm of a mental disorder is often arduous and painful. But through QuietMinds Nutritional Supplements you can finally become “normal,” and find stablity on the other side of the mountain.

In 1995 Drs. David Benton, Rebecca Griffiths and Jurg Halier studied 125 young adult females for two months to determine if Thiamine (vitamin B1) had any correlation between the subjects and moods.

Benton et al provided each of the young women with a multi-vitamin containing 50 mg of thiamine or a placebo every day over the 60 day period. Before and after taking the tablets, mood, memory and reaction times were measured and monitored. They determined that there was a significant correlation between mood and thiamine status, as judged by transketolase activation.

What is particularly interesting is that all positive influences reported took place in subjects whose thiamine status, according to traditional criterion, was inadequate. An improvement in thiamine status was reported as being associated with being much more clearheaded, composed and energetic. It appeared, however, to have no effect on the improvement of memory. However, reaction times were reported to be much faster following the supplementation period.

This study is evidence that often first symptoms associated with a sub-clinical intake of micro-nutrients are psychological. It coalesces with a series of double-blind placebo controlled studies that report, in a least some of the population, that micronutrient supplementation is associated with improved mood, (Heseker et al 1990; Smidt et al 1991; and Benton et al 1995b).

The effect of supplements for increased scores on intelligence tests have been demonstrated by Botez et al 1984; Benton and Roberts 1988; Benton and Buts 1990; Benton and Cook 1991 and Schoenthaler et al 1991a,b. Nutritional supplementation has been shown to be effective for the improvement of memory by researchers Bonke and Nickel 1989 and Deijen et al 1992. While, Benton and Cook in 1991 established the importance of supplementing diet for attention deficits, Bonke and Nickel’s research in 1989 showed improvement in hand-eye coordination by reducing nutritional deficiencies through vitamin and mineral supplementation.

Certainly when considering vitamin deficiency, thiamine is one vitamin that must be acknowledged as extremely important for mood and cognitive function.

The human body stores only small amounts of vitamin B1. Therefore, there is great risk to mood stability and brain health if intake is reduced for only a few weeks . It is well documented that Korsakoff’s psychosis, a reflection of brain lesions caused by thiamine deficiency, is characterized by an inability to form new memories, apathy and emotional blandness. And, post-mortem brains tend to show that a deficiency of thiamine is sufficient to damage the brain similar to damage shown with Korsakoff’s psychosis in more instances than originally thought.

QuietMinds Nutritional Supplements addresses potential thiamine deficiencies by contributing 5mg of thiamine mononitrate, vitamin B1, in every eight capsule dosage.

You are quick to call this mental illness
a chemical imbalance or a brain disease,
but have you ever thought to check me for
an allergy or a vitamin deficiency?

You are anxious to point out my anxiety
and label me with PTSD, OCD or BAD,
When what I really need is to eat my vegetables
and exercise to increase my BAT*.

You are happy to prescribe me an antidepressant,
so I take my chill pill every day as you requested.
Just remember this next time you write out that slip:
I am a child of God not a subject to be tested.

My parents tell me to “listen to the doctor”,
but which one might that be?
The one who profits off of drugs or the
doctor who teaches vitamin therapy?

“Take your medication” they all chime in –
my parents, my siblings, my friends,
but what they all neglect to realize is the
the drugs are a means to an “end”.

My parents tell me to “listen to the doctor”,
but which one might that be?
The one who sentences me to ill health,
or the doc who inspires me to be free?

You know labels do more harm than good,
yet you stick me with this “brain disease”
and now that I am tagged I will have to
spend the rest of my life being teased.

I am not alone you say, there are many others
“like me”; the list goes on and on you see.
There’s Vivien Leigh, Patty Duke, Kay Jamison,
and more, the latest being Jane Pauley.

Sadly, many people are woefully misdiagnosed,
such as Frances Deitrick, who had a brain tumor.
Physical problems masquerade as mental problems,
and others are tragically diagnosed according to rumor.

I see the likes of me portrayed on television,
in the media, and on the silver screen,
yet Hollywood can’t get past those old reflections
of the “Golden Era” that are just plain mean.

I’m no genius and I’m no freak, but
I may have some creative tendencies.
Those gifts originate from God alone,
not generated by some brain disease.

(*BAT = Brown Adipose Tissue)

Copyright 2006 by Denise Fletcher dmf4303@yahoo.com
(Reprinted with permission of the author.)

The following is exactly what the title states…suggestions. You control your own destiny. Ultimately, you’re responsible to one person… you.

Whether you are bipolar, clinically depressed, ADD, ADHD or something else, you did NOT just become ill with a central nervous system disorder. It took time to get the way you are. It will take time to reverse it.

Here are some things that are going to help speed your stability and recovery. The more of these suggestions you implement, the faster the turn around. It’s in your hands.

Avoid:

• Fried Foods
• Red Meats
• Sugar & artificial sweeteners
• Processed flour and white rice
• Dairy products
• Wheat products including pasta and cereal
• Peanuts
• Soft drinks and sweetened juices
• Street drugs
• Alcohol
• Tobacco

Eat “good foods”:

• Chicken and turkey
• Fish (no raw shellfish)
• Beans, lentils and peas
• Whole grains, except wheat
• Tofu, tempeh and soy cheese
• Eggs
• Vegetables, 4 or 5 per day, 2 raw
• Fruit, 3 per day
• Nuts and seeds
• QuietMinds Nutritional Supplements, minimum 16 per day (4X4)
• Omega 3, 2000 mg per day (1000mg X2)
• Olive, canola and walnut oil for salads and marinating
• Lots and lots of water, herbal teas, green tea, vegetable juices and water diluted fruit juice (½ and ½).

If you suspect you’re allergic or sensitive to a particular food

Eliminate it from your diet for three weeks. Then abundantly enjoy it three times for a single day. Monitor how you feel over the next couple of days. Be alert for abnormal fatigue, headaches, stiffness and other unusual maladies. Do not do this with foods to which you already know you are allergic!