Is it possible to treat pediatric bipolar without the use of medication. If so what are some good ideas and/or research. I'm having trouble finding anything about not using medicine.
There are a lot of families on this web site who are doing it, and we are getting closer to being completely stable and med free. I wish we had started from scratch using nutritional approaches. For us, the meds were awful and didn't work very well. They had bad side effects, and when they were not quite right, she was in the psychiatric hospital and kicked out of school. The meds are also highly addictive and hard to get off. We now know that at least the major portion of our daughter's treatment will be nutritional. We are still on a few psych meds, but just a tiny fraction of where we had been and much more stable.
I would read a majority of the CAM section posts on this web site and the archives. A book by one of the active members of this web site, Jeanie Wolfson (Naomi), It's Not Mental, really gave us the conviction that it is possible. She was a real pioneer before much of what is now available was written, A book by Dr. Hyman, the UltraMind Solution, is good. He covers the approach, although I can't stand his writing style. An excellent diet book is by Dr. Campbell-McBride, Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS). If you can find the CD's from a Micronutrients for Mental Health conference, it is a really good watch. Many other references can be found on the CAM forum. The True Hope web site has a lot of papers regarding their products. They also have a decent help line.
You could also consider joining one of the online support groups on this website. A lot of the people there have a lot of good experiences which you can learn from on how to deal with a difficult child, and you can contribute back. You can communicate with other moms and dads in a similar boat.
Aside from all this, I think the most important part is to make a conviction to make it work without meds. It will likely be a lot more work on your part than just going to the psychiatrist and getting a prescription (that will work wonderfully for a month or two at best). But the rewards will be a much happier and stable child than is possible on the meds. A child who is almost completely normal except for a quirky diet and who takes nutritional supplements. For us, we have had to come to an understanding of the neurotransmitters and precursers. To learn about vitamins and minerals and their roles in specific metabolic processes. An understanding of the different hormones. To brush up on biology and biochemistry (Wikipedia is great). To find out about the lab tests that are available. To read about the bacteria and fungus in the intestinal tract, and make diet changes accordingly. We now cook almost 100% of our foods, and run from anything on a label that we can't read or doesn't fit the diet. To get to where we are, we have not had a lot of consistent Dr. support, and some have really scoffed at us. We have had a battle with CPS to treat unconventionally. Others on this site have had excellent experiences with the doctors.
Best of luck. You can make it work without meds.
Brian
--
Daughter 7 BP/violent rages. Unsuccessful with multiple meds. Now reasonably stable (with a few regressions) on Risperidone + Intuniv + Restrictive diet + EMPowerPlus + AminoPowerplus + NAC + Q10 + low dose lithium + melatonin + inositol Son (5) Normal Wife (CathyK now also on TBMF) BP, & trying to wean off the meds.
Another reference is the Great Plains Laboratory has recorded webinars on their web site. Good info, but a bit like an infomercial.
Brian
--
Daughter 7 BP/violent rages. Unsuccessful with multiple meds. Now reasonably stable (with a few regressions) on Risperidone + Intuniv + Restrictive diet + EMPowerPlus + AminoPowerplus + NAC + Q10 + low dose lithium + melatonin + inositol Son (5) Normal Wife (CathyK now also on TBMF) BP, & trying to wean off the meds.
I wish I knew back when my kids were starting out, what I know now. My older daughter had unrelenting bipolar disorder for 13 years and was in and out of the hospitals for years. She was a partial responder to Lamictal, but that's all - partial. Every atypical antipsychotic (except Clozapine) was tried on her to the point that she got permanent side-effects. She is now angry at the medical system because they do not treat "psychiatric" as "medical" even though they claim it is biological and MEDICAL, yet no one specialty treated the whole of her and looked at underlying cause of the symptoms. She says the meds were a first step to save her life after she became completely derailed with mixed states. But then it is like all care stagnated. All that then happened was more and more and more psychiatric pills. Where was the actual investigation or trying to treat the condition CAUSING the bipolar symptoms?
And in her case, the cause turned out to be so simple. So what makes her most angry? What helped her was in the medical research literature since before she was even born - over 30 years ago!! One of the minor things that helped - increasing her thyroid hormones has been in psychiatric TEXTBOOKS for decades. Food sensitivities? Decades as well.
A friend of mine was in therapy for anxiety which turned out to be an adrenal tumor. That was only found after a distant family member talked her into investigating beyond her psychiatric diagnosis. And one of my best friends almost died because she had "panic disorder" which turned out to be a heart condition. (It's Ok - she had heart surgery and is now OK - but only because she was in the ER in spite of them telling her these episodes were "mental" when her last and would've-been-fatal episode ocurred).
Both my daughters are now fully recovered. They do use pharmaceuticals - we are not opposed to them - but none happen to be psychiatric ones. The older one's only pharmaceutical is thyroid medication for hypothyroidism. The rest now is diet change. The younger one is more complicated and needs several pharmaceuticals - allergy medication, hormones, and Nuvigil. But for her too, the rest is dietary.
Years of meds do take a toll on their body, and the antipsychotics can shrink the brain - particularly worrisome in children whose brain are in the process of growing and developing. I sometimes feel horrible for them, but I must shove aside guilt because we cannot know what we don't know until... we know it. I was not assertive enough. And the information was not readily available when we started out on the medication path 15 years ago.
There are also strategies to use while they are ill in order to help lower stress levels and help them cope with their own biology. There is DBT, and OT...
It makes no sense to me that we even label it by a psychiatric diagnosis when the person requires high thyroid levels to be normal, or have a higher need for B vitamins (there is now even a "psychiatric medication", Deplin, which is just methylated folate - a dietary supplement we can get over-the-counter!), or a higher need for lithium salts or a higher need of estrogen or progesterone than their artificial "normal" range on a piece of paper. Why do we even call it "schizophrenia" when an elderly post-menopausal woman, for instance suddenly develops psychosis which responds to estrogen? Just because MOST women with low progesterone don't become psychotic? How absurd!
--Jeanie aka "Naomi" It's Not Mental-The Book Older dd: formerly(?) teen-onset bipolar (morphed into ultradian cycling): "Recovered" after over 13 years - stable off psych meds almost two years. Now fine on just diet changes and higher thyroid levels (after healing - addressing gut issues/Candidal overgrowth while using EMPowerPlus and other supplements). She added a little EMpowerPlus back on as a multivitamin simply because she feels better on it - gets sick less often. Younger dd: formerly(?) Childhood-onset schizoaffective, TS, OCD, anxiety, PTSD, migraines. After over 15 years, is now "recovered" for almost 5 years after treating endocrine issues, food sensitivities, gut issues, sleep issues, nutritional/mitochondrial needs.
There are a lot of families on this web site who are doing it, and we are getting closer to being completely stable and med free. I wish we had started from scratch using nutritional approaches. For us, the meds were awful and didn't work very well. They had bad side effects, and when they were not quite right, she was in the psychiatric hospital and kicked out of school. The meds are also highly addictive and hard to get off. We now know that at least the major portion of our daughter's treatment will be nutritional. We are still on a few psych meds, but just a tiny fraction of where we had been and much more stable.
I would read a majority of the CAM section posts on this web site and the archives. A book by one of the active members of this web site, Jeanie Wolfson (Naomi), It's Not Mental, really gave us the conviction that it is possible. She was a real pioneer before much of what is now available was written, A book by Dr. Hyman, the UltraMind Solution, is good. He covers the approach, although I can't stand his writing style. An excellent diet book is by Dr. Campbell-McBride, Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS). If you can find the CD's from a Micronutrients for Mental Health conference, it is a really good watch. Many other references can be found on the CAM forum. The True Hope web site has a lot of papers regarding their products. They also have a decent help line.
You could also consider joining one of the online support groups on this website. A lot of the people there have a lot of good experiences which you can learn from on how to deal with a difficult child, and you can contribute back. You can communicate with other moms and dads in a similar boat.
Aside from all this, I think the most important part is to make a conviction to make it work without meds. It will likely be a lot more work on your part than just going to the psychiatrist and getting a prescription (that will work wonderfully for a month or two at best). But the rewards will be a much happier and stable child than is possible on the meds. A child who is almost completely normal except for a quirky diet and who takes nutritional supplements. For us, we have had to come to an understanding of the neurotransmitters and precursers. To learn about vitamins and minerals and their roles in specific metabolic processes. An understanding of the different hormones. To brush up on biology and biochemistry (Wikipedia is great). To find out about the lab tests that are available. To read about the bacteria and fungus in the intestinal tract, and make diet changes accordingly. We now cook almost 100% of our foods, and run from anything on a label that we can't read or doesn't fit the diet. To get to where we are, we have not had a lot of consistent Dr. support, and some have really scoffed at us. We have had a battle with CPS to treat unconventionally. Others on this site have had excellent experiences with the doctors.
Best of luck. You can make it work without meds.
Brian
--
Daughter 7 BP/violent rages. Unsuccessful with multiple meds. Now reasonably stable (with a few regressions) on Risperidone + Intuniv + Restrictive diet + EMPowerPlus + AminoPowerplus + NAC + Q10 + low dose lithium + melatonin + inositol
Son (5) Normal
Wife (CathyK now also on TBMF) BP, & trying to wean off the meds.
Another reference is the Great Plains Laboratory has recorded webinars on their web site. Good info, but a bit like an infomercial.
Brian
--
Daughter 7 BP/violent rages. Unsuccessful with multiple meds. Now reasonably stable (with a few regressions) on Risperidone + Intuniv + Restrictive diet + EMPowerPlus + AminoPowerplus + NAC + Q10 + low dose lithium + melatonin + inositol
Son (5) Normal
Wife (CathyK now also on TBMF) BP, & trying to wean off the meds.
I wish I knew back when my kids were starting out, what I know now. My older daughter had unrelenting bipolar disorder for 13 years and was in and out of the hospitals for years. She was a partial responder to Lamictal, but that's all - partial. Every atypical antipsychotic (except Clozapine) was tried on her to the point that she got permanent side-effects. She is now angry at the medical system because they do not treat "psychiatric" as "medical" even though they claim it is biological and MEDICAL, yet no one specialty treated the whole of her and looked at underlying cause of the symptoms. She says the meds were a first step to save her life after she became completely derailed with mixed states. But then it is like all care stagnated. All that then happened was more and more and more psychiatric pills. Where was the actual investigation or trying to treat the condition CAUSING the bipolar symptoms?
And in her case, the cause turned out to be so simple. So what makes her most angry? What helped her was in the medical research literature since before she was even born - over 30 years ago!! One of the minor things that helped - increasing her thyroid hormones has been in psychiatric TEXTBOOKS for decades. Food sensitivities? Decades as well.
A friend of mine was in therapy for anxiety which turned out to be an adrenal tumor. That was only found after a distant family member talked her into investigating beyond her psychiatric diagnosis. And one of my best friends almost died because she had "panic disorder" which turned out to be a heart condition. (It's Ok - she had heart surgery and is now OK - but only because she was in the ER in spite of them telling her these episodes were "mental" when her last and would've-been-fatal episode ocurred).
Both my daughters are now fully recovered. They do use pharmaceuticals - we are not opposed to them - but none happen to be psychiatric ones. The older one's only pharmaceutical is thyroid medication for hypothyroidism. The rest now is diet change. The younger one is more complicated and needs several pharmaceuticals - allergy medication, hormones, and Nuvigil. But for her too, the rest is dietary.
Years of meds do take a toll on their body, and the antipsychotics can shrink the brain - particularly worrisome in children whose brain are in the process of growing and developing. I sometimes feel horrible for them, but I must shove aside guilt because we cannot know what we don't know until... we know it. I was not assertive enough. And the information was not readily available when we started out on the medication path 15 years ago.
There are also strategies to use while they are ill in order to help lower stress levels and help them cope with their own biology. There is DBT, and OT...
And there are so many problems to look into... here is something about ADHD, but the question could easily apply to bipolar - ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) symptoms
It makes no sense to me that we even label it by a psychiatric diagnosis when the person requires high thyroid levels to be normal, or have a higher need for B vitamins (there is now even a "psychiatric medication", Deplin, which is just methylated folate - a dietary supplement we can get over-the-counter!), or a higher need for lithium salts or a higher need of estrogen or progesterone than their artificial "normal" range on a piece of paper. Why do we even call it "schizophrenia" when an elderly post-menopausal woman, for instance suddenly develops psychosis which responds to estrogen? Just because MOST women with low progesterone don't become psychotic? How absurd!
--Jeanie aka "Naomi"
It's Not Mental-The Book
Older dd: formerly(?) teen-onset bipolar (morphed into ultradian cycling): "Recovered" after over 13 years - stable off psych meds almost two years. Now fine on just diet changes and higher thyroid levels (after healing - addressing gut issues/Candidal overgrowth while using EMPowerPlus and other supplements). She added a little EMpowerPlus back on as a multivitamin simply because she feels better on it - gets sick less often.
Younger dd: formerly(?) Childhood-onset schizoaffective, TS, OCD, anxiety, PTSD, migraines. After over 15 years, is now "recovered" for almost 5 years after treating endocrine issues, food sensitivities, gut issues, sleep issues, nutritional/mitochondrial needs.