When Bipolar Meds Aren’t Working, Follow Your Gut

Follow Your Gut

In my opinion, people with bipolar and depression tend to have unhealthy diets due to their illness. We are constantly trying to make ourselves feel better, and food is one way to do that. Moreover, most of us have energy and motivational issues, which result in behaviors such as less exercise and less cooking of fresh food.

“All diseases begin within the gut.” Hippocrates 460-370BC

Almost all “mental illness” is simply gut illness and poor dietary intake in disguise. Do you have digestive problems like bloating, flatulence, diarrhea, and constipation?  Do you suffer from frequent headaches, fatigue, mood swings, depression or bipolar disorder? These symptoms brought on my poor eating habits are part of your overall gut health.

Bipolar disorder always involves a gut that needs to be “cleaned out” or fixed as soon as possible before malabsorption of essential nutrients becomes severe.  Excess toxicity is also a part of all mental illness, affecting your mood and overall state of wellness. A pathogenic yeast, candida albicans, is a prime agent in many emotional and physical problems.

A Little Yeast Works A Long Way

The yeast connection is a term to indicate the relationship of superficial yeast infections in your digestive tract to fatigue, headache, depression, PMS, irritability, bipolar disorder and other symptoms that can make you feel “sick all over.”

Eating certain foods poor in adequate vitamins and minerals may increase your risk of candida overgrowth.  Antibiotic use, mood stabilizers and other chemical drug cocktails could lead to candida yeast overgrowth.

Yeast can become a hardy fungus and has an aggressive appetite. Minor increases in intestinal yeast are usually not a problem, but if yeast overgrowth is left unchallenged it can cause intestinal permeability and leak toxins across the cellular membranes. This can cause a disruption in the absorption of nutrients and nutritional deficiencies that can lead to reduced immunity and weaken the body’s defense systems and contribute to mental illness problems.

Cleansing the Body

Without proper nutrition, the body can’t heal or regenerate its tissues and if you cannot digest and assimilate food, the tissues will eventually starve. Cleansing the body and taking probiotics, and other anti-candida measures is a step toward healing.

You should consult a Naturopathic Doctor, a nutritionist that has treated bipolar disorder beforehand or an orthomolecular medicine doctor to help cure candida. Here are some steps to take to cleanse your body of unwanted candida yeast:

• Candida thrives on sugar and depression can be a result of unstable and imbalanced blood sugar levels.
• Replace sugar with stevia or xylitol, which is more beneficial for your health and.
• Don’t move near NutraSweet, aspartame or monosodium glutamate. Avoid them like the plague!
• Cut out stimulants such as caffeine and soda soft drinks, which create an acidic diet.
• S. Boulardii is a good probiotic that flushes out candida from the body.
• Drink kefir.
• Detox with a 3-day apple fast.

Candida Detox

Detoxifying your body is one form of natural candida cleansing. The detoxification will flush out all the contaminants together with the yeasts. Hence, making your body healthy, yeast infection free, and it will also balance the good and bad bacteria within your system to perform their job properly. You should have three bowel movements a day. To help this process:

• Juice lots of raw vegetables—especially spinach and carrots.
• Eat lots of fiber.
• Take a good bowel cleanser.
• Drink ½ cup aloe vera juice both morning and night.
• Drink lots of water.
• Milk thistle helps cleanse the liver and aids in enhancing bile output to soften stools.
• Enzymes help digest foods and speed up elimination.
• Alfalfa tablets aid in detoxifying the body.
• Magnesium and a high dose of vitamin C (the two “bowel loosening” nutrients), help constipation.

Healing Testimony

If you have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, there is no doubt that you have suffered severe mood fluctuations, mostly likely from candida overgrowth. Maybe you have lied in bed and wondered how people could live their lives like this.  A friend of my, Paula who has bipolar disorder, has spent many days looking out at the sky, in deep sadness and cries for hours at a time. Paula was put on many medications that did not work, and moved from one prescription to another over the course of years with no sign of improvement.

But when Paula decided to follow a candida yeast program, she began feeling perfectly normal.  The toxins from the yeast inflamed her brain tissue. Think about it.  Her brain was swollen.  Nothing works right when it is swollen with inflammation.  When she treated for candida, the depression lifted and her mood began to stabilize.  It took her years to go off her bipolar meds, but she has done it successfully.

Paula continues to rebuild her immune system by eating organic, a low carbohydrate diet avoiding white flour and sugar, consuming a high protein, limiting antibiotics, and taking supplement with specific nutrients. She avoids sensitive foods like eggs and perfumes. By walking her dog regularly in the morning, she carefully monitors stress to stabilize her energy levels.

The damage from the root cause of candida is being healed and the root cause of her bipolar disorder has been discovered – and now avoided.  She is no longer having cycles of feeling driven and then crashing with exhaustion. There is hope for you, too.

You’re not alone in your struggle to overcome bipolar disorder. A lot of “what if’s” could be running through your mind and wondering what you could have done to prevent it. One of the most beautiful things about being human is knowing we are flawed and can try again. Give yourself a mental break and share how you achieve clarity and find happiness with others in the comment section below.