Minutus

))

Gabriele Sielmann
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Heilpraktikerin

One more person’s two cents’ worth: Despite eating well, exercising a lot, and basically loving life, I have suffered since 1999 off and on with periods of “profound insomnia,” meaning that it is impossible to fall asleep; even if you drift off a bit, you jolt awake immediately. These periods would extend, night and day, for weeks on end. I literally went once for 17 days with almost no sleep before I finally panicked and took allopathic sleeping meds. (At that point I had tried Valerian, chamomile tea, magnesium tablets, EFT, all the things that helped me during menopause, to no avail.)
I have been diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. Recently, on googling bipolar disorder, I found an excellent description of ***Bipolar II***, recounting just what happens to me. My insomnia is always combined with a state of ****depression and/or free-floating anxiety****, and this description provided that terminology plus the expression “profound insomnia”. Somehow, reading all that and knowing that the psychiatrist who wrote it was basing the description on a number of his patients’ experience, was extremely reassuring. It told me, finally black on white, that I was not **crazy**, just biochemically challenged, and that others do experience the same horrible “profound insomnia”.
At that point I had seen—count ‘em!—5+ psychiatrists over the 7 years and not one admitted that there was anything called “profound insomnia”. A couple did mention Bipolar II, which finally led me to the reassuring description on the internet. I would suggest that anyone who suffers from periods of being ***totally*** unable to sleep do some googling, if only just to see that you are not alone.
Those 5+ psychiatrists each told me, “Well, just nap during the day!” They were unable or unwilling to grasp that I could not sleep without their drugs (and when it was the worst, barely could sleep with them!) Of course, they were also only too happy to prescribe the tranquilizers and such—disgusting but a necessity when you have put up with total insomnia for days on end. I took ‘em, but I must also say that that kind of sleep is not the real thing. [The worst of them all was Lunesta! I tried a free sample from the latest psychiatrist one night and it terrified me!]
For reasons too long to go into here, I have been off all their drugs for 4 months and am sleeping reasonably well; have taken only one single dry dose of Sulphur 30c, 3 months ago, at the behest of my new and very wonderful homeopath.
In summary, the big thing, I think, is to realize that insomnia can be (maybe mainly is) caused by a biochemical imbalance. It—and the depression and/or free-floating anxiety that accompany the “profound insomnia” in (apparently) many Bipolar II sufferers—are not necessarily due to a character flaw. Nor to “poor sleep habits” either. Homeopathy can certainly help, but as to whether or not it can get to the bottom of my bipolar disorder, I have yet to see.
Teresa (Northern VA)
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It's not a caps nap as it is my only sleep!!! I took Sulphur 200 last week (for other reasons) and there has been no improvement.
Rochelle
Registered Homeopath
EFT(Advanced) Practitioner
www.southporthomeopathy.co.uk

Dear Tessa,
I sympathise with you and count my lucky starts that although I wake frequently during the night - anywhere between 1- 2 hour stints- I have no problem getting back off the sleep and as my husband insists I snore loudly and pushing me makes no difference and doesn't wake me!! I rarely feel sleep deprived except if I go to bed too late. I used to be a 2 a.m. person but now I am often in bed by 11.30pm!!
All the best in your quest to sort out the bipolar ll .Ca you explain the difference briefly between this and bipolar l ?
Rochelle
Registered Homeopath
EFT(Advanced) Practitioner
www.southporthomeopathy.co.uk

Dear Rochelle,

As usual, behind the scenes:

My hotflashes stopped promptly when I started taking a nice dose of calcium from Wateroz (wateroz.com). It is tiny ions suspended in water, totally absorbable and useable. I take the calcium before dinner and then just when I go to bed I take a ton of Magnesium, the sleeping mineral.

I recently learned about Melatonin, that the 3mg dose that is promoted by the ‘world’ is false, and the true dose is only 0.3mg

I went to the health food store and found the liquid melatonin where 1 dropperful is 1mg. So, I take 1/3 of a dropper just before bed, and UNBELIEVABLY I have been sleeping well through the night, and if I need to get up to pee, I fall right back to sleep. This has been unbelievable, after all these sleepless years.

Brings me to think that maybe Melatonin in the 4C potency (stimulating) would also work and I am going to order it, as this liquid melatonin has additional stuff (like sweetener and orange flavoring....) which I don’t care to potentize.

Shabbat Shalom

Sara
"Rochelle Marsden" wrote:
________________________________

Maybe you have something there but am now under a homeopath so I will
suggest it to her. The last Rx she has given me did something!!! But it is
the sleep that is getting to me worse than the flushes at the moment. Tithe
flushes have become better during the day since the Sulphur 200 I took last
week (the homeopath doesn't know about that one yet!! I took it to clear
myself of remedies I took while in India) but at night they still are bad
after each sleep stint.

Rochelle
Registered Homeopath
EFT(Advanced) Practitioner
www.southporthomeopathy.co.uk

Hello Sara,
your idea could be good. But less the melatonin itself but an animal (or plant) which grows in the night.
Otherwise you try to heal isopathcally not homeopathically. Or a being, living deap in the sea.
So that you imitate its power to live in night well cared.
Remember, in older times the life of woman was parted in three periods (and I hope I take the correct words):
1. the maid (which means the woman in full power without children), definable with white color.
2. the mother (which means the clansleader), definable with red color
3. the dark old woman (which means the woman past the menopaus), definable with black color.
Melatonin stands for black, night, being well living between light and shadow.
The change of life (climacteric) indeed is a change of life and body, accepting the dark sides of life, knowing its problems, appreciating its sonny parts... - and all beings, who can stand black / night / darkness, know both sides of life.
Could be a usefull association. A little bit like "symbolic homeopathy" (Hom. School of Berlin, Hahnemann S.).
Yours

Gabriele
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I've painted these periods before some years.
You can see it for some days: link
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________________________________

Rochelle,
As this discussion has progressed, you have added other information that would make me think this is a sleep disorder - not insomnia (as I have always been taught insomnia is the inability to sleep - not the periodic disruption of sleep). I've worked with this a good deal over the years and have a 'laundry list' of environmental, homeopathic, dietary, supplements, herbals, etc. that I go over with clients with similar problems. If you are interested, please contact me offline and I would be happy to sent you a list so you and your homeopath might consider some of the options.
Donna
rona@consultant.com

As I understand it, Rochelle, “Bipolar I” (manic depression) consists in periods of deep depression and periods of “mania”, i.e., very high energy in which people who suffer from the worst form of the disorder may indulge in activities that they would normally not consider--indiscriminate sex or big spending, for example. (I had an uncle who suffered from that kind of “bipolar disorder”.) Folks who suffer from Bipolar I often appear to need very little sleep in the manic period, but as I understand it, they do sleep some.
When I first became seriously ill with “Major Depression” in 1999, I kept hoping that it was not “manic depression” (nasty term for it; bipolar disorder is a lot kinder!) The more I read about it and thought about it, the more I realized, however, that I did have more energy than most folks a lot of the time. Had always had. But I had always also slept well almost all my life, so my extra energy did not really fit the descriptions of bipolar highs I read about. Nor did my other symptoms fit manic depression (thankfully).
Later I found that there is now a subgroup called Bipolar II that does not have the extreme highs. It has what are called “hypomania” and my extra energy and extra hard work might fit into that. If I understand correctly, Bipolar II is also more or less self-limiting, i.e. there are periods where one is quite okay. That has in fact been the case for me, only it was hard to tell when a bout would end because when it got really bad, I always caved in and went to a psychiatrist and got put on psych-meds. Then after a while I would go off them (in my opinion, because my body could tell that I didn’t need them, being in a period of remission, so to speak). Then after some months the “profound insomnia” would begin again and I would be back at square one.
There is a lot of information (probably too much) at http://www.psycheducation.org/bipolar/0 ... -What-4127.
I think that sooner or later it will be like Hepatitis A – B – C – Non-A-nonB-nonC or whatever the different names are. I had hepatitis in 1971 and it was just plain hepatitis. No one tried to define it—of course, I was in Madagascar at the time… But I bet bipolar disorder in a few years will be broken down into a number of different syndromes as hepatitis is today.
Teresa (Northern VA)
Change the world one small loan at a time...

See www.kiva.org to find out how!

_._,___

Thank you Rosemary, now I understand that the others are also
meridians in TCM and not names of organs as I thought...
--- In minutus@yahoogroups.com, "Rosemary C Hyde PhD"
wrote:
Triple