I just read an article on eMax Health entitled “Bipolar Disorder Linked to Genes of Biological Clock.” The article cites a study presented at the Eighth International Conference on bipolar disorder, suggesting that “abnormalities in the genes that control circadian rhythms (rhythms of approximately 24 hours, also called biological clock) contribute to the development of bipolar disorder (manic depression).”
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My wife is bipolar, and I’ve come to the conclusion that sleep is completely tied up in it. Her sleep apparatus – if you want to call it that -seems to be damaged. She often either sleeps too much or too little, and whichever way it goes it seems to feed into bipolar episodes of either mania or depression.
(can i give a plug for an article I wrote about this? it’s at http://www.bipolartalk.org/the-truth-about-mania.html )
so yes, I agree: sleep is strongly implicated. I really try to encourage her to get a proper night’s sleep and although she was resistant at first, she’s gotten a lot better.
thinker22
11:09 am on
July 24th, 2009Definitely a night owl! I’ve always had a hard time going to bed between 9 and 11:30pm. I hate waking up before 9am and usually am groggy until about 11 or 12. All throughout my required school years, I didn’t wake up mentally until the afternoon and teachers would ask if I got enough sleep, and I went to bed as early as I could but still woke up tired after tossing and turning all night.
Now I’m on Seroquel to help me sleep. I’ve had a sleep aid (3 kinds so far) for about a year now. Some make me oversleep and continue the tiredness problem during the day. So I cut back and now I can’t sleep through the night and wake up too early and fall asleep too late. During my manic spells I have incessant insomnia.
Basically, I’ve not found anything that can get me to sleep & keep me asleep and have me feeling refreshed the next morning, and my body isn’t going to help me on that front. Hey pharmaceuticals, make a pill that doesn’t make you drowsy the next day already! No amount of routine has helped either.
Carter Nelsen
12:59 pm on
July 24th, 2009I’m very much a night owl, but I have a very weird sleep pattern. It’s so weird I have a hard time convincing other people it’s even real. Trust me, it is.
The closest I have to a normal sleep time is about 2/3 a.m. – 11 a.m./noon. But several times a year it changes, within just a few days, to something like 6/7 a.m. – 3/4 p.m. After a few months (sometimes a bit less, sometimes a bit more), it switches back just as suddenly.
This actually contributed to my initial bipolar diagnosis; my shrink told she’d seen it before & that it was symptomatic of bp. I never got a detailed explanation, & have yet to find much of anything from any other source, but I suspect she was talking about the 25-hour clock?
I’ve had sleep problems of one kind or another (usually based around insomnia & difficulty falling asleep until long after the rest of the world) since I was a young kid, & years of efforts (including an unfortunate amount of “just get with the program already” advice) has yet to make much of a difference.
What little sleep medication has worked at all (Trazodone) works too well if it works at all, screwing up my schedule just as efficiently.
By now I’m reaching the point where I just have to live with these things the best I can. I seriously doubt I will ever be a morning person, or be able to live on one of the worlds’ more acceptable timetables.
Anonymous
9:55 am on
July 15th, 2010I’m weirdly both
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