Thank you to all members of our discussion forum who responded to my request for feedback. It was very helpful. By and large people felt that the new version of Bublaa – which we use to host the forum – was working alright (aside from the awkwardness around setting up a Bublaa account and then requesting membership in the MoodSurfing …
Small Rewards
A young woman who was scheduled to go on a big trek in the Himalayas was not doing the training she needed to in order to have a good experience. She had been depressed for the last few months and this was probably a manifestation of that mood. She told me that she felt she “should be doing much more.” …
Fish Oil Update
Since so many people with bipolar and depression take fish oil we thought we would pass on some information in a summary form from Consumer Labs. The full information is available if you subscribe. Consumer Labs is the only source of reliable information about supplements (the only place that does any testing) and if you take supplements we strongly encourage …
Myths of Weight Loss
In a recent article published in the the New England Journal of Medicine, David B. Allison, who directs the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, wrote a summary of what is definitely known and what is not known about obesity and its treatment. We thought that we would add a summary of this important and controversial …
Valentine’s Day Gift
I have been thinking a lot about Valentine’s Day, how it can become such a burden if one is single, or bereaved, and trying to figure out a way out of that bind. For years I did not lake the day at all, so I can certainly empathize. I came up with kind of an odd idea, and put together …
Be Helpful
We love today’s post from Just One Thing! (And yes, we have had several references to this site in the last few days… but he is starting the year by reviewing the best ideas on his site). And we felt compelled to put this post up today when we checked our email and found that today’s blog post from the …
Mary Poppins: Overcoming the Winter Months
What I most want to have available to me in the long winter months, to help me with my patients with bipolar and depression, is access to someone a lot like Mary Poppins. You may remember that Mary, played by Julie Andrews, was the incredibly cheerful nanny who transformed the unhappy and dysfunctional lives of the family she joined. What …
Feeling Already Full
A wonderful friend sent us a note that this post had been very helpful to him. It is, once again, from the Just One Thing site. The practice is called “Feel already full” and it is a perfectly timed reminder that so much of what we see in life (TV especially) is specifically designed to make us feel unhappy with …
Getting It Done Anyway
From time to time I am inspired to pass on portions of a post from a favorite blog. Today’s Moodscope blog was all about those days when you feel a bit “blah” and what you can do to not get trapped in indecisiveness and time wasting. As it happened this arrived on a day when I was struggling to get …
Take a Chance
If you are feeling depressed or anxious, today’s post from Rick Hanson (part of his Just One Thing blog) may be helpful. If you are already feeling energized, you might not need more encouragement to do something risky/taking a chance… Rick’s post is about how, as children, we learn to avoid certain types of conversations that seem too risky, and …
Running a Marathon
Many of us are strongly motivated by the desire to achieve results, complete tasks and succeed. Often we want to get where we are going quickly. Life is too short. Seize the day. Dealing with moods can be very frustrating. Change may take place slowly. Sometimes you have to put in a fair amount of energy just to hold on …
Power out of Depression
It sometimes can be very hard to think of ways of getting out of a lurking depression. A recent email from Moodscope (a site with a mood tracking program that many people find very useful) highlights one very useful strategy: instead of staying stuck in your brain, switch your focus to physical activity. This strategy can be surprisingly effective. If …
Meditate!
Rick Hanson has a wonderful blog of practices that will help you achieve excellent mental health. We encourage you to subscribe to his newsletter (Just One Thing). We were inspired to share with you a summary of last week’s email. It is devoted to one of the five most useful practices – meditation. Meditation increases grey matter in a number of …
Chronic Health Condition
A woman who works in the health care field came in for a visit with us today. We’ve been seeing her for about five months. She had a problem with depression and then developed a hypomanic episode. She has continued to have mood cycles for the last several months. It’s now clear that she has developed a bipolar type of …
Of Two Minds
This morning I was thinking about the relationship between your pre-frontal cortex and your limbic system. I know, it’s a little strange to be having these thoughts while out riding a bicycle in the morning… a hazard of the profession I guess. The reason I was thinking about this subject is that people’s moods appear to be affected by both …
Body Work
Several months ago a young attorney who I have been seeing for a couple of years came in and, reluctantly, told me that he and his wife had not had sex for the past year. It took two or three months to get him to consider going for couples counseling. I found a therapist who specialized in working with couples …
No More New Year’s Resolutions
We’re going to make a strong pitch for you to not have to make any more New Year’s Resolutions. Honestly, why this idea of deciding to make big changes in your life on January 1st has persisted, is one of the mysteries of human mythology. Perhaps it’s because we are such incurable optimists at heart. Or maybe it’s because we …
Exercise and Brain Health
According to the Exercise and Brain Health: Good Points to Remember article in the December 27, 2012 issue of Bipolar Network News, “(…) exercise is extremely important in (…) helping to improve depressed mood, increasing cardiovascular fitness, and maintaining healthy cognition.” It is also suggested that aerobic fitness may increase the size of the hippocampus which in turn decreases risk factors for …
Mindfulness in the News
A number of people called my attention to the December 15 NY Times The Power of Concentration article written by Maria Konnikova on the topic of mindfulness. As I read it, I noticed certain parallels with my December 8 2-Minute Meditation blog post, mainly that there is recent research that shows that as little as 5 minutes of mindfulness per …
Mind Body Issues
Health problems fundamentally challenge our sense of self and safety in the world. Those people who are able to maintain equanimity in the face of medical disease and aging are truly admirable. There must be about a million articles about how to accomplish this – so I am not sure that what I have to say adds much to the literature – …