Question:
There has been a lot of publicity about St. John's Wort
and its beneficial effects on depression. I don't think that St.
John's Wort is recommended for rapid cycling manic depression.
Answer:
What's wrong with lithium? It's not alternative, but it certainly
qualifies as natural.This is little known (though it's in the medical literature), but very high
doses of the thyroid hormone thyroxine (T4) have proven to be like a magic
bullet for a substantial percentage of rapid cyclers -- if I remember correctly
it's around 30%. About another third find the treatment completely intolerable,
and for another third it's a mixed bag. Possibly, high doses of whole thyroid
extract or concentrate would be a more user-friendly substitute. Another little known alternative/adjunct is magnesium. A few years ago, a
very respectable, highly published, etc. McGill University psychiatrist named
Guy Chouinard published an award-winning paper in which his group revived the
long neglected use of this mineral for bipolar disorder (at least they revived
it in the research clinic; as far as I can tell the revival was dead in the
water). Specifically, they administered it to refractory (to lithium, etc.)
rapid cycling patients and it significantly helped to stabilize them, I believe
during a manic phase. Chouinard (and others) has also published on his
successful use of tryptophan as a mood stabilizing adjunct or alternative to
lithium for bipolar ps; he's also had good "mood stabilizing" results with
estrogen/progesterone combos. Getting back to the mineral connection, there's a
body of evidence that mineral imbalances of at least two kinds contribute to
bipolar disorder and, therefore, perhaps also to the rapid cycling variant: too
much sodium, not enough potassium; too much calcium, not enough magnesium.
