EP 84: Your Bipolar Diagnosis Is Hiding the Real Problem: Why the Chemical Imbalance Myth Blocks True Recovery

A bipolar diagnosis can feel like an explanation, but we argue it often labels symptoms without identifying a root cause. We challenge the chemical imbalance narrative, question medication-first assumptions, and point toward curiosity-driven healing based on underlying sources of distress. 
• bipolar as a symptom cluster rather than an etiology 
• how the DSM is built and why that matters 
• concerns about conflicts of interest and medication marketing 
• trial-and-error prescribing plus polypharmacy risks 
• why the chemical imbalance theory is disputed 
• how treatment can reinforce the belief that bipolar is incurable 
• validating that symptoms are real and disruptive 
• why abrupt medication stopping is dangerous and why guided tapering matters 
• potential root drivers: micronutrient insufficiency, ultra-processed food, iatrogenic medication effects 
• other contributors: substances including high-THC marijuana, trauma, learned coping patterns 
• recovery as resolving causes, not just suppressing symptoms 

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Transcript

Why Labels Can End Curiosity

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When somebody is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, they are not identifying an underlying etiology or an underlying disease or an underlying condition. And that's one of the big bipolar is not myths is bipolar is not identifying the source of the symptoms. It is not identifying the reason that you're experiencing the symptoms you're experiencing. And the problem that that creates is that people think that they have been told why they're experiencing those symptoms. They believe that the underlying issue has been identified. And the problem is that that ends curiosity. I've talked about this in previous episodes, but it ends curiosity into what actually is going on. And so the underlying issues are never identified and never treated. In this podcast, I bring you solo insights from my journey and guest interviews with leading researchers and experts. Join us to transform chaos into hope and reclaim your life. Let's heal together. I've seen a lot of things on social media lately that are reinforcing some false beliefs and myths about what bipolar is, what a bipolar diagnosis actually means. And so today we are doing an episode What Bipolar is not and what bipolar is. And the hope of this is to help spark some curiosity in you so that you don't just take my word for this, that maybe you'll do a little research on your own and learn a little more. And I don't talk, I'm not talking about research going into Chat GPT. I'm not talking about going into the DSM. I'm talking about reading perhaps some of the books that I have recommended in previous episodes, and I'll mention them again today. But learning a little bit more about the history of psychiatry, about the history of the DSM, about how these diagnoses were developed in the first place, so that you can start being a little more skeptical and curious about what this diagnosis actually means and about the idea that bipolar is incurable, because that's one of the things that we're going to talk about today. So let's start with bipolar is not. I think it's important to talk about the myths that surround this diagnosis that keep people stuck. When somebody is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, usually when you go in to see a psychiatrist, you have been experiencing symptoms, sometimes for a while, that are very distressing. And when you go to the psychiatrist, you're going because you need help. Usually most of us don't want to go see a psychiatrist. And so if you're like me, you will have felt like you needed to go see somebody for a while, but you kept putting it off because you were hoping that, you know, maybe you could fix it yourself, or you don't want to be told that you're broken. I know when I when I went, I was, it took about a year after the first recommendation was that I go see a psychiatrist before I actually did. I was struggling in college with increasingly erratic mood swings. And my behavior was becoming more and more concerning to those close to me. And I was my parents and an aunt and uncle that lived near me were increasingly requesting that I and recommending that I go see a psychiatrist because they were worried about what they were seeing in me as far as behavior and inconsistency and my behavior and the choices I was making in my life. And I finally got the courage up to go see a psychiatrist. And I was diagnosed initially with depression and anxiety disorders, and then later it was changed to bipolar disorder after I was started on an antidepressant. And when I went to the psychiatrist, I was led to believe that I was being diagnosed with a chemical imbalance. That I was being diagnosed with an underlying etiology, that the source of the problem was being identified. When somebody is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, they are not identifying an underlying etiology or an underlying disease or an underlying condition. And that's one of the big bipolar is not myths is bipolar is not identifying the source of the symptoms. It is not identifying the reason that you are experiencing the symptoms you're experiencing. And the problem that that creates is that people think that they have been told why they're experiencing those symptoms. They believe that the underlying issue has been identified. And the problem is that that ends curiosity. I've talked about this in previous episodes, but it ends curiosity into what actually is going on. And so the underlying issues are never identified and never treated. And when somebody is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, you are not, they are not, they are not doing blood tests, they are not doing brain scans to diagnose you because there are no benchmarks, there are no blood tests or brain scans that are used to determine that somebody has bipolar disorder. The only thing that they use to determine if somebody has bipolar disorder are the symptoms. And the symptoms themselves have been determined. The symptoms that decide if somebody has bipolar disorder or depression or anxiety or schizophrenia are a cluster of symptoms that was voted on by a panel of psychiatrists. And recently, Dr. Joseph Witt During talked about this. He talked about how it's a fairly unscientific process, actually, because you get a the reason why the original DSM was created in the first place, the diagnostical statistical manual of psychiatry was created in the first place was for the purpose of medicating. It was for the purpose of telling psychiatrists which medications to use to treat people. And they created, they created categories or diagnoses based on clusters of symptoms that a panel of psychiatrists had voted on. And when they created later iterations of this manual, they did the same thing. And there has been an increasing number of people who are starting to call into question the motives of the doctors that are on this panel because many of them, if not all of them, have either are currently or have received money from drug companies. There are, it is, the entire system is all wrapped up in the idea that medication is required to treat patients. And so it's it's pretending like it's this very scientific process of diagnosing and treating somebody. They've created really long lists of symptoms and frequency of symptoms, and it's not actually identifying the actual source of the symptoms, it's just giving you a diagnosis based on the cluster of symptoms that has been determined by this group of psychiatrists. And this has creates all kinds of problems for people that are struggling with these symptoms because they believe that the treatment itself is going to make them better. And one of the things that Professor Joanna Moncrief talks about is that when they first created the DSM years ago, when they were first starting to treat people with medications, not all psychiatrists were subscribing to the idea that they were fixing an underlying problem. That when they first started doing this, there was a recognition that you were using drugs to suppress symptoms, but the drugged state was preferable. And therapists used to not treat people with that were on medication because they understood that this, their emotional response was being suppressed, and it was not process, it was not possible to process emotions in a healthy way because the emotional response was being blunted by the medication. But now we've got this idea, and most of it has to do with the marketing campaigns of these drug companies, that these drugs are actually fixing something, that they're actually fixing an underlying issue and and that they're making things better, which is why people are told that we just have to keep looking until we find the right combination of medications. And I'm really surprised on a regular basis about how many people are willing to accept this idea. When I when I talk about the truth about bipolar online and on social media, I get a lot of pushback from people who say you just have to keep trying different medications until you find the right one. And it's it's surprising to me because I think how that's a I remember thinking this when I was very first being treated, that it was seemed quite unscientific to play guess and check with medications. Um when I was in when I was in school in biology, I remember a teacher talking about the this idea of playing guess and check. So guess and check is when you make a guess at what might be what might work or what might be appropriate in a certain situation. You try it, and if it doesn't work, then you try again. And you just keep trying until you hit on the right, you hopefully hit on the right thing. And with psychotropic drugs, this is a really dangerous approach. I I don't know what other word to use for it because psychotropic medications are powerful mind-altering substances that we don't fully understand. And most drugs are not tested, they are tested for the most at for like 12 weeks. These drugs have not been tested for long-term safety or efficacy. And there is no financial motivation to test them for that. There is no, in fact, there are huge financial disincentives preventing people from being willing to test these medications for their long-term impact, for whether or not they are safe. These drugs are not tested when they're being used to get to with each other. It's something that is called polypharmacy. When you are taking multiple psychotropic medications, these drugs aren't tested for that. We don't we don't go in and say and test, you know, one of the common things when somebody is diagnosed with bipolar disorder is to be put on like a mood stabilizer, mood stabilizer or antipsychotic and an antidepressant. They don't test for combining these drugs with each other. And so the people that are the test subjects are the patients. We are the test subjects, and there is no willingness to consider that maybe what we're doing is not helping people, maybe what we're doing is actually harming people, which leads to the chemical imbalance theory. And one of the things that I I want to address here because it's it has been brought up, um, is if we're going to if we're going along with this theme, bipolar is not. Bipolar is not a chemical imbalance. It is not. And Professor Joanna Moncrief, who I've had on my program twice, who I've had on my podcast twice, led the research team that reviewed 20 years of research and determined that the chemical imbalance theory is false. And the problem is that it has been used so widely in marketing that even psychiatrists believe that the chemical imbalance theory is true. There's been zero curiosity about whether or not it's true. It's just a convenient, comfortable way to explain why psychotropic drugs are are needed. And that's actually how the theory developed in the first place. This was a theory that was developed back in the 1950s to try and explain why certain medications had an impact on people who were suffering from what they called melancholia. And it's that's what we would call depression today. And it was the original um, I think it's called Lamotrogen. There was a medication that was used to treat, I think, malaria. I apologize that I can't remember it offhand. I should have written it, written it down. But there was a medication that was used, I think it was to treat malaria. And the doctors observed that the patients would get happy when they when they took this medication. They would be dancing around the ward and they would feel elevated and happy. And so their mood would be elevated. And the observation was, I wonder if we could use this medication to treat melancholia, people who are depressed. So they started using it, not understanding, not understanding the drug, not understanding why it was impacting people this way, but hoping that maybe this might help people who were struggling with low mood, with a depressed state. And as these medications were starting to be used to try and treat people who were struggling with these symptoms of depression, they developed a theory as to why the medication was working, why it was helping people elevate their moods. And the theory was the chemical imbalance, that the brain, the brain chemistry was out of balance and that serotonin production was off. And so that the medication was improving the serotonin in the brain, which was why, you know, why this was working. That was the theory. And interestingly, over the decades since that theory was developed, there have been numerous attempts to try and prove this theory true. And not only did they prove that it wasn't true, that there was no chemistry, there was no brain chemical imbalance in the first place, but they discovered that the medications themselves were causing a chemical imbalance in the brain because these medications are not natural to the brain. When we talk about brain chemicals, we're not talking about artificial chemicals that are developed in a lab. We're talking about brain chemistry. And they're they're two different things. These brain chemistry, the neurotransmitters in the brain, are naturally occurring processes. And the things that are necessary to help improve these natural occurring processes are not chemicals. They are micronutrients, they are vitamins and minerals and omega-3s and amino acids. Those are the things that our body needs to function in a healthy way. And in order for our brains to get what it needs to function in a healthy way, we need to have a healthy diet. And nobody, because we started back in the 90s with psychotropic medications and that became the focus, most doctors were not interested in learning more about whether people could just improve their diets to improve their mental health. So all of the focus over the past 75 years in psychiatric research and development was trying to prove the chemical imbalance theory, trying to prove that these medications work, trying to find new medications to fix the problems that people are having. And it made it so that there was no curiosity into whether or not what they were doing was actually working or beneficial to their patients. And this leads to another bipolar is not, which is bipolar is not incurable. First of all, we go back to the beginning. Bipolar is not identifying an underlying etiology. So we're not identifying a disease or a, you know, an actual etiology, an underlying condition. We're just identifying a cluster of symptoms. And we know now, because of the research from Professor Joanna Moncrief, that it is not a chemical imbalance. That theory was totally disproven. And a lot of times, one of the things, one of the, I forgot to mention this, but one of the ways that people push back on me using Professor Moncrief's work in talking about how bipolar is not a chemical imbalance, is they'll say, well, she's talking about depression, but bipolar really is a chemical imbalance. And that's not true because all of the chemical imbalance theories rest on this idea that depression was a chemical imbalance. All of the theories of chemical imbalance for mental illness began with that original theory. It is a house of cards that was built on a faulty foundation in the first place. And there have been numerous attempts. I hear I have people all the time saying, well, if you look at my brain scan, look at brain scans all you want. But there's a reason that we we don't use brain scans and diagnosing. There's a reason we don't use blood tests and diagnosing, because an underlying etiology has never been identified. But the reason that bipolar disorder, quote unquote bipolar disorder, has become incurable is because of the treatment approach itself. The treatment approach that assumes that we've identified a disease when we identify when somebody is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and then assumes, based on the last 75 years of treatment through psychiatry, that they will require medication for life, medication that changes the brain chemistry and does not address the underlying issue. We created an incurable condition because the treatment itself is preventing the cure. The treatment itself is not addressing or identifying the underlying issues. It is changing the brain chemistry in an abnormal way that makes the brain function in an abnormal way. And so the person stays sick. Bipolar does not need to be incurable, it does not need to be a lifelong condition. It is possible to identify the underlying sources of the symptoms and then treat the underlying source and resolve those sources of symptoms, which leads me to what bipolar is. Bipolar is observing very real and very distressing symptoms. When I say that bipolar is not a disorder, it's not identifying an underlying ideology. I'm not saying that the symptoms aren't real. And I'm not saying that they're not distressing and very disruptive to your life. They are. I lived with it. There's a reason I went to the psychiatrist in the first place. I it took a year for me to get the courage up to go. But when I finally went, I was hopeful that they were going to be able to help me because the symptoms I was experiencing were very distressing. They were so disruptive to my life. They were destroying relationships, they were embarrassing, they were humiliating, they were discouraging. Bipolar symptoms are very real. There's a reason that people go to the psychiatrists in the first place. We're experiencing very real distress that all the diagnosis does is observe the distress you're experiencing. It does not identify why you are experiencing that distress. And so it's so important for us to get curious. Have some scientific curiosity, have some curiosity into what's actually happening. Your brain is in distress. Why? What's actually happening? It feels good. It does. It does feel good to have a diagnosis that that alleviates you from having responsibility for it. It blames it on a chemical imbalance in your brain or something outside of your control because then you don't have to be responsible for it. You can just take some drugs and and it would it would be great. It would feel good to be able to take some medication, have it all go away and get back to your life. And there is a small percentage of people who find relief from the medication and are able to eventually figure out how to live their lives with the medication and with the underlying distress never being identified because a medication is able to suppress it in a in a sufficient way for them to go about their lives. But one of the things that makes me very sad about that is that there are serious long-term negative impacts of these medications on the body and the brain. I remember every time I would take my medications, I would, every single time. I don't think there was a day that I was on the medications for that 12 years that I didn't feel sick to my stomach about what I was putting in my body. I was a very healthy person. I was a competitive athlete through high school and college. I ate very healthy. I took very good care of my body. I never drank alcohol. I never smoked. And I was putting substances in my body that I was fully aware were doing serious damage to me. And I didn't feel like I had any choice. I felt like I had to take those medications because I was told by the doctor that that was necessary to treat my quote-unquote disorder. That one of the medications I was on depict damages the liver. I had to go in regularly for liver function tests. And I remember one day crying on my way home from having my liver function test, thinking I have spent my entire life abstaining from alcohol and I am doing significant damage to my liver with this medication. It's going to destroy my liver and I have to take it. And it just made me sick every time I took it. These medications are not natural substances to our body, and they do long-term damage. And so if there's a way to treat the underlying source and resolve them so you don't have to be on medication for the rest of your life, wouldn't you want to know? And I want to put a caveat in here. This does not mean if you're on medication to go take, stop taking your medication. As I mentioned earlier, these medications cause a chemical imbalance in the brain. And so you have to work with an expert on how to withdraw these medications from your system safely so that you don't end up, you know, harming yourself. They can have serious withdrawal symptoms and it takes time. I had a client recently that got through her cross-titration. We call it cross-titration when you're helping your brain heal through micronutrition and helping you safely, slowly withdraw from the medication. And it took her a year and a half to get off the medication. She did it safely. She did it with very little distress, really. But she had to use, she had to have expert guidance through the process to help safely withdraw her from the medication. So please don't go stop taking your medications. If you want help, if you want help, you can contact me. You can contact, I've I interviewed Angie Peacock. She's somebody who helps people get off of medications safely. I I would I would recommend Yosef Witt During's uh clinic, but it I've heard recently that it's gotten quite expensive. And so I think he is referring people to other places. But he's a psychiatrist who came up through the traditional psychiatric training and was very suspicious of what he was being taught, did more research, worked for the FDA, worked for drug company, and discovered the truth about psychiatric medications. If you haven't listened to him talk about it, I would encourage you to go find him on social media. It's I'll I'll link him in the in the show notes. But these medications are not treating an underlying cause. They are trying to suppress symptoms, and they do it in a way that does tremendous damage to our minds and to our bodies. And so it is it is so important to understand that yes, bipolar is observing very real symptoms that are very distressing, but we need to have curiosity about what's actually happening. What is actually the source of those symptoms? I've talked about this on previous episodes, but just for you know the sake of what I'm saying here, some of the main sources of symptoms for people are, as I mentioned, micronutrient insufficiency. If your brain is not getting adequate nutrition, it will not function in a healthy way. And it will manifest in all manner of symptoms. We can all have all kinds of mental health symptoms that can be the result of not getting adequate nutrition for our brains. You can end up with ADHD symptoms and depression symptoms and anxiety symptoms and bipolar symptoms and even schizophrenia. People who are struggling with those types of serious symptoms can be the result of not getting adequate nutrition for your brain. That is one of the main underlying sources. It's why we've seen such a dramatic increase in the number of people being diagnosed with mental health conditions in the last 50 years, because our food is not food anymore. Everything is ultra-processed. Even people who are eating, you know, trying to eat whole food diets, if you're shopping at the grocery store, most of that, those foods have come from far, far away. And so the nutritional value is very low. I did a podcast episode on this like a year and a half or two years ago with an expert on food transportation, and he talked about how depleted our food sources are in nutrition, largely because of how far they travel. And so that is one of the main culprits is the lack of nutrition, the lack of the micronutrients, the building blocks of the neurotransmitters in our brains. The next one is ironically iatrogenic. So somebody starts struggling with, you know, even mild, you know, mild depression, you know, if it gets distressing enough and you go to psychiatrist and you're put on an antidepressant, over two-thirds of the people diagnosed with bipolar disorder were first treated for depression. They were put on an antidepressant, which causes a chemical imbalance in your brain and often will lead to symptoms of mania or hypomania. And then instead of being recognizing that they caused those symptoms to occur with the medication, they are told, we misdiagnosed you. You actually have bipolar disorder. And then they load you up on more drugs. So the iatrogenic, the medical harm from the medications themselves causes symptoms that then lead to more diagnoses that cause you to need more medication. So helping your brain heal from the effects of these medications is key as, you know, in helping somebody to actually heal, to heal their brain and heal the underlying sources of the symptoms. Drug use, not just a illicit drug or not just legal drugs, and there are other medications that people can take for other health conditions that can actually lead to mental health symptoms that then lead to a diagnosis. So it's not just psychotropic drugs. You can be taking another type of medication that can cause symptoms of depression or anxiety that can then lead you to be diagnosed with a mental health condition. Drug use is a big one. And marijuana is especially relevant today. And I've there have been a number of different psychiatrists talking about this issue that are holistic psychiatrists that are trying to promote help helping people to heal. And this is actually somebody that I'm going to have on my podcast soon, is a woman who has a mother who has started an organization that is trying to help make people aware of the dangers of marijuana use. She was lives in Colorado. And once it got legalized there, all of a sudden they saw a spike in the number of people being diagnosed with mental health conditions directly related to the use of marijuana. And it's because the, I believe it's if I say this wrong, I apologize, but I think it's the THC level in the marijuana is dramatically higher than what it was, you know, 50 years ago. 50 years ago when pot was being used all the time, 60 years ago, 70 years ago, when it was being used all the time, it was very low levels of THC in the in the drug. And now there has been such a dramatic increase in the level of THC that it is actually causing symptoms of psychosis and mania in people. And instead of any curiosity about what's actually causing the symptoms, they are diagnosed with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia and put on psychotropic medications. We've got people who are dealing with severe trauma, but trauma is a big underlying source of symptoms. You can have somebody who has, you know, traumatic experiences, like one time you can have a traumatic experience or multiple traumatic experiences or lifelong neglect or things like that that can cause dysregulation in the brain, cause depression, and cause anxiety. You know, you could experience trauma responses that are then I diagnosed as bipolar disorder or anxiety disorder, and then you're put on medication and the underlying issue has never been addressed. You're just drugged up. People are suffering and they are being put on drugs. You, you know, if somebody is experiencing symptoms and they experience them for prolonged periods of time, you can develop unhealthy thought and behavior patterns as a result. And this can lead to emotional dysregulation. There's all kinds of things that can actually be the underlying source of the symptoms. And if you don't ever identify what the source is, you can't treat it. So that's why it's so important to take these very serious symptoms and get curious about what's actually causing them. The next bipolar is, is this leads to the next bipolar is, which is it is disruptive to your life. These symptoms are very disruptive. And that's why we look for help. That's why we go to psychiatrists. That's why we go looking for, you know, somebody to help us understand why, why you're struggling with these symptoms that often lead to very disruptive and damaging destructive behavior. And we want to know why. We want to know why we're struggling with compulsive behaviors. We want to know why we're struggling with irrational thoughts and racing thoughts and elevated moods that lead us to do crazy, sometimes dangerous things. But again, it is not a chemical imbalance. It is not an underlying etiology that's being identified. It's just the symptoms that are being observed. Like somebody who is struggling with fever is being told that they have fever disorder. That's not helpful. Yes, running a fever of 105 is very dangerous. If somebody is running a really high fever, it's very dangerous and very distressing. And you want to do whatever you can to get to address it as soon as possible so that you don't end up with brain damage. But we don't assume that you have fever disorder and we don't put you on anti-inflammatories for the rest of your life. We look with curiosity at what could be causing the fever. So we might give you something temporarily to suppress the fever so that we can prevent damage to the brain and to the body, but then we look with curiosity at to what is actually causing the fever to occur. That's what we need to do with mental health challenges. We need to look with curiosity at the source of the symptoms you're experiencing. There are times when people need something to, if they're a danger to themselves or others, you know, sometimes when somebody gets diagnosed, they get diagnosed because they have a severe psychotic episode. If you're a danger to yourself or others, we need something temporarily to help bring that, bring you back into a safe place emotionally or mentally, right? So I am not totally anti-medication. I think that there are times when it's appropriate to use them for short periods of time to bring somebody back into a safe place mentally so that they're not a danger to themselves or others. But then we need to get curious what caused the symptoms in the first place. It is not bipolar disorder and it is not these diagnoses that only observe the symptoms. What is the source? What is actually causing it so that we can treat the source using research-based integrated treatment? There is so much research out there now. It's incredible to me. I'm so excited because there are so many people now that are actually getting curious about the sources of people's symptoms. I love talking to Dr. Bonnie Kaplan about her research, her groundbreaking research, in my opinion, on micronutrition and the role that it plays in our mental health and how we can solve the problems. You know, we've I've read The Body Keeps the Score and talking about how trauma impacts the emotional regulation of our brains and our bodies. And when you are not addressing the underlying issues, you will not resolve the symptoms. We need to get curious. We need to get curious about what is causing these symptoms to occur in the first place and then use research-based treatments that will actually help resolve the source so that you can heal. The last, this leads me to the last bipolar is, which is bipolar is curable. It is possible to resolve the underlying sources of the symptoms so that you can heal. When I first started my blog back in uh January of 2021, I didn't know that I had been healing. I I thought that I believed what I had been told about bipolar being a lifelong and curable condition, that I would have it forever, and that I just needed to learn how to manage it. And I thought that I I had gone longer and longer and longer periods of time without any symptoms. I hadn't had any manic symptoms at that point. So in 2021, I hadn't had any manic symptoms for over a decade. And I and I I had been I started on the micronutrients back in 2010 and I got off my medications back in 2010. I had not experienced the mania since then. And I was having longer periods of time where I was not experiencing depression, and my depression was manageable. It wasn't gone completely, but it was manageable. And my anxiety symptoms were starting to resolve, and I was starting to understand what was causing the anxiety symptoms. So I thought that I had just learned to manage what I believed still at that point was a lifelong and curable condition. And as I did more research to try and help people, as I decided to start sharing what I was learning, I wanted to share what I was learning because I had wished that somebody else had shared it with me, which is why I started my blog. And then I started the podcast. And as I started doing more research, I started recognizing that what I had been told about my bipolar diagnosis was not true. And even though I started believing it about myself, I was hesitant to share it with other people because I thought, well, maybe I'm different. Maybe I, you know, which is what often people will say, you were misdiagnosed or, you know, you're you must not have had bipolar disorder, because again, we believe that bipolar disorder is incurable. And so if somebody's heals, then they must not have had bipolar disorder. Again, super unscientific. Like we need to be curious about these things. Like if somebody was diagnosed by eight separate psychiatrists like I was over a 12-year period of time, hospitalized multiple times. If if somebody who went through that says that you can heal, shouldn't we be curious about it instead of dogpiling and say you're a liar or you're misinformed or you're dangerous? Shouldn't there be some curiosity? Science is all about curiosity. True science is about curiosity. Being curious, being open to the idea that maybe you were wrong. So if somebody is saying that their process is scientific, but they're not open, be suspicious. Because that's not scientific. That is very anti-science, in fact. It is possible to identify the underlying sources of the symptoms that led to your bipolar diagnosis and treat those underlying sources using research-based methods that will help you to heal. Bipolar disorder is curable. It is possible to heal. And I learned that for myself. If I as I was doing more research and I started becoming more curious and more suspicious of what I had been told, I started recognizing that I was healing, that what I had been doing for that previous decade that had led me to greater and greater periods of stability was actually, I was actually healing. I was actually resolving sources of symptoms. It started with getting off the medication safely and getting on the micronutrients and helping my brain begin to heal from the effects of the medication and for the effects of not having enough adequate nutrition for my brain to function in a healthy way. Once I, once I resolved those two sources, then I was able to start resolving some of the other sources of symptoms, unhealed trauma, unhealthy thought and behavior patterns, unhealthy coping mechanisms. I started recognizing the symptoms for what they actually were, which was information. My brain was asking for help, and I started recognizing what it was saying to me and how to give it the help that it needed. I had to develop new habits for the way that I interacted with the world and in relationships. I had to change the way that I was what that I was interacting with people and with life and with the world around me, so that I was interacting with those things in a healthy way. I had to create habits for healing. So let's review. Bipolar is not identifying an underlying etiology or disease. It is only identifying a cluster of symptoms. Bipolar is not a chemical imbalance. That has been completely disproven. In fact, when you take these psychotropic medications, you create a chemical imbalance in your brain. Bipolar disorder is not incurable. Yes, bipolar disorder is these symptoms are observing very real and very distressing symptoms. And yes, these symptoms are bipolar is very disruptive to your life. But the good news is that bipolar is curable. It is possible to heal bipolar disorder. If you are ready to start your path, I would encourage you to read my book, The Upside of Bipolar, Seven Steps to Heal Your Disorder. I would encourage you to develop your own mood cycle survival guide that will be the beginning of your journey to healing and recovery by helping you to learn how to proactively manage your symptoms. And then if you have already done those things and you're ready to begin your own healing journey, please reach out. Let's get together and talk about the Upsiders Tribe, my coaching program where I coach people through the healing process. I would love to hear from you. Please send me an email or a message on social media and let me know your thoughts about what I've shared today. What do you think Bipolar is? Until next time, Upsiders. Thanks for joining me on the Upside of Bipolar. Your journey to recovery matters, and I'm grateful you're here. For more resources, visit www.theupsideofbipolar.com. If you're ready to dive deeper, grab my book, The Upside of Bipolar, seven steps to heal your disorder. If you're ready to heal your symptoms, join my monthly membership, The Upsiders Tribe, to transform chaos into hope. Until next time, Upsiders