Sleep and Bipolar Disorder

Hey, y'all --

I wanted to talk to you today about sleep, because too many people underrate its importance with their bipolar disorder. You wouldn't believe how many people go into episodes over this seemingly small thing!

Sometimes when someone goes into an episode, they think it's because of their meds, when it was really caused (at least in the beginning) by their loss of sleep. You're supposed to have 8-9 uninterrupted hours of sleep every night if you have BP.

If that sleep is interrupted, or if you start getting less than 8 hours, for a period of time, it can lead to an episode.

I know, because it's happened to both me and my husband, and we've both gone into manic episodes because of it.

Here's another example of how important sleep is:

At one point, I was waking up as tired in the morning as I was before I went to bed. It wasn't my medications, and it wasn't a side effect of my medications.

It was a side effect of poor sleep.

I had a sleep study done, and found out that I wasn't getting uninterrupted sleep. It was fixed with what they call a CPAP machine, and now I sleep through the night.

Just wanted you to know this, because you need to have good sleep habits to prevent bipolar episodes.

Wishing you peace and stability,

Remember God loves you and so do I,
Michele