Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder, alternating between episodes of depression and mania. It is a mental disorder affecting about six percent of the U.S. population. The average age of bipolar onset is twenty-one. Bipolar disorder is often triggered by certain physical, environmental, and emotional stressors in life. Therefore, knowing how to anticipate or identify these stressors is critical to controlling and treating this disorder. In addition to medications, overcoming this debilitating disorder requires rigorous regiment on the part of the patient. What is your role as a bipolar disorder patient? See yourself as an Olympic athlete. As such, you have a goal and you train yourself as an athlete with that goal in mind. As a bipolar patient, your goal is to be mentally healthy and stay stable for as long as possible without any serious episodes of depression and mania. If you are an Olympic athlete striving for peak performance, you will have to train yourself everyday to make significant changes in your performance. These changes may take time and you may even resist them at first; but the sooner you make these changes, the greater chance you will achieve the result you desire. Likewise, if you wish to overcome your bipolar disorder, you will have to come up with a plan and start new behaviors for optimum results. Sleep plays a pivotal role in stabilizing your moods. It is therefore important to keep a regular sleep pattern to regulate your brain chemistry, which is often the culprit of the disorder. Restful sleep not only gives you adequate physical energy, but also enhances the performance of your hormones and neurotransmitters. Unfortunately, patients with bipolar disorder almost always have problems with sleep: in fact, sleep problem is one of the main symptoms of the disorder. Research has indicated that bipolar disorder patients must structure their sleep patterns as their first line of defense against the onset of another episode of mood swing. Your sleep pattern can be disrupted by both external and internal factors. The external factors are environmental and stressful events in your life, such as watching the Olympic Games and staying up late for consecutive nights, or going on a long trip. The internal factor is the bipolar disorder itself. However, if you are on medication, the internal factor is more often than not triggered by an external factor, rather than being the cause of the sleep problem. Sadly, many bipolar patients tend to attribute the cause of their sleep problems to anything or anyone but themselves. Like an Olympic athlete, you must set your goal to recognize what triggers your sleep problems. No one can do that for you! You must always ask yourself: What have I done to trigger my sleep problems? Once, you are aware of the external factors, you must do everything possible to achieve that goal, which is to eliminate those factors that cause your sleep problems. It is important that you write down all possible triggers. Like an athlete, you must start this training process so that you will find the stability you need in order to get on with your life. Copyright (c) 2008 Stephen Lau
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