And it's Fasting.   


I've tried bringing this up before on another account, and even on this one. It's been met with a lot of close-mindedness and misunderstanding. But I'll try again since this very well could be a tool that helps many manage their bipolar better. It's said that keto diets help. There are even some people talking about that today. I don't believe it's 'keto' necessarily, but rather the fact that your body is running on ketones more than it is glucose.   


So fasting. Controversial. First off. I've been practicing it for nearly 15 years. I'm not dying from it. I'm not going to die from it. My brain isn't running on fumes. And just because you're hungry, doesn't mean you need to be shoving food into your gullet every 4 hours. For 200,000 years of human history, humans didn't have food security as we do now. Fasting was a regular thing we did. Our bodies are designed to work this way, they were never designed to have access to food multiple times a day. I fully believe a lot of the issues we suffer with in regards to food, obesity, and whatnot are in a large part due to the fact that we eat constantly now. There's a lot of science behind fasting, if anyone is interested I can answer many questions. I'm just here to say.   


My Bipolar went from severe/extreme, needing to have help to even function day to day, to completely manageable adding in this practice into my life. I eat one meal a day. A large, very healthy meal. With more than enough calories to sustain myself. But for 23 hours of the day. I'm not eating anything. Sometimes even for 2 days.   


What I've noticed. From doing so.   


* Better mental clarity. Brain fog is severely diminished. On the days I do eat more than once a day, I notice this getting significantly worse. Constantly stumbling on words, forgetting things, getting distracted etc.   

* Less frequent episodes, Less severe episodes. I still have them, but what used to happen many many times a year even with medication is now down to maybe 1 or 2 severe episodes. Everything else is minor and goes away usually within just a few days.   

* Depression symptoms are significantly better. My depression was debilitating. It was a huge chore even just showering. It was hard to find the motivation to do anything more than lay around all day. This is no longer the case since I started fasting more frequently.   

* Irritability. Actually significantly lessened. Don't get me wrong. I'm still an irritable pos on a bad day, but generally speaking. It's much better now. 

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* Weight gain.. Being on a bunch of different medications that cause weight gain.. well you naturally blow up. However, thanks to fasting.. It's pretty easy to maintain weight or even lose it. Incredibly easy. I ballooned up years ago, nearly 300 pounds. I gained all that over 2 years when I started taking new medications for bipolar despite not changing a single thing about my diets, and even eating less. Now I'm just under 210.. 5'11 inches. Could still stand to lose maybe 15 pounds.. That's it though. 

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* More stable mood. Which definitely helps with bipolar. Since my general energy is completely stable, There are significantly fewer chances for things to go out of whack. Between this and lithium it takes pretty significant events to shift my mood enough to cause issues. 

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* Better sleep. Honestly, Fasting/keto dieting has changed how much sleep I need. I'm completely well rested at about 5.5-6 hours. I'm also MUCH less drowsy throughout the day even though I'm on 3 medications that used to knock me on my ass as early as 1 pm. I'd be napping then. Now.. No issue staying up all day, maybe a bit tired at 5ish.. but not enough for anything more than a 15 min nap now. 

I know that it's helping with all of these too because these symptoms almost always get worse the moment I start being careless with eating multiple times a day. One or two days is fine, but If I start eating two meals a day, or snacking all day. High carb diet definitely makes it worse. Especially the depression and irritability. So it also seems like the diet that I choose to eat when I'm not fasting also plays a role. The more meats and veggies I eat vs bread or potatoes. the easier it is to manage symptoms and overcome problems. I'd also like to say. That I've experienced ALL of these benefits to my bipolar, along with many other benefits to my health, and quality of life, and basically 0 bad side effects or negatives in doing this practice. it has nearly 100% positively impacted my life.   


Feel free to ask any questions. I didn't want to go into the science behind fasting too much in this post. I just wanted to lay out the benefits that I've seen. I'm really interested to see if anyone else is practicing fasting or keto and has seem anything even remotely similar. Because this practice has taken me from almost being put into a home, to functioning pretty normally now.