Stuff You Should Know - How Bipolar Disorder Works

Episode Date: May 8, 2014

Suffering from bipolar disorder means a lot more than your garden variety mood swings. Bouts of mania and depression are just the headlines. There are also theories that there's a link between bipolarism and creativity. Learn all about this disruptive, yet manageable disorder. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all in one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio. For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase, go to squarespace.com slash stuff and use the offer code stuff. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck and Brian. That makes us Stuff You Should Know. And Jerry's here too, so it's all good. The original gang. Yeah. How's

going? Pretty good, man. How are you? I'm great. Good. Okay, then. Let's get to it. Yeah, do you have a good setup for this one? No, I don't. No, I think it kind of speaks for itself. I mean, it's bipolar disorder. It's been around long enough and I think it's been exposed enough. People have been educated enough that anything I do would just seem jackass-ish. Well, we were just talking before we hit record about whether or not we know anyone who has bipolar disorder. And I think most people probably know someone. You might not even know it, but I definitely like I had a very specific friend in college who had it. And that was, you know, I was like 20. So it was, you didn't know about that stuff when you were 20, at least I

didn't. So it was very weird. That's first time I'd ever heard the term. And, you know, he fit the profile as far as being super up and full of life and energy, one moment, and then super down and very troubled, to say the least. Yeah. And this was, these are words I'm using for my 20-year-old self. You know, I just thought, man, he's like, he's super super happy or now he's super down. But that's, that's sort of a rudimentary way to describe it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, that is bipolar disorder in a nutshell. That's why they used to call it manic depressive disorder too. Yeah. When did they stop that? I think maybe in the 90s. Yeah. It seems like to me. Sounds about right. And you're not too far off from everybody knowing somebody with bipolar

disorder because apparently about 5.7 million adults in the U.S. are diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And I think 3% of the population worldwide is estimated to suffer from it. Yeah. And you said adults, it can manifest itself in children, but generally teenage, mid-teenage years and up is when you're going to first start seeing signs of it. Yeah. 15 to 25, from what I understand. In general. Yeah. And as you said, Chuckers, like the condition of bipolarity is characterized by intense, frequent swings from very, very happy to very, very sad. And it's much beyond the average person's mood swings. Because I mean, like if you're 15 years old and you're listening to this and you're like, well, sometimes

I'm unhappy and then other times I'm sad, that's normal. Yeah. This is far beyond normal, like where you are in either case, like you say, super up or super depressed. It's nowhere near what you are normally. Yeah. And in some cases of the most severe bipolar disorder, there is no normal. It's either totally one way or totally the other. Yeah. And the person suffering from it just swings back and forth maybe over the course of a couple weeks. Yeah. And lives like that. Yeah. Sadly, we have a couple of stats about the effects. We'll get to early here. You're 40% less likely to have a job if you are bipolar. Yeah. That seems really high. Yeah. 10 times more likely to abuse alcohol or drugs, which is as a cyclical effect because alcohol and drugs are really rough

on you if you have bipolar disorder. Well, yeah, they can trigger a swing one way or the other. Yeah. I saw that in my friend actually in college. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And 15% of bipolar patients successfully commit suicide out of the 25 to 50% who try it. And those numbers are startingly high. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's very high. Startlingly? Startlingly. Is that a word? Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about this. What's the, what is, I've already kind of given a rough overview, but let's dig into the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Yeah. They're basically, they characterize two swings, mania and depression. If you're having a manic episode, you're going to be in a great mood. You're going to be high on life. You're going to have a lot

of energy. You're probably going to be talking really fast and it's called lageria. Say what? Lageria. What's that? Excessive talk, talkativeness. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just really fast thoughts like everything. What was that movie with Brad Cooper and De Niro? Oh, Silver Lying's Playbook. No, the other one. I know you're going to say that. Although that is... What other movie have those two been in together? The one with where you take a pill and you can like tap into more of your brain, which is... De Niro was in that too. Yeah. I don't know the name of that movie. I know what you're talking about. It wasn't a very good movie, but... Exceptional or amazing or something like that. Remember, yeah. This is at the point when people are yelling into their car stereo.

Including Bradley Cooper. Yeah. He's like, you idiots. Yeah. And I can't believe I just forgot about Silver Lying's Playbook because that directly covers this. Yeah. But what I was talking about was the manic. He was almost a manic in that other movie where just ideas all the time at hyperspeed and he just couldn't do them fast enough. Yeah. So that's characteristic of the manic episode. Sorry, Bradley Cooper. You're distracted. You don't maybe need as much sleep. You're restless. You're irritable. You might want to have a lot of sex. Yeah. Like everything's just magnified, I think. Yeah. And with a manic episode, they're often... Like all of this is often accompanied by a sensation of euphoria. So most people who suffer from bipolar disorder don't go seeking

treatment when they're in a manic state. Right. Because they can like that. Yeah. For some people, a manic state, you can have all these things, but it's instead of accompanied by euphoria, it's accompanied by irritability, quickness to anger. So it's not all fun and games for everybody. But for the most part, if you're in a manic episode and you're bipolar, you enjoy the manic episodes way more than you enjoy the depressive episodes. Yeah. And I think both are super rough on friends and family because in the manic state, you don't know quite what you're going to get. Right. Well, you engage in very risky behavior. You may make a bunch of risky investments. Yeah. You may buy a lot of stuff. Yeah. It can go so far as to... You can

have psychotic symptoms. So in a manic episode where you're displaying psychotic symptoms, you may think you are God or totally infallible, untouchable, can do no wrong. And then that can feed into the symptoms of engaging in very risky behavior. Yeah. You could even hallucinate. You're right. Like full-on T-things. Yeah. You suffer from delusions and hallucinations. So the DSM says that if you have a certain number of manic symptoms for at least one week, then that is considered a manic episode. So that has kind of changed apparently with the DSM-5. This is DSM-4 stuff. Gotcha. With the DSM-5, they really kind of... I think the prevailing idea was, what's with this whole bipolar, otherwise specified, not otherwise specified?

Yeah. That's just a total cop out, which we'll get to in a minute. But the idea that there's like this, you don't fit this one or this one. So you fit this generic third random category. I thought the same thing actually. I'm glad that's changed. I think they've kind of dug in to diagnosing it even more. We changed some of the thresholds and exclusionary criteria. And now it's supposed to be a little more laser guided. But one of the things they did change was that, for example, I think as little as five days of an episode is enough to constitute a diagnosis rather than like a week or two weeks or something like that. That makes sense. And then you have hypomania, which is sort of like mania light. It's just

a less intense version of mania. So that's the manic swing. The depressive side of the coin is exactly what you think, but amplified by a million. Like you're not just sad. You feel despair and you're sluggish and you can't focus and you're restless and you're irritable. These are where the suicidal thoughts are coming. So it's not your garden variety depression that you might feel on a day-to-day basis because we all feel that. That's right. And you might also experience mixed symptoms, which is called a mixed episode. So for example, you might have a lot of intense energy, but you might also be suffering from feelings of utter despair, which sounds like a horrible combination. And basically you can take,

say, any mania and then add just some of the depressive suicidal thoughts, manic suicidal thoughts. That would be a mixed episode. Right. And then you have something called rapid cycling, which is when these swings are presenting themselves. Do you know what DSM-5 says? I couldn't find that it had a lot of changes to the rapid cycling. I think that what they found was that drug that doesn't necessarily respond to drugs very well. And they've kind of started to understand rapid cycling a little more, but I don't know what they changed with the diagnostic criteria for that. Well, here they characterize it by a year of at least four episodes of mania, hypomania, or depression. Right. So if you have four episodes in a year,

you've got rapids. Apparently that's rapid. Right. I think it can be a lot more rapid than that. I think that's the minimum to be considered rapid cycling. Okay. All right. So what are the different types of bipolar disorder today? There's definitely bipolar one, which is essentially your life is going from one end of the spectrum to the other. There's not periods in between really where you're stable. Right. That's the most severe, obviously. Yeah. You have bipolar two, which the sequel. That's right. That means you have at least one episode of depression and one, at least one hypomanic episode, but you could feel somewhat stabilized in between. Right. Which is a big differentiator, apparently between one and two. And then like we said,

there used to be bipolar disorder, not otherwise specified, aka the cop out. Right. And it was, there was a lot of people who were just kind of fitting into this and weren't necessarily getting the right diagnosis. Yeah. And I guess they've expanded the criteria for bipolar one and two. And then they've also kind of looked into massive depressive disorder and then said, well, this has some aspects of mania as well. And that's technically a bipolar disorder too. So they kind of did away with it a little bit, I think, because they thought they were looking bad. Yeah. It's so hard to categorize. I mean, I know they take a lot of heat. It's tough to categorize mental illness because it's so different for everyone. And well, a lot of people criticize

the approach. Yeah. The basis of the DSM is tell me how you're feeling. Right. Which is flawed in and of itself to begin with, because subjective reporting is just completely unreliable. Yeah, but you can't take a blood test and not yet result. And then secondly, to further subjectively interpret those subjective self reports into supposed, you know, criteria. Yeah. And then saying, well, you have X, X and X, but you don't have X. So technically you're not bipolar, which means you don't have, your insurance won't cover these meds that you need. Right. The whole system's very screwed up, which is why they're hoping to do things like create blood tests that say, ah, you have bipolar one. And it's because of this, these neurotransmitters are messed up. So

you'll respond very well to this specific dose of this medicine. I don't think we're more than 10 years, 15 years away from it. Boy, that'd be great. But it's, it's going to be a long, horrible 10 or 15 years for people who are suffering the most from bipolar disorders. Yeah, that's true. That can't come fast enough. And then the final, unless that's gone away too, cyclothymia, is that still around? That is the least severe. And that is at least two years of hypomania and milder depression swings. And I think also that's, I believe it's still around, but I think it's, it's changed a little too. And I think that apparently the child psychologists of the field said, you guys, there's a lot of exuberance and even mania symptoms that are

totally normal in adolescence. So let's, let's tighten this up a little bit because we don't want kids to be diagnosed with bipolar just because their parents think that they're hyper. Right. Put my 15 year old on lithium. Exactly. Yeah. So I think that they managed to kind of change the criteria for cyclothymia saying this is just above the normal threshold of mood swings. Right. Yeah. So like we said, they don't know, or I don't know if we did, they don't still know what causes it directly. Nor do they know how the drugs that treat it are effective. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of like, try this out. It's like, we know spaghetti will start to stick to refrigerator. We don't know exactly why,

but let's throw it at the side anyway. But what they do know is that genetics can play a role. You are going to have an increased likelihood to develop it if someone in your, like if your parents had it, let's say, but they also have these odd outliers like you could be a twin and your twin has bipolar disorder, but you don't. Right. So it's just sort of a mystery still. Well, yeah, it seems like they, that it does have, people are genetically predisposed and then an environmental factor can trigger their bipolar disorder. Like a really rough childhood or a bad life event or something really, really good. Yeah, that's true. But a sudden swing in normalcy in a person that is genetically predisposed to bipolar disorder is what can kick it off

in your life. Yeah. Other, we already talked about drugs and alcohol that can definitely trigger seasonal changes. I think we've talked about seasonal affected disorder. Sad. Yeah, sad. Yeah. Which I think, I think most people experience a little bit of that. Right. But again, if you're genetically predisposed for the way I see it, and this is totally unscientific, but just from researching this, right, it seems like you, you, there's a normal baseline for brain chemistry. Yeah. And it's not a thin line. It's like a pretty good size block. Yeah. And it's easy to also get outside of that one way or the other. Right. And when you are outside of it, you have the symptoms of bipolar disorder. And if you're bipolar one, you're just constantly

going from the top to the bottom of that block and outside of it. See, that sounds very scientific and easy to understand. The block? Well, I mean, maybe not scientific, but easy to understand. Okay. And then if you, if you say have bipolar two, you can exist within that normal range, but you can be knocked out of it. But your brain chemistry is already predisposed to having bipolar disorder by virtue of being able to overproduce or underproduce certain neurotransmitters. That's what I think will ultimately be the understanding of it. Well, I know they definitely tie a lot of mental disorders to either too much or not enough dopamine and serotonin. Like it's, it's definitely brain chemistry going on. Yes. And that's, yeah, they think that that's

the, um, basically the basis of it is just fluctuations in brain chemistry. Yeah. Like super low serotonin during manic and depressive episodes is, is charted. Yeah. And apparently serotonin is one of the brain, one of the neurotransmitters that are like, everybody calm down. Let's just keep things stable. Right. That's what serotonin is. And you can have too much dopamine, which can result in both mania and depression. Yeah. And I think too much is also present in psychosis too. So hallucinations, delusions, that's why you can have those. It's such a tough thing to try and study, you know? Yeah. I'm reading that. I started that book, John Ronson, the great John Ronson who listens to our show, by the way,

yeah, writer of men who stare at goats. Oh, neat. Yeah. He's a fan and, um, hey John Ronson, his, uh, his book, The Psychopath Test. Let's start reading that. Yeah. It's super interesting so far. Is it a semi historical fiction? Is it nonfiction? Is it totally fiction? It's sort of a look at how the industry, the mental health industry, tackles mental health. So it's nonfiction. Yes. That sounds like it's up my alley. Yeah. I should have said nonfiction right off the bat. Yeah. You're like, I'm going to make you guess. Yeah. I will let you, uh, I'll let you borrow it after I finish it actually. How about that? Okay. And then, uh, I will take you up on that right after these messages.

I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look

good. There is a risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't

have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Uh, all right. So I guess we can talk a little bit about how it is treated, uh, medication wise. Um, it is a long-term illness that is,

is basically looked at as a, uh, even a lifelong illness for most people, something you have to deal with, uh, forever. Yeah. Um, medication wise, lithium since the 1970s has been the go to, uh, it still is. It's a mood stabilizer and it's going to help out with both sides of your mood swings. And apparently it works for you. Right. And I like, like you said, that's the go to. And it typically, like people tend to respond to that. Yeah. It's, it, it's a go to for a reason. Sure. Not just because it was first. Right. Or that there's a Nirvana song. Right. He, he was a bipolar. Right. Certainly. Cobain. Sure. Yeah. I think so. Um, and, uh, there are alternatives to lithium because not everybody responds to it. Not everybody has the, the, a good reaction to it.

Yeah. With a, even somebody who does respond well to lithium, um, they have to keep a pretty good eye on your lithium levels in your bloodstream. So you have to visit the doctor quite a bit. The whole point of, or I guess the rigmarole that you will go through when you're diagnosed with bipolar and say, I want to combat this with meds, um, is basically shooting blind. Yeah. Uh, and using a pragmatic approach to medicating you into saying, okay, you're reacting well to this one. Right. Let's try a slightly lower dose and see what happens. Uh, and with lithium in particular, they, they keep an eye on it through, through blood tests, but with all meds using, use to treat bipolar disorder, they're going to really kind of like, um, try everything.

Yeah. And it's still like, how you feeling? Yeah. Yeah. Like, tell me how you're feeling. Right. Not let's do this, uh, test to read on a screen how you're feeling. Still. Yeah. You know. Uh, and again, part of the reason why is because they don't quite know how some drugs work. They just know that they do work for some people, but not everybody. Yeah. Anti convulsants is another, um, another one that they use and it's also a mood stabilizer. And I think that calms down the, when your brain is the parts of your brain at least that are ramped up and overacting. Right. One of the ways that it, it affects that is by, um, increasing the amount of GABA in your brain. Yo, GABA? Kind of.

What does that stand for again? It stands for gamma amino butyric acid, obviously. Well done. Thank you. It's been a while since I tried to pronounce something hard. Well, you can use the anti convulsants sometimes even with lithium. Again, it's, can be a cocktail of drugs that you're on. Right. Depending on what works for you. Uh, atypical antipsychotics can help. Um, they usually, uh, use those after they've tried the lithium. I think they tried lithium first. Yeah. Unless you're a teenage girl or a pregnant woman. Right. Um, and then, uh, the anti psychotics work because, um, they affect the amount of dopamine in your brain. Right. And again, high levels of dopamine can lead to psychotic symptoms,

which is why they call the drugs that treat those antipsychotics. Right. Um, and then benzodiazepine, aka relaxants. I think those are used less probably because, uh, they're addictive or can be addictive. Yeah. And at least they're short term used. Right. Used. And they, yes, they, they use them to, uh, promote healthy sleep too. Um, like you said, one of the symptoms, especially of mania is just going without sleep. Like you got too much to do. Right. And you don't even need it. So you don't sleep. Um, and one of the, I guess the presence of GABA or low amounts of GABA, yeah, which is a neurotransmitter that's involved in getting sleep. Yeah. I believe staying asleep too. Um, it kind of underlies this idea that your sleep cycle is off and it's either the result of

your bipolar disorder or it's helping to cause your bipolar disorder. Either way, they've found that promoting healthy sleep, uh, for example, there's this thing called dark therapy, which is no exposure to artificial light after dark for a certain amount of time can help promote healthy sleep and can help stabilize a bipolar disorder symptoms. Right. Well, that makes sense. Well, yeah. Like, uh, it always kills me when I see people on Facebook at like three AM three AM saying on Facebook that they have insomnia, right? Well, you've got a little shiny bright screen in your face. Exactly. Start by putting that down and see what happens. Yeah. Um, so yes. So with, there's all these little clues out there, Chuck, that like,

so many pieces of the jigsaw puzzler on the table, they just haven't been fit together yet. Yeah. You know, but it seems like there's, um, there's a kind of a hornet's nest out there. I've wondered, can you live with bipolar disorder without medication? Right. And apparently there's a big divide in the bipolar community. Like there's pro med and anti med. Yeah. And I've seen comparisons between talking about like religion or politics or meds. Right. With bipolar people. It's all the same. Right. Like you want to avoid those things to keep things friendly. Um, but I've seen that some people are like, yes, you can live without meds, but you probably can't get to stable right without meds. Right. Once you get to stable, then maybe you can, but, um, there's practically no

way to get to stable without the help of medications. Yeah. So people who have bipolar disorder will be like, I've been med free for a year, which is great because it means that they have managed to fight off episodes and triggers. Yeah. But they've done that through other therapy too, not just avoiding treatment. Right. Because if you avoid treatment, not only does the, does, does your, uh, condition get worse, it gets harder to treat. Yeah. The episodes supposedly definitely get worse as you go. Yeah. Uh, well, there are all kinds of therapies that you use along either in place of your medications or along with, and we won't get too much into these because we've gone through most of them before, but, uh, cognitive behavioral therapy, of course,

family therapy, group therapy, ECT. We did, we did a whole show on ECT, didn't we? Yeah, we did. That was a good one. Yeah. Electroconvulsive therapy. And, um, one that I hadn't heard of, social rhythm therapy. I hadn't heard about this either, but it makes utter and complete sense. Yeah. And that has to do with, um, I think getting yourself and your body on a set schedule is much better for you if you have bipolar disorder, not only just sleep, but just regular, regulating your, your day and your schedule. Yeah. And I don't think anybody's suggesting that a bipolar disorder is a mind over matter type situation. Like I think there are very few mental illnesses that are, that more clearly demonstrate the brain-based understanding of mental illness

than bipolar disorder. Yeah. Like your neurotransmitters and the chemicals in your brain are out of whack. Right. It's as simple as that. Right. Um, what these other non-medication therapies seek to do, especially, um, the interpersonal and social rhythm therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy is to get you to confront this thing. Yeah. To confront your condition and learn to understand it, like understand what your triggers are, understand that you have to have X amount of hours of sleep a night or else you may end up in like a manic episode. Right. Understand that like you just can't drink whiskey. Right. Maybe you can have a beer like every couple of weeks or something, but you can't touch whiskey because you'll end up in like

a manic or a depressed, like there are triggers out there. And for you personally, these are your triggers. And if you avoid them, you can stay in that stable range. Right. And, and learn to live with bipolar disorder. Yeah. You know. Super interesting. Yeah. All right. So right after this break, we're going to talk about whether or not there's a link between creativity and bipolar disorder. Hey, Chuck. Yeah. We've got a pretty good website. Sure. But not everybody does, even though they might want one. Well, we have a team of people putting it together. We do, but just the everyday person walking around out there has a team of people just waiting to help them get their website together and then a Squarespace. That's right. It is super easy to

use. If you want your own website, you can have one with simple drag and drop intuitive features. Yep. You don't have to learn how to code and do all that stuff. And even if you get confused, which you probably won't, they have great 24 seven customer support. That's right. They're very design centric. And if you want to create a logo, they have an easy logo creator. You can go check it out for yourself at Squarespace.com slash logo. Plus you have something to sell on your internet site. Yeah. Well, all of their plans have commerce options from hosting an entire store to accepting donations for your personal blog. Yeah. And it's a very responsive design. So your website is going to look great on every device on your laptop, your tablet, your mobile phone.

It is pretty great, my friends. Guys, you can go try Squarespace risk free. It goes Squarespace.com slash stuff and you'll get a free 14 day trial with no credit card necessary. And if you like it, it costs as low as $8 a month and includes a free domain name if you sign up for a year. That's right. So just use our offer code STUFF and you can get 10% off of your first purchase. That's Squarespace.com slash stuff with the offer code STUFF. All right, buddy. There is a long been debate on whether or not creative people are either more likely to be bipolar or bipolar can lead to creative genius. Yeah. Didn't we talk about, didn't we do an episode on that? Was it in a thinking cap? I think I was in, can this thinking

cap make me a genius episode? Yeah, maybe so. Trans magnetic stimulation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's that latent inhibition kind of thing for schizophrenia and creativity. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely like a laundry list of very creative people throughout the years that suffer from bipolar from Beethoven to Jimi Hendrix who wrote manic depression. Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allen Poe, Axl Rose is on the list. Yeah. Graham Greene, Dickens. Did I say Dickens? No, but you just did. Francis Ford Coppola, Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys. Yeah. He really had a terrible episode after, did Smile ever get released? Yeah. And it just flopped? Well, it got released recently. Oh, okay. But I'm saying at the time. No, it never got released at the time. So something

happened that set him off. I guess the band, the rest of the band members wanted to go in a different direction. Well, he was obsessed with the Beatles too and trying to be better than the Beatles. Right. And I mean, Smile was up there. It was pretty good. Yeah. But yeah, I guess it never got released. And maybe that's what triggered his episode. And started the dark years. Yeah. Yeah. And this was long before anybody understood anything. Like this is prior to the advent of the use of lithium for bipolar disorder. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That didn't come around till the 70s. Yeah. So I have a thing that I like to read. It's a little long, but there's this great article from Slate called What Does It Feel Like To Have Bipolar Disorder? And it was written by

someone named Mills Baker. And it kind of backs up a lot of what we're feeling here, but gives you just a little insight since we're not good, since we can't talk first hand. We'll let Mills Baker do it. Do you mind? Please. I think only in their extremes, Armenia and depression actually unintelligible to ordinary folks. That is, at their utmost intensity, they're unlike anything a normal person experiences. But at most times, they're not at all so different from the maximally intense moods that everyone knows, just more so longer lasting and disconnected from normative causes. And that seems to be one of the big points is basically what he's saying is that it's not so different maybe than feeling manic or depressed

yourself, but it's way more intense. It lasts for way longer and there may not be a cause. Right. And not that I don't have bipolar disorder, but it would seem like it's to a debilitating degree. Like it affects the rest of your life negatively. Yeah. Bipolar is less about short-term mood instability than about long-term mood cycles. Instability is a part of it, but not the only part. Second, the cumulative effect of these cycles on the formation of a personality is significant. So after a childhood of a radically changing interest in attitudes on such a timeline, one develops a certain excitability, flightiness, distractibility, or perhaps that's just me. Again, it's different for everyone. But it is a major

part of being bipolar, the personality that is shaped by a lifetime of intense fluctuating moods. So he's taken just a more macro approach. It's going to make you who you are. You can't just look at the bad mood or the up mood. It's going to basically form your personality over the years. Yeah, I would imagine. To know what it feels like is to know the qualia, the phenomenological experiences a bipolar person encounters that an unaffected person does not. I don't think there are many of these. Going berserk, being creative, having an awful temper, not being able to trust my own emotional reactions. These have a certain weight when I list them out. They can even sound unique, but everyone loses it. Everyone has moments of charisma and creativity

and success, strength and achievement, and everyone struggles with himself. You may not hallucinate, which this guy does, by the way, but I can bet you understand what it's like for your mind to misbehave and react insanely. If you haven't yet lost control of your life, just wait. For me, the most enduring way that bipolar feels different is in how I cannot trust my reactions. I thought this part was really interesting. When someone says something to you and you recognize it as an insult, for instance, as abuse or abuse, your reactive anger is appropriate and you can commit to it. Or you can make some determination based on your values and your reason and choose a different course of action. I can't even trust the person

that even insulted me, so I can't trust my emotional perceptions or reactions. That's got to make you just feel way out of sorts. If you can't even feel like you're trusting your own emotions. That's the one thing that you have is how you're feeling about any given situation that makes up your personality in large part. If that seems flawed to you, that's the way to live. Finally, that is the strangest thing about how it feels after the dust of the actual disorder settles. After more than a decade in, the open insanity has abated and visits only briefly. The idea that I'm a secret artist is absurd. What's left is a more or less normal life in which I have to emphasize mental hygiene like prioritizing regular sleep,

for example, and in which I always feel doubt about what I think and feel as we all probably should anyway. He's on medication and it seems like he has a healthy attitude about it. I think it's interesting to hear people talk in first person about mental illness. I'm sure it's a lot easier for him to talk about it now too that he's got it licked. Yeah or coping with it at least. So you got anything else? I got nothing else. This is a good one. Hopefully it helps some people. Yeah, thanks to Mills Baker for being open to Slate about the disorder. Yeah, thanks to Slate and Mills. Mills and Slate.

If you want to learn more about bipolar disorder, you can type those words into the search bar at HouseToForks.com. It will bring up a very good article and a bunch of other stuff too. And since I said very good article, that means it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this a shark correction. Really? Yeah, remember how we talked about sharks basically perfected themselves and haven't changed in millions of years? Yeah, oh yes, yes. I was like, we haven't talked about sharks in forever. Now I remember you.

Yeah, well, there's some brand new findings which is pretty excited and Jake Hayes from New York City sent this in. I really enjoyed the Darwin and Natural Selection episodes guys and thought you might find this recent study published in the journal Nature that is interesting given the example you gave about sharks. Apparently contrary to the theory that they barely changed over the past hundreds or millions of years, they may have evolved significantly actually from their ancient ancestors and may not be the living fossils we thought they were. Scientists have thought that shark gills were an ancient system that predated modern fish. However, a newly discovered fossil of a shark that dates back 325 million years shows a remarkably

different gill skeleton than modern sharks. This fossil provides evidence that shark gills have evolved over time and that it is actually modern day fish that may be the ones with the old gill systems. The new gill system may have changed over time to help sharks sprint after their prey or pry open their jaws to eat larger things. So he said he just came across this article and I saw it all over the place of course like you know two weeks after we recorded. I think it was even like a day or an hour or something. Yeah, I think you're right. But it's pretty cool info and that is once again Jake Hayes from New York City. Nice, thanks a lot Jake. We appreciate you and I think a few other people let us know

about it too. Yeah. But none but Jake was from New York City. That's right. So we selected him. If you want to let us know you're from New York City, we want to hear about it. You can hang out with us outside of the podcast on Twitter at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can hang out with us on our Facebook page, facebook.com. We also have Pinterest, Instagram, the whole jam. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.discovery.com and as always join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Sexy Teen Crush Boy Bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody

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