Hello, fish oil
There are some promising studies that suggest that fish oil may be an effective mood stabilizer.
Ever since my lymph nodes swelled up and burned in pain when I went up from 25mg to 50mg of Lamictal, I’ve been taking 4g of fish oil per day.
I have to say, Lamictal is as close to a miracle drug for bipolar disorder that I’ve ever experienced. Sure beats the Depakote/Lexapro combination I’ve been on in the past or the Zoloft/Zyprexa experiment before that. I’ve been doing some grieving over the fact that I can no longer take Lamictal.
So back to fish oil…
In the study I read, they took 9g of fish oil per day. That’s a lot — 9 of those huge horse pills. I’ve been reluctant to take that many.
Fish oil has its drawbacks — besides the benign fish breath, you also need to worry about mercury and other pollutants. You also need to worry about free radicals. And lastly, you might need to worry about too much vitamin D.
I’m taking fish oil I’ve had in my cabinet for awhile. When I get through it here in the next few days, I’ll order the good stuff — a couple of brands have been recommended as being far more superior and pure, so I’ll try them out and report back.
The good news is, it’s been a week now since I came off the Lamictal, and I haven’t had any major mood episodes. I do feel slightly more edgy, but not depressed or manic.
So I’m looking forward to going up to 9g of fish oil, but not on the grocery-store variety I have now. I don’t quite trust it.
My shrink is not a fish oil man, and he’s talking about putting me on lithium or Tegretol. We’re still waiting for the Lamictal to clear out completely, so that gives me some time to complete the human testing on myself with the fish oil project.
Wish me luck.
