Lithium and A Big Head

Posted on June 9, 2010 in Mania Psychotropics

Descriptions of mania done by the performance artists we all turn into when the waves of emotion overwhelm us can include hands going to our temples with the cry “It feels like my head is going to explode!” Theatricality reveals truth if we observe what researchers have discovered in the course of revealing why lithium works to bring us down:

Inflammation in the brain, like other parts of the body, is an important process to help the brain combat infection or injury. However, excess or unwanted inflammation can damage sensitive brain cells, which can contribute to psychiatric conditions like bipolar disorder or degenerative diseases like Alzheimers.

It’s believed that lithium helps treat bipolar disorder by reducing brain inflammation during the manic phase, thus alleviating some of the symptoms….rats given a six-week lithium treatment had reduced levels of arachidonic acid and its products, which can contribute to inflammation.

In addition, they also demonstrated, for the first time, that lithium treatment increased levels of a metabolite called 17-OH-DHA in response to inflammation. 17-OH-DHA is formed from the omega-3 fatty acid DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and is the precursor to a wide range of anti-inflammatory compounds known as docosanoids

I doubt that I ever told any professional about the sense of puffiness or bloating that I felt when I was manic. My head felt like a balloon. My emotions drafted up on winds of madness. Pressure in the temples and at the back of the skull marked the episodes, pressure that was without pain. I did not experience head aches, but I often wondered if there was a tumor growing. Would the sutures of my skull hold against this force? There was always a sense of living just before a great pop. I had to get thoughts realized, I had to display the great zepellin of my imagination before it was too late. That Hindenburg of consciousness was always aware that there would come a precipitous meeting with the docking tower, a ruin of my mind in depression.

If I am not imagining this, then I have discovered for myself an important, physical sign of mania.