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Bipolar Husband Changes His Diet

Posted by David B. and Dianne Hansen | August 15, 2008 .

In the world today, there are millions of people who have a particular kind of chemical imbalance in their brains. We know it as bipolar disorder or manic depressive illness. My husband is one of those.

I’m happy to say that from the beginning of our marriage, he cooperated with me as far as strategies for minimizing his (our!) bipolar experiences in life. The first area of concern that needed his cooperation was diet. Our bodies are made of what we eat! Our brains’ chemistries are affected by our food.

You may not believe that.

So why don’t you put it to the test! After experimentation over the years, my husband and I recommend the following dietary standards:

  • move away from white flour, white sugar, processed foods, coffee, all caffeine, all sodas, all substitute chemical sweeteners, all substitute fats
  • emphasize fresh, wholesome fruits and vegetables, eaten separately from each other
  • eat veggies with good quality meat
  • eat your meat by 2:00p.m. each day, not any later
  • eat veggies with bread that’s whole grain
  • eat fruit alone
  • don’t drink store-bought juices

Those are enough suggestions at first. If you will follow those basic guidelines and establish new dietary habits (takes a month or so), you will be amazed how your body responds.

I will always mention our life-lines, our antioxidant juices. They’ve literally brought my husband out of his bipolar daze (sudden lack of energy, mumbly speech, seeming to go off into another world…) within 15 minutes, each time we’ve resorted to this fix. Our two favorite juices are:

There are so many people who know little or nothing about managing bipolar disorder with dietary changes and other things that I’ll be mentioning as time goes along… Our new book Bipolar Love Story will give you innovative and immediately usable ideas for managing bipolar disorder.

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