삼성서울병원

Bipolar disorder (previously known as manic depression) carries the highest risk of suicide as a single disease. In psychopathologic terms, the main culprit behind the tragic suicides of high-profile celebrities is thought to be bipolar disorder, not depression.

In fact, the disorder is emerging as one of the more serious social problems, as it often turns out that many perpetrators of random crimes these days could be diagnosed as bipolar. Today, I am going to tell you about it.

Stretching your body properly before and after exercise is extremely important. This warm-up time prevents physical injuries by relaxing your muscles and joints. Lifting weights without stretching can damage your ligaments, joints or muscles.

Body parts such as your waist, shoulders or knees need to be stretched enough as they bear a considerable weight during weight-lifting. Also, post-workout stretches are a must to relieve tight muscles and avoid possible muscle pain.

Consider that you may be in your manic period when for over a week you get excited, nervous, and much more active, and show more than three of the following symptoms.

1. ① Have far too much pride, or exaggerated confidence.
2. ② Have less desire for sleep; you feel three hours of sleep per night is enough.
3. ③ Become more talkative than usual, and find yourself talking endlessly.
4. ④ Experience a fast train of ideas and have relentless thinking on a continuous basis.
5. ⑤ Get distracted easily by unnecessary external stimuli.
6. ⑥ Start new things without proper consideration and find yourself too active or nervous to complete them.
7. ⑦ Loss of self-control, concentrating too much on pleasure and doing things that may result in unfavourable and painful situations, such as uncontrolled shopping-sprees, reckless sex, and imprudent business investments.

If for more than two weeks you demonstrate more than five of the following symptoms (① or ② must be included).

1. ① Feel depressed for most of the day.
2. ② Have no interest in anything at all.
3. ③ Lose appetite and start to experience a decrease in weight (or have too much appetite and gain weight).
4. ④ Can’t get enough sleep (or get too much sleep).
5. ⑤ Speed of thought and physical movement becomes slow (or you find yourself disoriented and anxious).
6. ⑥ Feel exhausted and powerless.
7. ⑦ Everything seems valueless, and you start to feel guilty for that.
8. ⑧ Feel as if your brain has stopped working, and cannot concentrate. You can’t make any decisions at all.
9. ⑨ Feel like dying, and keep thinking of death or suicide.

Bipolar disorder is a disease of the brain caused by undesirable issues in neurotransmitters, activity levels of brain cell circuits, or an imbalance in hormones. The occurrence and intensity of the disorder are closely related to changes in your stress level and biorhythm. A general biorhythm is based on a single cycle.

In general, women are most vulnerable to depressive periods at some point in their menstrual cycle (usually about a week before the menses), after giving birth to a child, or during their menopause when hormonal changes occur. These are called premenstrual syndrome, postnatal depression, and menopausal depression respectively.

Changes in season (in particular in the amount of sunshine) are also closely related to bipolar disorder. Although in the Northern hemisphere we have the least amount of sunshine during the winter, we are more vulnerable to depression from late autumn to early winter than in mid-winter, as this is when daytime gets shorter and changes in the amount of sunshine really occur. In Korea, we should also take extra care during the rainy season in July, because sunlight gets even scarcer during this time of the year than in winter.