Julie A. Fast checks in while on a trip to England and explains how she shifted her sleep patterns while still in the United States to adjust to a different time zone.
Whether you’re traveling close to home or around the world, regulating sleep is the number one way to keep the mood swings to a minimum in order to enjoy the most benefit from any form of travel.
Julie created a plan to change her circadian rhythm slowly in order to keep her bipolar disorder under control once she was in a new country. It’s not always possible to make as big a change as Julie describes, but even a shift of one hour can make a difference. People with bipolar disorder can travel and see the world!
For more from Julie, click here.
Julie A. Fast uses her extensive research and personal experience to offer strategies for managing bipolar disorder. Read more in this Q&A about how her insights can guide confident management and deepen our understanding of this brain-based illness. Julie A. Fast is a recognized authority in the mental health field. She is known for her...
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I like Julie Fast’s ways of coping with time changes and everything.
Sometimes I rapid-cycle and all I can do is warn everybody about what I’m going through.
Do any of you suffer anxiety along with your bi-polar?
My anxiety causes me to blackout-but I look fine, I cooperate and go through the motions, but find myself missing large periods (days) of time.
Does anyone have any ideas of how to handle this?
Uh… not sure I have bp disorder, but I do have a sleep disorder. What you neglected to mention, is HOW does one do this? Supposing one has Delayed Phase Sleep Disorder, for example? Did you do it w/ Melatonin, or what? Doctors have given up on me… I would love to go to bed earlier, but physically can’t. Oh well… have fun! Guess travel is out for me…
Hello WonderingHow. You can search under the term sleep in the search engine for the blog and find my articles and blogs on how I finally turned around a massive sleep issue. I still struggle, but as of now, I’m able to fall asleep on most nights without sleep meds. It’s mostly about trigger management for me. What I do leading up to sleep matters. The Bp Hope webpage is filled with tips on sleeping better. Bipolar disorder is basically a sleep disorder, so the more we can manage our sleep, the better we can manage the illness. Julie Here is a recent article on sleep from the magazine. http://www.bphope.com/hope-harmony-headlines-bipolar-sleep-problems-and-solutions/
Julie
Such discipline and wisdom my friend! I try to keep your word in mind when I travel for work. Although it doesn’t always make sense to others, I know it’s very important for me to keep a consistent sleep schedule and to get enough sleep.
I love seeing you in that backdrop! 🙂
Jon Press
Last year I was diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnoea and put on a CPAP machine to sleep, it has totally messed me up I’ve had episodes of mania and mixed episodes which I haven’t had since being on lithium (2009) now I’m all over the place, also there is no communication between the sleep clinic and my psychiatrist, drugs that the psychiatrist is prescribing is making the O.S.A. worse therefore making bipolar worse. I’m at my wits end, as for travelling NO WAY!!
Staying on track with sleep is absolutely critical to my staying stable. So much so, that I have ruled out travelling for the rest of my life. My being stable is so much more important than any trip could ever be. If I do ever decide that I want to travel out of my time zone, this is helpful.