Okay, Wizzywig, you've asked a phenomenal question, and I'll try to help you with what I know that has worked for me and others:

1. Find out if you have a sensitivity to caffeine by eliminating chocolate, coffee, and tea from your diet for 2 weeks. If you begin to feel better, chances are you have a sensitivity to them and you should remove them from your diet. Such a sensitivity can emulate bipolar illness. See DoctorYourself.com/ruthwhalen Go down the left-hand column until you see the article called "caffeine allergy" and click it. (That will awaken some careful thinking.)

2. Try hard to eliminate sugar; it's addictive and causes cravings; in fact, it acts
on the same portion of the brain that heroin does--the opiate sensors that can crave
heroin. Read Dr. Kathleen DesMaisons work called "Radiant Recovery" in which she
rewrites and enhances her first work called "Potatoes, Not Prozac". It's all about
sugar sensitivity and what the symptoms are for those who become addicted to it
and, more importantly, how to recover from the addiction.

3. Watch your intake of grains. I have read one doctor's report that bipolar patients have a severe grain allergy. Recently, Dr. William Davis has published a book about this problem, identifiying it as a gluten allergy (often referred to as Celiac disease, but it goes much further into problems for the brain than Celiac disease).

4. Drink purified water. So many cities have water that is treated with chlorine,
and your system needs pure water to help metabolize all the things that we give
it daily to digest.

5. Cut a lemon in half and squeeze it into an 8-ounce glass of cold water when you
have excess acidity--coming from med residue which is always acidic. If one lemon isn't enough to calm the system, about 4 hours after the first one, squeeze the second lemon into cold water. That ought to re-establish calm for your emotions.

The lemon, while it is highly acidic in taste, becomes one of the most alkaline foods we can ingest when it is subjected to being metabolized. That reduces the acidity that we build by taking medications and by having too much acid-reacting foods in the American or Western diet.

5. Ice ream is a double whammy for anyone who has bipolar illness or depression.
It's the milk (which is really only a perfect food for calves); it has sugar, which is
highly addictive, and the milk itself contains lactose, another sugar. We're getting
a bad deal by using ice cream, according to my psychiatrist. It is digested as acidic, and the body fluids and tissues need to be slightly more alkaline than acidic. (Look
at the lists of foods which are alkaline-reacting and those which are acid-reacting.
See Alkaline Foods. com and Acid foods.com for information.

6. Cut off your TV and your computer a couple of hours before bedtime. The light
from the screens of both can cut back on the melatonin which your pineal gland makes once late afternoon begins and turns into night. If you watch things that emit light during the hours just before bedtime, your body will slow its production of melatonin, and you may have difficulty getting to sleep.

Do some helpful reading about the benefits of vitamins A, B, (the whole series), C,
D3, E, and the use of fatty acids 3,6,and 9 which are anti-inflammatory and help
preserve calmness of the system.

Then get a very good probiotic that will create healthy digestion. (A far greater
percentage of neurotransmiiters are in the digestive tract than in the brain, so you
need to make sure that your digestive system is getting all the benefits from whole
foods and correct balance of flora.)

That's enough to keep you busy long enough and engaged enough with activity to
improve your feeling-tone.

It does work if you become conscientious about wanting to improve your feelings.

Add exercise to that and you have an unbeatable combination to improve your health and especially your emotional status.

Take care and good wishes.