Here’s What You Need To Know About Mood Stabilizers
Mood stabilizers are a part of psychiatric medications used to treat the symptoms of depression, mania, hypomania, and bipolar disorder. Using such mood stabilizing supplements turn out to be effective in the course of treating severe or acute disease conditions.
However, their normal prescribed dosage prevents frequent episodes of anxiety, stress, and mood swings. In short, mood stabilizers or brain supplements recover the patient’s normal mental functions and drive the random state of mind towards emotional regulation.
However, if you want to treat any of the symptoms related to emotional dysregulation using mood stabilizers, you need to know their primary mechanism of action, available types, and all the possible side effects.
What Are Mood Stabilizers?
Mood stabilizers refer to a group of medications or supplements used to prevent severe disease symptoms and poorly regulated emotional responses in the states of depression, mania, hypomania, and bipolar disease.
Depression is a common mental disorder characterized by the persistent feelings of being lost, sad, and alone without wishing for any kind of pleasure. The use of mood stabilizers to treat depressive symptoms reduces the abnormal activity of the brain and suppresses the production level of stress hormones. As a result, the depressed patient feels mental satisfaction and calmness.
Mania or a manic episode is the state of sudden alleviated emotions either aggression, excitement, anger, or sadness that persists for a certain period of time. The manic episodes could be shorter or longer depending upon the lifestyle of the victim.
Most of the time, sudden shock, long-term stress and anxiety, disturbed sleep cycle, and the over-consumption of antidepressant drugs cause frequent manic episodes. The intake of calming supplements relaxes the stressed nerves and calms down the raised level of stress hormones and so, reducing the extreme mood shifts.
Hypomania is associated with a similar group of symptoms as mania but is less intensive and sudden.
Bipolar disorder is a condition in which a patient behaves abnormally under different conditions and usually shows two kinds of behaviors contrasting healthy individuals. In bipolar disorder, the victim experience prolonged manic and depressive episodes that affect the mental health and cognitive agility of the patient. Mood stabilizing agents also relieve intense mood shifts and manic episodes by reducing the abnormal activity of neuronal secretions.
Types Of Mood Stabilizers
Mood stabilizing supplements come in a variety of chemical compositions intended to treat a particular group of symptoms related to a disease. The broad kinds of mood stabilizers include lithium, anticonvulsants, antipsychotics, valproate, lamotrigine, and carbamazepine.
Lithium
An appropriate dosage of lithium proves to be effective in treating long-term mania episodes. The recommended dose of lithium varies depending on how often you get manic attacks or how severe they could be.
Lithium-based medications come in both liquid and tablet forms. In liquids, lithium is present in the form of lithium citrate whereas tablets contain lithium carbonate. Till now, lithium is considered the best mood reliever and has proven effects against aggression and sudden mood swings.
However, some of the patients also reported milder side effects of lithium such as fatigue, headache, nausea, and muscle cramping.
In order to get desired outcomes, couple your lithium medication with the high level sodium diet.
Anticonvulsants
Anticonvulsants are a group of drugs that work by controlling the abnormal activities of the brain. These drugs are mainly recommended for epileptic attacks and Alzheimer. However, their proper dosage can also treat the group of symptoms related to bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, and severe mood shifts. Most of the time, doctors recommend anticonvulsants to calm down manic episodes.
However, the over-dosage of anticonvulsants can also cause temporary or long-term side effects including dry mouth, constipation, diarrhea, and dizziness.
Avoid usage of alcohol while taking the course of anticonvulsants.
Antipsychotic Drugs
Antipsychotic drugs comprise a number of drugs used to treat psychiatric disorders including depression, mania, hypomania, bipolar personality, and mood swings. These drugs alter the functioning of specific neurotransmitters and thus relieve psychotic symptoms.
Dopamine and serotonin are major neurotransmitters involved in the psychotic phenomenon. Like other mood stabilizers, antipsychotic drugs also pose some undesirable side effects including drowsiness, mild tremors, restlessness, and blurred vision.
Similarly, the use of valproate, lamotrigine, and carbamazepine also has proven activity against mood swings while triggering some side effects such as delusions, dry mouth, constipation, tremors, and nausea.