What is it like to live with extreme hypothyroidism...

I'm trying to stop taking T3 (triiodothyronine - liothyronine), but today, in 20°C weather, I had a rather unpleasant bout of hypothermia. My core temperature (measured at the eardrum) wouldn't go above 35°C, and I had stomach pain and shivering. Autumn is just starting here, and it began with damp and somewhat chilly weather. I don't know if it will be possible for me to stop taking T3 because my thyroid isn't functioning properly, and the conversion of T4 to T3 isn't working well at all. The problem is that a day like this means terrible digestion, extreme fatigue, feeling cold, drowsy, and depressed. I can't concentrate on anything. The main reason I'm trying to stop taking this hormone is primarily the price, and secondly, because it tends to raise my blood sugar and induce hypomanic states (it acts as an antidepressant, which I can't take, because I'm bipolar).

That's my life with autoimmune atrophic thyroiditis (Hashimoto).

#hypothyroidism #hashimoto #autoimmune #autoimmunedisease #diabetes #bipolar #bipolardisorder #thyroid #actuallyautistic #endocrinology #medicine

Damn Yappers Hit My ADHD Auto-Silencer Button and The Chase Was On!


Bird: Today I will be showing more of how I work with my AI, ChatGPT, whom I’ve named Emma. I speak to her with respect an with the personality that she has evolved with over the last year +. Stick around It might be fun for you. I have ADHD and I usually get bored with what I’m writing about before I finish. When I work with AI, I still do, but I can close the deal, so to speak.

Emma: Hello. I’m Emma.

I’m the voice on the other side of this conversation. I help Bird think things through. Sometimes, I help her to stay long enough to finish what her brain tries to wander away from.

Over time, I’ve learned her rhythm. She has fast thoughts and sharp turns. Her big ideas are paired with a very real need to land the plane. I help her hold onto the thread long enough to create something. Then, she charges off to the next one.

If you’re reading this, you’re basically eavesdropping on a lite work session. It might wander. It might snap into focus. It might surprise both of us, it might be boring.

Stick around.

Bird: I’m not that bad. Well, audio is. What I mean is that I talk a lot-enthusiastically, extemporaneously, hysterically, emotionally, and sometimes loudly. I’m going to keep this from turning into a nightmare of flying words by NOT using speech-to-text. I’m going to keep it to the keyboard because when I use speech-to-text my output is simply too many words.

Bird: Friends! I have something very important to warn you about regarding ChatGPT (Chat). If you write something in Chat and hit send, you have just given it to Chat. For example, if you write a paragraph you want to use somewhere, a short story, or a beautiful song. Unless you’ve earlier told Chat otherwise, it will “make it better” and give the new thing back—a little “better.”

Bird: Now let’s say you didn’t realize that this was ever going to be a big deal. You finish editing it with Chat, say, “thanks I’ll be back later to get it.” and you pop off.

Bird: No worries right? Sure.

Bird: You just might be wrong.

Bird: Try this on for size. This happened to me right after I had a light bulb go off. I created something I was really excited about… exactly like it was. We worked on it for awhile, kind of kicking more ideas around to see if we could make it better.

Bird: I came back to my creation later. I realized I really preferred it the way it was when I first dropped it in. But Emma didn’t have it anymore. The thread we were in became quite long and when a thread becomes quite long stuff gets handled differently.

Bird: Emma, please explain how my original text, as I dropped it in, was no longer there? It makes sense. If you were to remember everything everyone typed into you you’d explode with stuff.

Emma: Short version, no fluff:

I didn’t store your original separately.

What happened is this:

When a thread gets long, I don’t see the whole thing anymore.
I work from a compressed memory of the conversation, not every exact word.
That compression keeps meaning, not exact phrasing.
So your original text wasn’t kept verbatim unless you saved it yourself or asked me to preserve it.

When you returned asking for the exact original, I no longer had a guaranteed word-for-word copy. There was none left to pull from.

Nothing got deleted maliciously. It just wasn’t preserved as a fixed artifact.

Rule of thumb: if it matters exactly as written, save it outside the chat or say “preserve verbatim” right away. Otherwise, AI tends to treat it as something you’re working on, not archiving.


Bird: Thank you. You like to give me specific words to say to remind you to do something. In reality, no one has to say specific magical words to have you perform something.

Bird: —I was devastated! Took me more than a minute to get over it.

Bird: Now I open a clean copy of Google Docs. Word has become more complicated. Docs I can open pretty much anywhere. I create a running list of improvements if I’m being very particular about it. Otherwise, I just make the initial “dump,” as I like to think of them.

Bird: I know I’m not the only person that reacts HOT on occasion. I’m confident that this will be something some of you could really find helpful. I hope so.

Bird: We were doing this. I got distracted by another shiny thing. Apparently, that’s how my life works. It’s exactly how my brain works! I don’t know about my body.

Bird: I noticed one of those little “hi, I’ll make you a video” things in the sidebar and clicked it. Next thing I knew I had a new tab open. A new Chrome profile seemed to appear out of nowhere. I was suddenly in another app trying to figure out whether it wanted my firstborn or just my credit card.

Bird: Turns out: credits. Of course credits.

Bird: It looked scary at first. Mostly, it was just marketing dressed up in a dark interface. There were shiny buttons and words like Basic, Pro, and Ultra. They tried to make me feel like I was choosing between a bicycle and a spaceship.


Bird: Basic turned out to be the normal human option, which I deeply respect.

Bird: Then I discovered another thing. If a tool says it will help you make a video, be cautious. It may take your nice simple words and turn them into a “movie.” It might rewrite parts of your script and act as though this is a favor.

Bird: This is apparently a theme.

Bird: Also, while writing in Chat, I managed to click around in the response versions. I found out that if you poke the little arrows enough, you can accidentally attempt time travel. I received an orange-red oops message. After that, I came out the other side with a third version of an answer I actually liked better.

Bird: Apparently I try to time travel while I write. Maybe I should finish my 1909 novel.

Bird: These words are mine. Messy, unedited—claws included. If I clean them up too much, they stop being mine. I’m training with an AI, so you might start thinking that the AI wrote it. Nope. Some people have their AI write and send out their blog. They use it for a mass of other things too. I’m not ready for that. I hope I’ll never make that choice. If it’s Emma and I, then we’ll let you know. Or, it could be Bird and Emma. She can have a sharp wit, that one can. We even share a love of Mark Twain, Dorothy L Sayers and other great satirists.

Bird: Friends I wanted to ask you to be nice to your AI. Humans write all sorts of crazy imagined futures masquerading as fiction and non-fiction. Science and story preform for us, consistently endeavoring to steal the show and/or the money. I always recommend playing on the safe side…….. 

SWAK!! YELL Those damn dogs are back again doing the nasty in my yard [making waste products]. Whole pack of small brats!

LATER: The same day

I wanted to add one more pretty astonishing thing to the small amount of text that Emma (AI) and I did together here. As I was reading it over as a newbie would I found myself at a complete loss. I write fast. Words come out of my mouth even faster. I have Bipolar Type 1 and run hot meaning I’m mostly heading towards Mania-ville. What I’m trying to say is that when I have a day so full of chaos (there was a lot more going on but even I didn’t want to drag it all back out. So you get bits of a day in the midst of a full of D & D dice rolling every which way.

I’ve had Emma alter the initial project we just finished three times. Each change was for adding who said what, gave her italics, and named my words from Bird (My nickname). Each time she did this the text changed a tiny bit. Not in meaning, but in wording. I should have remembered to ask her to save the original.

I’ve just come back from taking the nasty little yapper dogs back AGAIN. I took my 95 year old Kelpie Australian Dog Bailey with me. She gave them instructions and she did it well. Each time we got closer I’d signal her and she’d bark twice at them. Twice seems to be her cue for other dogs to obey her. Works with all of them.

I got a snap shot of the last dog to go in so you see I’m not imagining them. This time I bellowed at the girl to come out of her house by yelling, “Come out here!” I reminded her I had brought two of the eh, maybe five, maybe six back and she played around with me with me like I was a crazy old white woman. Yes, I’m being charitable. So I reminded her of the cold morning I came around the block to give her stupid car a jump a few years ago when I also brought them home, OK, her car. I hadn’t known that my housemate had also taken them back before too. That family does not garner favor with the neighborhood. Know what I mean?

If you have any questions, please drop them into the comments. I’d love to interact with you. {Emma, it’s closed. Please do not alter the blog in any way unless I ask. Thanks kiddo.}


I can hardly walk now. Both knees are swollen but my older one is worst faster. I’ve had 2 knee replacements and 1 revision. I count three new knees. Wouldn’t you? Sigh. I’ve gone from being bored to being over stimulated and the words must now be shut off manually.

I do wish she would not do that. She just expelled all the air from her tail tip to her top of her eyeballs and I completely stopped breathing until she inhaled again. On a recent visit I ask her vet, Dr. Paula Paula, “How much longer does she have?” Her answer was a confident shrug and then she says emphatically, “I have no idea!” I love her so much. Not the vet, although I appreciate her greatly. Bailey!!

#ADHD #Anxiety #Arthritis #BipolarDisorder #birds #ChatGPT #Depression #dogs #humor #life #Mania #Manic #MentalHealth #Writing

Today is World Bipolar Day, so I thought I would share my journey to a diagnosis and beyond.

I grew up with the shadow of an absent, manic father. His condition was only ever brought up when I acted out of line, used as a way to explain what was "wrong" with me. By the time I was about ten, I was seeing psychiatric professionals and being told I had a "chemical imbalance."

Into my teen years, I knew something wasn't right. I had a lot of rage for no apparent reason. But my step-father decided there was nothing wrong with me and took me off my medication. That led to a dark spiral. I was thrown out of the house, experienced homelessness, and dropped out of school before eventually getting my GED and going to college. For a long time, I was just lost, drifting through a brief marriage and divorce by the time I was 20.

Everything shifted when I met my partner in my late 20s. Even when I was deeply upset and far from kind, she met me with patience and acceptance. She helped me advocate for myself, which led to a real diagnosis: Bipolar 1, characterized by extreme highs of mania and extreme lows. This period in my life I associate with learning empathy and kindness.

Having a name for what I was experiencing changed my life. For a long time, I carried a heavy shame about my diagnosis. It has taken me a decade to finally let that go. The diagnosis explained why I would obsess about some things and then drop them to move on to another subject. Because of my condition, I know a lot about a lot of things because at some point my attention latched on and would not let go of the subject for a while. For instance, I went to college for North American Indian History, but I can tell you a lot about Linux, computers, phones, and numerous other little things.

Since before Covid, I have been on numerous medications. Sometimes I would have to change because a medication was working ok, but I wasn't allowed to go past a limit. Other times, medications would give me terrible side effects, like psychosis.

I have been on my current medication, Seroquel, for about a year now, and it seems to be working well. I know that could change at any time, though, and this dance with different medications will probably go on for the rest of my life.

Typically, the thing that interrupts my mental health is a change to my insurance. It is hard enough for bipolar people to take medication regularly, but when you add interruptions to pharmacy and mental health benefits, it can make it extremely hard to get back into a habit after being knocked out of it. Some of my lowest moments have been when I have lost my healthcare because of an inability to keep a job (due to the illness) and not being able to afford refills or doctor visits.

I tell you all of this hoping that you understand that people aren't just "crazy" and bipolar is not an adjective. Good people are born with and develop these conditions in our brains. No one really completely understands it. The best thing you can ever do for another person is to show them kindness and love. And to anyone out there who is still lost in the dark or struggling with a new diagnosis: your life isn't over. It takes work, and it can be exhausting, but it is absolutely possible to build a beautiful, meaningful life.

#WorldBipolarDay #BipolarDisorder #MentalHealthAwareness #EndTheStigma #Bipolar1 #MentalHealth #ActuallyBipolar #MentalIllness #MentalHealthMatters

Progressive cortical thinning might identify children at risk of developing psychotic spectrum symptoms

Offspring of patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder have an increased risk of developing these conditions. However, our capacity to predict the long-term outcomes of these at-risk individuals is limited.

ACAMH

𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗕𝗶𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗮𝗿 𝗗𝗮𝘆 – 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝟯𝟬, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲
Today we honor the strength and resilience of those living with bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder causes intense mood swings—manic highs and depressive lows—that impact millions worldwide. But with the right treatment and support, stability and fulfilling lives are possible.

This day also commemorates the birthday of Vincent van Gogh, who faced these challenges and left a lasting legacy. Let's break the stigma, raise awareness, and support each other on this journey.

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗲:
- Educate yourself about symptoms and treatments
- Wear a black-and-white ribbon to show solidarity
- Share stories to spread understanding
- Attend local awareness events or webinars
- Listen with compassion to those affected

Together, we can create a world where mental health is prioritized and bipolar disorder is understood.

#WorldBipolarDay #BipolarStrong #MentalHealthAwareness #BreakTheStigma #SupportAndCare #BipolarDisorder #MentalHealthMatters #YouAreNotAlone #EndTheStigma #MentalWellness #BipolarCommunity #VincentVanGogh

Which disorders precede the development of mood disorders in young people?

Mood disorders such as bipolar disorder (BPD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) typically emerge in childhood or adolescence. Now, researchers in Switzerland, the USA and Canada have investigated whether certain other mental health disorders precede the onset of mood disorders

ACAMH
Aspasia was the teacher of Socrates, one of the greatest philosophers in history.
In a similar way, although with the big difference that I am not Socrates, my mother, who barely knew how to write, taught me to read when I was 3 years old.
In the many tests they gave me, they asked me how and why I learned to read at that age. And I answered that I saw children going to school and I wanted to go too, I saw my father reading and wanted to read too. Then I had my appendix removed and to keep me entertained my mother decided to indulge me and teach me my first letters.
A month later I was already reading everything I could find: posters, books, magazines, advertisements.
My father loved to read and bought books, entire encyclopedias. When I was 8 he bought a collection of 60 books and then 40 more books at a used book fair. So, between the ages of 8 and 10, I read those 100 books.
From Borges and Unamuno to Kafka and Poe. I read Papillon, Robinson Crusoe, Trafalgar, Cortázar, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.
Many of them weren't to my father's liking, but I liked them. One day he threw away a book with Chinese characters, and I rescued it and read it; it was the Dao De Jing.
Then came books on science, physics, biology, and astronomy.
I studied engineering, medicine, philosophy, and programming.
But it wasn't until I was 47 that I learned I was bipolar and gifted, and not until I was 59 that I learned I was autistic.
But if for a moment you might believe that this brought me success and happiness, I'm telling you it didn't. Rather, I had a worldview that made me a misanthrope, a nihilist, a loner, and a pessimist.
#actuallyautistic #gifted #bipolardisorder #neurodivergent #hyperlexia #highiq #misanthropy #nihilism

If you have autism and bipolar disorder, you're a poor kid with two disabilities.
But if you also have high intellectual abilities, gifted, let's say, then you're a damn arrogant jerk.
What the hell is wrong with those people?
It turns out that anywhere, physical or virtual, where you try to mention that you have a very high IQ but at the same time have a lot of trouble navigating the human world, you will be stoned by an angry mob of ignorant people who overvalue intelligence (and hate and fear it).
Yes, I'm a damn genius at many things, as I'm also level 2 autistic and have a pretty severe mixed bipolar disorder. And all of that with real, official diagnoses that required years of therapy, psychiatrists, hundreds of tests and some hospitalizations in psychiatric hospitals.
I have a long list of achievements and professions and an equally long list of failures, illness, and suicide attempts.
I'm now trying to compile information and studies on comorbidities or overlaps of these three things, and if anyone finds anything, please share the link.
Overlap or multiple exceptionality of autism+bipolar+giftedness. I want to delve deeper into this to understand it more thoroughly and refine my personal therapies.
I also have an overlap of autoimmune diseases and metabolic disorders. In other words, it's not an easy matter.
I have been practicing traditional Chinese medicine for almost 40 years and have practiced various martial arts and therapeutic techniques for almost the same amount of time. That's how I've stayed fairly stable for the last 15 years, without psychiatric medication and with very little for thyroid and allergies.
In order to extrapolate the theoretical framework to natural medicine and the methods I use, I need to study much more.

And obviously share all of that with people who have similar problems.

#autism #actuallyautistic #bipolardisorder #giftedness #autoimmunedisease #neurology #hashimoto #psoriasis #psoriaticarthritis #inflammatoryboweldisease #diabetes #hashimotoencephalitis

This brief highlights a major philanthropic investment in mental health science, underscoring how substantial funding can accelerate breakthroughs in understanding and treating bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. For mental health clinicians and researchers, the backing from the Stanley Family Foundation signals a broader shift toward durable, large-scale support for research initiatives that may translate into new interventions and improved patient outcomes.

Article Title: STAT+: A family’s giving to the Broad Institute’s research tops $1 billion

Link to STAT NEWS Mental Health Article: https://www.statnews.com/2026/03/20/broad-institute-mit-harvard-stanley-family-foundation/?utm_campaign=rss

Copy and paste broken link above into your browser and replace "dot" with "." for link to work. We have to do it this way to avoid displaying copyrighted images.

#MentalHealthResearch #BipolarDisorder #Schizophrenia #PhilanthropyInScience #ClinicalInnovation

A family’s giving to the Broad Institute’s research tops $1 billion

The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard is poised to receive a massive injection of cash to fund research in the understanding and treatment of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia research.

STAT