I’m hypo again.

Had difficulty getting to sleep last night, my brain was far too busy thinking!

Future thinking, which for me is always pleasant, but can at times be somewhat irritating, especially when laying in bed trying to sleep at two o’clock in the morning approaching 48hrs with only three hours sleep.

My body was aching; desperate for a chance to regenerate a few dieing and indeed dead cells, and all my brain could do was say: ‘Sod You! I have an idea and I’m gonna visualise and plan it in every single detail.’

Luckily for me the idea is nothing out of the ordinary, and apart from a little planning, will be relatively easy to pull off and indeed be great fun.

But still, it would have been much more helpful for me to go to sleep last night rather than future thinking. Ho, hum.

Anyway, the subject of today’s post (and with grateful thanks to Rianna for inspiring the writing of it) is the term ‘hypomanic‘ and its definition, as I now believe some clarification is in order.

Firstly, for those who don’t know, hypo- and hyper- are in fact two different prefixs and as such when talking about being hypomanic, I am not, in effect, simply referring to being hypermanic and spelling it wrong.

The prefixs are different. In fact ‘hypermania’ doesn’t actually exist, and you’ll see why later in this post.

So hypo- versus hyper-

Well they are probably best described as the medical equivalants of the Latin prefixes ‘sub‘ meaning ‘under, close to‘ and ‘super‘ meaning ‘above, beyond‘.

So we have hypo- from the Greek ‘hupo‘ meaning ‘under, below‘ and hyper- from the Greek ‘huper‘ meaning ‘over, beyond‘.

Now this is pure supposition but I’m guessing we use these Greek meanings in medicine as opposed to their Latin equivalents because Hippocrates, the 4th century BC father of medicine was Greek.

Okay, two examples:

The first being about your thyriod, the gland in your neck that controls how quickly your body burns energy, makes proteins, and how sensitive your body should be to other hormones.

Now, there are medical conditions know as hypothyroidism which is abnormally low activity of the thyroid gland, and hyperthyroidism which is abnormally high activity of the thyroid gland.

Another example is that of blood sugar levels. A deficiency of glucose in the bloodstream is referred to as hypoglycemia, whilst an excess of glucose in the bloodstream (often associated with diabetes) is refered to as hyperglycemia.

I am sure you’ll be familiar with the ‘hypodermic needle’ often contracted to just ‘hyperdermic’; This, of course, is a needle used for administering a drug under (hypo) the skin (dermic – from the modern Latin, suggested by ‘epidermis‘).

And I’m sure you’ll know of hyperactivity as in ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – any of a range of behavioral disorders occurring primarily in children, including such symptoms as poor concentration, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.)

In fact, we are so familiar with the term ‘hyperactive’, that it is usually just referred to in its contracted form: ‘hyper’; so much so that we refer to anyone getting overexcited as simply being hyper.

Anyway, hopefully now you can understand the ‘sub-, below, under, deficient, low, down, sub-‘ meaning of ‘hypo’ and the ‘super-, above, over, excess, high, up‘ meaning of ‘hyper‘.

And therein lies some confusion since:

a) I often refer to being ‘low/high’ or ‘down/up’ in terms of my mood swings (bipolarity) meaning of course depression and (for me, hypo-) mania.

and

b) I often refer to my brain as being ‘over-active’, which can be confused with being ‘hyperactive’, and since the term ‘hyper’ is actually a contraction but now a recognised word in itself and thus far more widely known than the prefix hypo-, this could also be causing confusion since when I say I am, or, am going, ‘hypo’ I do not mean ‘hyper’

And just to finish off and referring back to the inaccurate term ‘hypermania’ at the beginning of this post, since mania is indeed at the top of the mood scale, with depression being the bottom, you can’t technically go above ‘mania’ so the term hypermanic doesn’t exist.

I go to hypomania, ie a level ‘below’ mania.

And as an aside, in my research for this post I have just read online a rather interesting analogy to help you understand what is happening with my brain.

I often refer to Bipolar Disorder as being mood swings between two (bi) poles (think of the North Pole and the South Pole, ie two opposite ends) on a scale between 0 (at one end, ie depression) and 10 (the opposite end, ie mania) where most people experience life in terms of mood swings between the levels of 4.5 and 5.5.

Well, an easy way to picture this is to use the ‘processing speed’ of the brain.

Lets say most peoples’ brains operate in the speed range of 45mph to 55mph with 50mph being the norm (I am simply using ‘mph’ – miles per hour – as measurement of ‘speed’.) ie if you are sad and pissed off your brain would be going at 45mph and if you were happy and excited it would be going at about 55mph.

Well my brain operates at any where between 5mph (with 0mph being dead, obviously) and about 75mph.

I am Bipolar II where (in this analogy) around 70-80mph is refered to as hypomania ie ‘below’ mania. With someone who experiences full blown mania their brain would be processing things at the speeds of up to 100mph. (I have done this, though thankfully only because of a reaction to the wrong medication. I’d really hate to experience this as a normal part of my cycle.)

And just for your information you may well have gathered that my brain is currently rattling around in my head at about 70mph! (And those of you who saw me last week will appreciate the difference, since I was then struggling to get above 20mph.)

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So there you go, prehaps a rather convoluted and over complicated explanation of the term ‘hypomania’ and the confusion I may have caused in using it, but seeing as I’m rather hypomanic at the moment I tend to write like this, so there!

Oh and my darling 50mph Rich (its our 13th anniversary today) has just remined me that I haven’t eaten at all today and maybe perhaps I’d better stop writing and eat some breakfast or indeed lunch instead!

Right, food, well in minute maybe; I have another post or two to write first….

PS: Thank you, Rianna.