An estimated 2.3 million Americans live with an emotional illness called bipolar disorder, according to Mental Health America. Scientists searching for the cause of bipolar disorder have noticed that levels of glutamine -- a basic component of your body's proteins -- seem to rise in the brain when bipolar patients enter manic states. If these findings are confirmed by more research, bipolar disorder would be associated with increased brain glutamine levels, not decreased glutamine levels. If you or someone you love has bipolar disorder, you may wish to monitor bipolar glutamine research, because the research might eventually come up with dietary changes for bipolar patients that would reduce the amount of glutamine in their diets.
Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, causes patients to experience unusual mood swings, from extremely elated to dangerously depressed, usually following a cycle of mania to normal moods to depression. As of 2011, there is no cure for the illness, although it usually can be controlled with medication and psychotherapy. The illness is hereditary, usually passing from parent to child, but the exact way in which abnormal genes that cause bipolar disorder alter the brain's normal functioning is still under study.
Glutamine
Glutamine is one of 20 amino acids, a group of chemically similar molecules that your body uses to make proteins. Your body needs proteins to make healthy skin, glands, organs and muscles. A University of Maryland Medical Center essay, "Glutamine," describes glutamine's many functions, including helping the brain to work normally. Your body makes some of the glutamine that you need; the rest comes from foods you eat, such as milk, yogurt, ricotta cheese, cottage cheese, beef, pork, poultry, raw spinach, raw parsley and cabbage. You can also ingest glutamine as a supplement, in the form of powder, capsules, tablets or liquid.
Bipolar Glutamine Research
A 2008 study by researchers at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts found that bipolar patients who were experiencing mania had higher levels of glutamine in their brains than schizophrenic patients who were psychotic and healthy control patients. A 2009 study done by scientists at the Catholic University College of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea, discovered that depressed bipolar patients who were given a chemical that lowered the glutamine levels in their brains, and a mood stabilizing drug recovered from depressions more quickly than a group of bipolar patients treated only with the mood stabilizer.
Glutamine Theory
Scientists are still trying to determine why glutamine levels in the brain are connected to bipolar disorder. Researchers at the Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University in Maharashtra, India proposed a theory in a paper published in April 2011. These scientists suggested that both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder might result from defective genes in the brain that direct the brain's cells to seek more glutamine than the brain actually needs, causing overproduction of glutamine, which in turn could cause schizophrenic psychosis and bipolar mania. More research will be needed to determine the precise relationship between brain glutamine levels and bipolar disorder before any dietary or medication changes can be recommended.
References
- Mental Health America: Bipolar Disorder and African-Americans
- National Institute of Mental Health: What Is Bipolar Disorder?
- University of Maryland Medical Center: Glutamine
- "Neuropsychopharmacology"; Decreased Glutamate/glutamine Levels; S.J. Yoon, et al.; June 2009
- "Biological Psychiatry"; Abnormal Glutamatergic Neurotransmission ... in Acute Mania; Dost Ongur, M.D., et al.; October 2008
- "Medical Hypotheses"; Unstable Genes Unstable Mind ...; M.V. Hegde, et al.; April 2011
