@solobeee1

I already DO exercise - 30 minutes of pilates or walking daily and have been exercising my entire adult life, even through my pregnancy until the day before I went into labor. It hasn't helped the neuropathy. Maybe my anxiety some. I am off benzos and take fish oil which helps anxiety & minor depression a bit. I have done massage, acupuncture, physical therapy and they didn't make a noticeable difference, plus insurance didn't cover most of it so co-pays were a financial consideration. I'm not a health nut when it comes to diet, but my diet isn't horrible. I rarely eat fried foods and try to avoid greasy foods. I eat fresh fruits and vegetables, cheeses, healthy fats. Now, I'm not perfect so I will have lasgna or a piece of cake or a cookie, but I also dealt with anorexia when I was in college, and calorie counting or labelling foods as "bad" or completely off-limits is still triggering to me all these years later. My BMI is normal for my height. All my labs apart from folic acid and iron were normal.

However, bipolar disorder is a crazy disease. Some few people can manange without meds; for most of us without meds, it's even worse. I have bipolar I, the manic symptoms are more severe and can be devastating to your life & relationships - overspending, irritability, rash decisions (driving while manic), inability to concentrate, lack of sleep, well you can just google all the symptoms of mania. But worse, if my mania is not pulled into check quick enough I go into psychosis. During which I blackout 95% of the time for days on end (no memory AT ALL of that time) until treatment kicks in and spend the other 5% hallucinating usually that I am talking to God one on one and I know all the solutions to the universe and how to fix the world. The flipside of course is depression so severe I hate to think what would happen if we owned a gun. All of these mood episodes are severely destructive to my relationships with my husband and daughter. SEVERELY. Even WITH meds, I need tweaks, and no combination works for me over periods of longer than a year of two. Usually stress triggers my relapses. And some stress you just can't avoid. My latest manic episode was prepicitated by hurricane Beryl making landfall very close to where I live & massive power outages.

Sometimes meds are the only choice. And if the meds help both my bipolar and peripheral neuropathy, all the better.