[Anjae]

Interesting about the protein.

I read that psychiatry is the only field of medicine where doctors don't examine the organ they study.

To my knowledge, yes. A handful of psychiatrists will have the decency of request brain scans and blood samples, but not many. Blood samples will allow, for example, to see if someone thyroid levels are normal or not. If not, thyroid problems can cause many symptoms that are associated with mental illness.

Even GPs, who, as the name say, are general practitioners, request all sorts of tests. Psychiatrists, not really. They go by what shows, what the patient and those around the patient tells them, rather than look deeper.

Neurologists, on the other hand, examine the organ they study/work with. In fact, in my opinion, neurologists should be the ones dealing with mental illness. But they are not. Or mostly not. Some psychiatric teams include a neurologist, but not all/not always. In a way, psychiatry is still very late XIX century/early XX century.

The knowledge about the brain exists and is public, it just seems that psychiatrists still haven't catch up with the times.

My H's job, is to figure out how the brain works. Seriously. And sadly, he doesn't realize that something is not quite right in his head.

That is some irony. How sad.

[Velika]

I think I am going to take a new approach and contact the authors of these articles. Like many others on this thread in particular, I believe there is a neurological/biophysical reason for what we are observing, and that the specific family issues that come up are secondary to this loss of brain regulation — or in fact simply a repeat of previous episodes of same illness in other family members.

Watching MLC unfold is both horrifying and I have to admit fascinating. It makes you really wonder how the brain works and what is going on. Perhaps others on this thread have done so already, but I think it would be interesting to approach researchers and ask them how their work on the brain might apply to sudden changes in midlife. Since MLC seems quite similar to bipolar, BPD, and major depression these are likely good areas of research to focus on.

For what it's worth. I hate to feel I am helplessly standing by in all this. I appreciate all the research others here have done on this complex topic.

[Thunder]

V, it really is fascinating.

I know my H's crisis had a lot to do with his hormones.
I think I told you I even saw him having hot flashes the first 2 years or so.

I know a hot flash when I see it, it's obvious.
I had mind ones but I also have friend's who had them pretty bad.  The redness would creep up from their chest, to their neck, to their face and they would start sweating.  My H did that exactly.

I once told him he was probably having a hot flash and he said...well, I'm having something.  He started wearing shorts to work, in the winter!

I would observe him while he slept on the couch sometimes.  He would get all flushed and it would wake him up, tearing his shirt off.

I'm like you, I did some research and men can in fact have hot flashes due to low hormone levels just like we can.
So even though my H had a pretty bad childhood I truly think his crisis was more hormonal.
Just my opinion, of course.

[Roma]

I don't know if this fits here  yet I've noticed my H body has changed, as far as looking like a teenager, as well as his voice is changing/cracking. Is this normal for a 40 something year old man having a MLC?

[Velika]

Elegance, I experienced exact same. In the fall he would get upset and yell at me with a very throaty voice, just as you describe. Even my therapist told me that some of the things he said sounded like words of a teenager. ("You didn't want me so I found someone who did!" "Do you even want to know me?")

Has anyone on this thread researched what happens to teenage male brains during adolescence? If this is also a time of hormonal fluctuation it makes sense that mental illness that often appear in male adolescence could theoretically suddenly appear in midlife.

Considering it, almost all of my husband's FOO issues have to do with mental illness and behaviors as a result of adults in their 40s abandoning the family.

To chronicle, in my experience and from some limited observations of celebrity MLC:

Pre bomb drop: Intense exercise, weight loss.
Bomb drop: Glowing, vital, "manic."
Post bomb drop (four months) Rapid aging, sullen or "dementia" appear to eyes.
Post bomb drop (eight+ months): Puffy appearance, tense expression, vacant look.

[Thunder]

It only makes sense.  Their hormones are changing in their teen years and they are changing as well in midlife.
Difference is in youth the hormones are raging, in midlife they are waning.

I guess I get the aging thing, to a certain point.  No one enjoys getting old.  I certainly didn't, but somewhere down the line you have to accept it.  You can stay active and healthy but you are never going to be 20 again.  No matter what you do.  My H even said one day, I can work out every day and keep in shape but my body will never look like a 20 year old boy.  Their skin and their natural muscles are just different.  Of course it took him a couple of years to realize that.  lol

Your hair will gray, you skin will wrinkle, your body is aging.
These men (well mostly men...sorry guys) think by being with a young woman it will reflect on them.  It won't.  It could make them feel younger, and I can understand that (youthful energy, firm bodies), but it's not going to make them look any younger.  In the end their still the same age and their still aging.

There just is no fountain of youth.   Gosh darn it!   

[Ready2Transform]

It only makes sense.  Their hormones are changing in their teen years and they are changing as well in midlife.
Difference is in youth the hormones are raging, in midlife they are waning.

THIS! Bookends of their most 'vital' years (not that it's all downhill from midlife, but it's not called "the change" for no reason. ). Plus the dopamine/serotonin changes that are apparently the root of most identity-related disorders, increase in cortisol from stress, etc. Post-crisis I actually feel quite level headed and 'youthful', but it's a different feeling than it was in the thick of it when I was like an emo teen.

[osb]

Velika, just for giggles, I went to read the source article for that interesting news report about the brain protein that goes awry in bipolar disorder. Caveat lexor. The protein the scientists were looking at has a very tenuous connection to bipolar disorder, at best. Mostly they were looking at proteins that affect brain cell structure (in mice, who don't really get manic depressive - or at least, who would know if they did??), did some quite lovely studies on the molecular organization of synapses, and concluded with a leap in the dark toward clinical application, by raising the possibility that this could (perhaps, maybe) play a role in bipolar pathology.

Anjae, I feel this is precisely the reason we have psychiatrists, in addition to researchers. I say this humbly as a researcher. I study cell structure myself, I know well these leaps in the diagnostic dark - you're obliged to make 'em to get anyone else in the universe interested in your favorite molecule... but as you would know better than many, there's a huge gap between brain structure and function, and we're all more complex than the sum of our parts. There are things psychiatrists do understand about how the brain works from watching and listening, that can't be seen by pulling the brain up by its roots (or from blood tests). FWIW I'm confident MLC will be better understood once the peculiar stigma attached to this diagnosis lessens (schadenfreude on the part of middle aged docs and researchers, perhaps?), and people treat it like any other disorder of the mind, a puzzle to be solved.

....climbing off scientific soapbox now.... oof.

[Upintheair]

I am just curious: anyone tired to put hormone (testosteron??) secretly in their H's food?

[Velika]

OSB, thank you for looking that up. I was so interested in the story that I looked up proteins, the brain, and testosterone. I guess it is reassuring that there are actual medical professionals on here baffled by MLC -- as well as brain researchers suffering from it.

I hope you are right about it becoming better understood. Maybe it is like postpartum or infertility and just needs more people to talk about it.

Up, I don't live with my husband and he expressed paranoid fear I would spike his food with magic mushrooms soon after bomb drop. Do you think the testosterone would help?