Omega 3 Fatty Acids in Bipolar Disorder Many people have a bipolar disorder and many don’t even know it. Those who do know try to treat it and sometimes, it gets really frustrating. In the experiment, they tried see how the patients would react if they took 9.6 g/d ω3 fatty acids or placebo, which is basically olive oil. This was tested on 30 patients with the bipolar disorder for 4 months. The goal in this study was to stabilize patients that have an unstable bipolar disorder.

Experiment The experiment was a 4-month, parallel-group, placebo-controlled, double-blind pilot study in which outpatients with bipolar disorder were randomly going to receive ω3 or placebo. The patients in this study were 18 to 65 year old of age who have bipolar disorder (type 1 or 2) and had to at least be in 1 manic or hypomanic episode in the last year so there is a higher chance that it may happen again. Many of these patients had rapid-cycling bipolar disorder, which is when the patient experiences four or more episodes of mania or depression in one year. Sometimes, these episodes can last for a very long time depending on how it is treated but it isn’t permanent. They allowed the patients to continue with their psychiatrist or psychotherapist, but there was no new psychotherapy treatment in this experiment. They also continued to receive the medication from when they started the experiments. The patients received identical gelatin capsules concentrated with ω3 fatty acids or placebo. Each capsule of ω3 fatty acids contained 440 mg of eicosapentanoic acid and 240 mg of docosahexanoic acid, which was vacuum deodorized and supplemented with tertiary-butylhydroquinone. Three patients developed side