Food allergies/celiac disease and mental health

[larkasaur]

I probably have celiac disease (an autoimmune disease triggered by eating gluten), also many delayed-onset food allergies. 

The delayed-onset food allergies are related both to celiac disease and to being otherwise allergic. 

I had a psychological revolution from eliminating gluten and other foods that made me sick after I did a hypoallergenic elimination diet followed by food challenges. 

Here's a description: 

I had spent my life in dreams. My feelings and thoughts were very loud, calling me to pay more attention to them than to objective reality. My vision was ensouled - my abstract perceptions, my emotional thoughts were also visual perceptions. My feelings were alive in my vision, as small almost-hallucinations, as if my vision were permeated with something transparent that moved and sometimes formed shapes that were feelings. Out on walks, I had an unpleasant, compulsive fascination with graphics, posted announcements, art - as if there might be something very interesting, or it was something I needed to see - but I was annoyed to have to look, too. I was very tense; little things would upset me a lot and my back would get terribly tense, and I could only relax after hours in a hot bath. My mind translated the muscle tension as rage, and I was angry a lot of the time. I had spells of despair, I would cry and cry and wonder if my life was ever going to get any better. I felt like killing myself, often. I had a waiting room in my mind, where my words would have to sit in a state of unease before I let them out of my mouth.

When I finally quit gluten and the other foods, after half a lifetime, it was as if I'd had a tree growing in my mind, with its roots tangled everywhere, and it was pulled out. I could FEEL that my mind was fundamentally changing.

It was a giant relief from anxiety. I don't have to forge through a crystallized cloud of anxiety, that chattering static of anxiety that used to be around me all the time, to do little things. My words glide out as if they were slipping out of my mind, past the little mental hands I used to parcel out my words with. I don't control my actions as much either. I'm more stable, because the world isn't always coming in and exciting me emotionally - so now I look for stimulation in the outside world. My vision is just vision, less interesting than when it was so decorated with my feelings. My "deep" rage, my simmering unfocused anger, vanished as if someone had waved a wand at it. I let go of resentments more than I used to; I've been able to do things I couldn't before, because I accept that bad things might happen. I'm not as vulnerable - my new calmness shields me. I'm much more realistic. My despair went away. I'm sure that wasn't just because I had found answers, because I only stopped having those terrible spells of crying despair after 2005, when I found more food intolerances that had been hidden.

It hurts less to be alive, now. The food intolerances caused me psychic - pain - so that I tried to get vicarious satisfaction from other people's pleasures. I was horribly abused as a child, and I thought this was the explanation of all my problems before I found my food intolerances. An ex-boyfriend used to tell me that I was wrong to think my pain was so much worse than other people's - but I know that was a true perception, because although I'm still an abuse survivor, it hurts much less than it did. Some of the power that the abuse had to limit my life, the dark, hating demon-souls of my parents that occupied my mind, the primitive voltage of their gaze, turned out to be gluten-caused hypersensitivity. I can enjoy math and physics more or less in peace, even though my father taught them to me with screaming and raging insults, because my memories are quieter now. I used to feel like a Martian, like a visitor to this planet, a stranger drifting through the human race. And that was also true. I really was different. My consciousness was different from other people's. I feel like a person, now. I'm less a bare wire, needily wanting contact and comfort from people, yet over and over struck by flashes of hostility, like a lightning-charred tree.

Hypersensitivity, dreaminess, feelings infused with vision, vision infused with feelings, the past very close to the present - all could have the same cause. Maybe food intolerance causes neurotransmitters to change so that there's more communication inside one's brain.

I also got more alert, more "with it", quicker. My chronic slight fog lifted. I used to see people through the picture I had of how they ought to act, which was based on my emotional needs. Now I realize I'm interacting with social, emotional creatures: subjective, clothed apes.

 

I also had "reactive hypoglycemia" for 25 years, which disappeared after I stopped eating foods that I had these delayed-onset food allergies to.  It seems that because of my body trying to suppress the allergic reaction, I had a lot of anxiety after eating "fast" carbs such as sugar, and a lot of depression. 

 

Has anyone else around here had psychological / psychiatric / neurological improvements from quitting foods?

[Chimako]

Yes because I had low vitamin B from malabsorption. 

[Guest]

I had a friend who had undiagnosed celiac disease and she lost a lot of weight. Professionals thought she had an eating disorder, her anxiety and depression was through the roof. When she was tested for celiacs and eliminated gluten after finding she had that, her physical and mental health improved.

I don't know how dietary intolerance can be linked to neuroscience. I haven't read about a direct correlation between eating a food and feeling an immediate emotional shift, I know that sugar and caffeine can affect the mood.

Making sure you eat carbs, protein and healthy fats does ensure that nerve pathways form and that the brain can function properly, which is why very restrictive diets cutting out many foods can lead to nutrient deficiency.

[larkasaur]

I had a friend who had undiagnosed celiac disease and she lost a lot of weight. Professionals thought she had an eating disorder, her anxiety and depression was through the roof. When she was tested for celiacs and eliminated gluten after finding she had that, her physical and mental health improved.

I used to subscribe to a celiac mailing list, and people would often post about their depression, anxiety, ADHD, panic attacks, etc. getting better on a gluten-free diet.  Also some people with schizophrenia are helped with a gluten-free diet. 

I've gotten the "you might have an eating disorder" treatment from a gastroenterologist.  I had a strict dieting/binging eating disorder when I was a teenager, but not now.

Also, I was treated somewhat weirdly when I told a gastroenterologist I had emotional changes after eating certain foods.   

That was years ago though - perhaps this has changed now.

 

I don't know how dietary intolerance can be linked to neuroscience. I haven't read about a direct correlation between eating a food and feeling an immediate emotional shift, I know that sugar and caffeine can affect the mood.

It is often non-obvious, especially if one is eating the culprit foods with almost every meal. 

With my "reactive hypoglycemia", I did have reactions to foods that were obvious to me. 

A paper linked "reactive hypoglycemia" to "beta-adrenergic hypersensitivity".  The beta-adrenergic receptors are involved in anxiety and also in suppressing histamine release from mast cells.  So that's how delayed-onset food allergies are linked to anxiety, I think - these receptors get activated to suppress histamine release, but this has the side effect of causing anxiety. 

There's been some research on foods associated with ADHD, gluten-sensitive schizophrenia, etc. 

 

Making sure you eat carbs, protein and healthy fats does ensure that nerve pathways form and that the brain can function properly, which is why very restrictive diets cutting out many foods can lead to nutrient deficiency.

Yes, one needs to talk to a nutritionist or use a nutrition program to monitor one's diet to see what might be missing.  I do take some supplements, and I analyzed my diet for nutrient deficiences.  For example, I stopped eating dairy - many people with celiac disease can't eat dairy either.  And I had no sources of vitamin D left.  So I started taking vitamin D. 

Also, I suspect that eliminating a lot of foods might have had a worse consequence - that it's good for one's immune system to eat food allergens, it trains the immune system to not react to allergens.  My diet is very hypoallergenic now. 

I'm eating tiny amounts, 20 mg or so, of foods I have these delayed-onset allergies to.  I hope this will be good for my immune system, and maybe eventually I can start eating those foods in larger amounts.

Edited June 25, 2014 by larkasaur