Has anyone info on wheat allergy and mental illness?

Question

Celiac (wheat allergy) and bipolar disease run in the family? Is there a connection? I appreciate anyones' sharing their experience and hope.

Answer 1

Gluten intolerance and other autoimmune diseases are related to depression and schizophrenia. I don't remember reading anywhere that there's a direct connection to bipolar disorder, but you might try going to http://www.scholar.google.com and search on "celiac disease bipolar disorder" just to see what comes up. Seems to me some of the B vitamins are involved with depression too, and you might look that up as well.

What I've read about bipolar disease is that it may be more directly related to lack of Omega-3's in the body, so treatment with fish oil, flax seed oil, etc. can help. If there is a connection to celiac disease it could be that since celiac disease damages the gut and impairs nutrient absorption, including absorption of fats and oils, then Omega-3's are less likely to be absorbed too.

I never knew a day without depression until I went gluten free. I know that bipolar disorder is different than just depression. If you're asking the question for yourself, then why not either get tested for celiac or just try going gluten free for a couple of weeks to see if you start to feel better? My own experience is that some of the "mental" issues such as depression, mood-swings, attention deficit, and brain fog took more like 6 weeks to really clear up, but there were definite differences within 3 days. But to properly do this experiment you need to eliminate gluten entirely as any amount at all causes your body to kick out the antibodies that attack your body. That means you need to plan your meals ahead of time and think about what you eat.

If you're asking the question for another person -- my experience is that most of the time it's really tough to convince other people that diet can make a difference, and even if you can convince them, most of them seem to prefer a drug subscription rather than modifying their diet. Currently, there is no drug available for celiac disease.

Best of luck in your search for answers!!

Answer 2

There is absolutely a link between Celiac Disease and mental illness, though I'm not sure that CD can be related to bipolar disorder. There are, however, many bipolar CD sufferers. I don't believe that there has been a genetic link discovered at this point. CD is capable of causing mental illnesses because it deprives the body of essential vitamins and nutrients due to malabsportion. That being said, if one remains strictly gluten free (wheat, barley, rye, and oats) there is often hope that he/she may recover emotionally as well as physically. I don't really think this applies with a disorder such as bipolar though. The gluten free diet (over time, years possibly) could lessen the manic and depressive episodes.

Answer 3

I'm rather supprised by this but:

A study was done in Sweden (which is rather good for mental health research) that showed that coeliac disease probably increases the risk of occurance of mood disorder. There's no information on whether there's a genetic link between the two.

Here's the abstract of the article;
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed

Answer 4

Yes, interesting. I used to suffer from serious bouts of depression and anxiety attacks. I've also come to realise that I can't eat more than a little wheat, otherwise I get all bloated, gassy, indigestion, etc.

I think the answer lies in the colon. Wheat is perhaps bunging up the colon (I know it does in my case) and if the colon is backed up, then it starts to cause all sorts of problems including gas, indigestion, heartburn and chronic constipation, which can in turn cause mental illnesses such as depression and fatigue.

http://www.angelic1healing.com

Answer 5

You need to see a GI doc in case you have a physical problem that needs correcting. At this point, you probably can't be tested for Celiac Disease because the test only looks for damage on gluten. To be tested, you'd have to start eating gluten for about 1-2 months, damage yourself again, and then the test will pick up the markers in your blood that show you were damaged. However, past that, first, you are not alone. And here's what many of us have discovered. Whenever a product says X free? It means whatever the company wants it to mean. There is no legal standard for how much gluten or dairy or soy is allowed in a gluten or dairy or soy free product (in the USA. There IS a standard for gluten free in some countries). You can usually assume that X free really means 'less than Y ppm (parts per million, a concentration) of ingredient X.' It is rarely to never actually completely free/zero. So tons of dairy allergic folks react to dairy free products, and corn allergic folks react to many corn free products, and so on. Contamination of these foods can come on the farm, in shipping trucks, during processing, during packaging. Finding 'pure' foods can help. I had to go to the farmer's market to find fruits and veggies without sprays, waxes, coatings, or gases used on them. As an example in your case? Apples and pears both often have a type of wax called Lac wax (from a beetle, can be used on organic produce) which has either soy or dairy casein added to it to improve the texture. so you could be getting dairy problems from the apples and pears. Stores are supposed to have a notice in the produce section if some of their fruit has wax, but many do not. Also, another possible thing you can look into is a sulfite allergy. This is the 10th most common allergy. You react to many of the common sulfite 'baddies,' just the ones that docs don't know about (because they don't research the food industry like those of us who have to EAT these foods). Sulfites are a preservative that has to be broken down by an enzyme in our bodies. This same enzyme is needed to break down sulfur, too (which is in pretty much everything) so some sulfite allergic folks have problems with high-sulfur foods, too. Examples in your own list. Citrus juice is almost always higher in sulfites. Beans are higher in sulfur and often can only be eaten in low amounts or not at all. White rice can be coated with a sulfite containing coating if it is vitamin enriched. Fermented soy (like soy sauce) produces natural sulfites during fermentation as well as being higher in sulfur naturally. Corn derived ingredients in almost every vitamin in the world are usually sulfited (not corn meal or corn flour, though). Sulfites are in many pesticides and some sulfite allergic folks can't eat some produce due to this, and potatoes are in the top ten produce items with high pesticide loads this year, too. AND...a lot of sulfite allergic folks get major mental components from this along with physical ones (anxiety, sensory issues, all sorts of fun stuff). They also report different reactions depending on which type of sulfur/sulfite they encounter. So this might be worth checking into for you. Other conditions which can involve just one or two issues that encompass a wide-swath of foods are: fructose malabsorption (also involves beans, white rice, other things), salicylate sensitivity, histamine sensitivity, problems with tyramine or phenols. I put in some links below that can hopefully help you figure some of this out! Even if you DON'T have the issues above, many of the folks in groups on these issues has had to do a lot of research to get better, so they may have heard something ELSE that could point you in the right direction. :-) Good luck. You can do this. It's totally possible, and a lot of folks out here will be happy to help you make it. :-)

Answer 6

don't you think it's kind of strange that most people with wheat allergy has some kind of mental dis-ease? and that most people with mild form of mental dis-ease have wheat allergy?
hhmmm. sometimes a college degree isn't needed - just life experiences.

Answer 7

They are two totally separate things. Sure, I guess you could have an allergy to the same thing someone else in your family has. You could also be predisposed to have a chemical imbalance in your brain--causing the bipolar. But one has nothing to do with the other.

Answer 8

Yes, there is a connection. I've found a few websites you'll be interested in reading.

http://glutenfreeforum.com/lofiversion/index.php/t9732.html
http://www.drkaslow.com/html/gluten-brain_connection_.html
http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/wheat.htm
http://curezone.com/forums/f.asp?f=354
http://curezone.com/dis/1.asp?C0=80