Anyone else have severe chemical/biological depression?

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Joined: 14 Apr 2007
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19 Nov 2009, 12:59 pm

This is just getting ridiculous. I called in sick for work today because I couldn't get out of bed. I left the description of it as "sick" because depression isn't seen as a "real" illness. I hate feeling like I have to be dishonest.

I have no major stressful events or hardships occurring in my life, I'm just completely lacking in enthusiasm for life. I don't look forward to anything these days. Right now I feel the only reason I'm still alive is me not wanting to cause any further hurt to others. I really can't describe in words how awful I feel. My intellect and social ability seems to be declining as well, I can hardly speak to people these days. I just have nothing left to say anymore.

Wedge
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19 Nov 2009, 1:32 pm

Depression is a disease. And also I guess it is the first or second disease in terms of cause for lost hours of work.

ouinon
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19 Nov 2009, 2:13 pm

I suffered from severe chemical/biological depression, ( for many years ), and "cured" myself of depression, ( low-level chronic and acute and suicidal ), feelings of alienation, anxiety, mood disorder, brain-fog, etc, by excluding gluten from my diet. I have also found that sugar induces serious anxiety and gloom too, so increasingly cut that out too.

There is some scientific evidence that gluten causes depression in people with gluten-intolerance, and not only do 1% of the population have celiac disease, which is the tip of the gluten-intolerance iceberg, and 10% of the population have elevated levels of gliadin-antibodies ( gliadin is the bit of gluten which causes the most problems ), but it is possible that up to 30% of the population may have some form of reaction to it. It is now certain that gluten can cause neurological damage in people who are intolerant to it, very often the ones who have little or no gastrointestinal symptoms too, so it has a tendency to be overlooked, go unnoticed/undx'd until quite late in life.

There is also increasing scientific evidence that many cases of depression may be a kind of auto-immune disease in that most anti-depressants are anti-inflammatories, ie. the way they work is by calming immune-system activity ( the "Depression as Sickness Behaviour" hypothesis is gaining ground. There's a great article about this called "Mind under Seige" which I have a link for somewhere and will look out for you ... http://www.biopsychiatry.com/immunesystem/index.html Lots of great links to scientific abstracts at the bottom of the page ).

The simplest way to find out if diet may be a factor is to go on a five-seven day exclusion diet or fast, excluding all the most common offenders, ( gluten, dairy, corn, sugar, eggs, and soya ), or just gluten, and eating plenty of salad and vegetables, ( intestinal transit, speeds things up! ), and see how you feel by the end of it. If diet is a factor you should see some difference after 4-5 days.

Although you will see improvements in a week, if food is a factor, you would need to exclude dairy for 3-4 weeks to see the full effects because it takes that long to leave the liver, and to exclude gluten for 26 weeks because it takes gluten that long to leave the liver. And in the case of gluten you may carry on seeing improvements for much longer, in fact some only really kick in after a year, depending on how old you are and how much glutenous foods you tended to eat.

One classic sign of a food intolerance is being addicted to, compulsive around, that particular food, ie. needing it to wake up in the morning, eating it as comfort food, bingeing on it, having to eat it at least once a day or feeling s**t.

It took me years to manage the complete exclusion/gluten-free diet which I have achieved the last two years now, because I didn't have the internet until recently, and without the support and information online, on forums, etc, I kept giving up because of the setbacks caused by accidentally eating gluten in foods which I didn't know contained it, and because so many people around me thought that it was all in the mind/imaginary etc, that very often I doubted myself, especially when it didn't seem to work all of a sudden, or repeatedly, ( ie; hydrolysed vegetable protein is gluten, flavoured crisps/chips and corn snacks use gluten to "attach" the spices etc, soya sauce contains gluten, though tamari doesn't, dried fruit is often dusted in flour, etc, etc, etc ), but since finding sites like The Gluten File, at: http://jccglutenfree.googlepages.com/ , and its sister site, the forum, "Gluten Free and Beyond" aswell as celiac.com, and the gluten free sections of the forums Neurotalk and Braintalk, I am succeeding, and it is sooo wonderful.

Good luck.

Last edited by ouinon on 19 Nov 2009, 2:26 pm, edited 3 times in total.

marshall
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19 Nov 2009, 2:20 pm

I don't think drastically changing my diet is even possible for me. I'm a picky eater and I hate cooking for myself. It's just too much work to cook for oneself when one is depressed.

ouinon
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19 Nov 2009, 2:24 pm

marshall wrote:

I don't think drastically changing my diet is even possible for me. I'm a picky eater and I hate cooking for myself. It's just too much work to cook for oneself when one is depressed.

You don't have to cook. I barely cook anything.

I eat lamb chops and other simple meat, lettuce, ham, ( watch out for the wheat-cured kind ), avocado, tinned ( and frozen ) fish, cucumber, boiled and scrambled eggs, fresh parsley, cheese very occasionally, tomatoes, yoghurts, etc. All very easy to prepare.

It depends which one you find the most inconvenient; depression or a little more effort/time spent on eating.

You can eat tuna straight out of the tin, ham straight out of the packet, cucumber by slicing it, etc.

Picky eating can be a sign of food intolerance, especially if you seem to end up eating wheat and/or dairy products all the time.

.

ouinon
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19 Nov 2009, 2:54 pm

marshall wrote:

I hate cooking for myself. It's just too much work to cook for oneself when one is depressed.

It occurs to me that I would probably have felt like that if I hadn't experienced the amazing relief from depression, anxiety/panic, brain-fog, etc which three days of a water fast with only the odd mouthful of apple, resulted in.

I could hardly believe the way I felt on the fourth morning; it was as if I had been living in a shopping centre, over an airport, next to a motorway, and under a construction site, ... without realising it, ... for years, and suddenly they were all gone. The peace was astonishing. I cried with relief and gratitude. I felt as if I rediscovered some of my childhood self.

That feeling has sustained me through years of ( frequently on-off ) exclusion, of mistakes, etc, during which time careful/thoughtful cooking/food shopping has very often seemed like "too much work".

But support and information are vital too, hence the importance of the various forums which I mentioned.

.

ouinon
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20 Nov 2009, 3:09 am

I like this piece, written by someone else, about the kind of helplessness she feels, and that I feel, in this sort of situation.

http://www.zombieinstitute.net/Rant.htm

Zombie_Research_Institute wrote:

... And You- you know who you are- the college student who keeps saying you can't possibly give up gluten because bread and pasta are the only things you like to eat: Stop complaining about your terrible fatigue and embarrassing cataplexy and your stomach-ache and irritability and your autoimmune disorders and depression and drug side effects and medical expenses and how nobody understands you and there's nothing you can do and Get A Freakin Clue! You're a wheataholic, and more obnoxious and in denial than all the alcoholics and addicts I know. If I could, I would duct tape you to a chair and detox you myself. ...

I think that what you say about being too depressed to do it is probably why, although I don't go around recommending that people go on water fasts, because it can be dangerous, that is exactly what I did myself! It was SIMPLE and relatively EASY to do! No hard work, no cooking, no special shopping, etc. :lol:

And the results were so astonishing that it was obvious food was a factor, and the memory of how fantastic and amazing I felt after three days ( of water and apple, therefore "gluten-and-dairy-and-sugar-free" ), has kept me going through many mistakes/setbacks/"sod this!"moments etc, because I had already had direct experience of just how worth doing it was.

.

anahita
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20 Nov 2009, 9:51 am

ouinon wrote:

I read an article about “ MSG and Autism”. that believes Autism appears very similar to the disease PKU, which causes brain damage by the buildup of the amino acid due to an error of metabolism that prevents the breakdown of this one amino acid. “There is a low-affinity glutamate transporter that acts as a 1:1 cystine-glutamate exchanger and carries cystine to the interior of the cell in exchange for intracellular glutamate. The released glutamate undergoes rapid uptake via the Na+/K+ glutamate transporter. Accumulation of extra-cellular glutamate inhibits the cystine-glutamate exchanger, resulting in depletion of cell stores of cystine. This predisposes to oxidative stress, because cysteine, a derivative of cystine, is required for synthesis of the anti-oxidant glutathione. Oligodendrocytes are particularly susceptible to glutathione-induced cystine depletion and excitotoxicity.“
I myself have a genetic disease “cystinuria”. Cystinuria is an inherited disorder characterized by the impaired reabsorption of cystine in the proximal tubule of the nephron and the gastrointestinal epithelium. I now think there must a correlation between cystinuria and my depression, autism,… new research also shows 3 similar but distinct syndromes associated with cystinuria have been described. one of the most important of 3 syndrome to me is the 2p21 deletion syndrome, a severe syndrome with a number of additional features including a moderate to severe psychomotor retardation (see in people with major depression) and a decrease in activity of the respiratory chain complexes I, III, IV and V. My doctor (for cystinuria) said to me if you want to have a diet. You must avoid eating almost everything milk, dairy, meat…..you just must drink gallons of water to avoid kidney making stones.But now the problem is not kidney stones, it is high depression,autism I don’t know I must have diet or not. I want to psychologist tomorrow for the first time, for depression and autism do you think it helps?

ouinon
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20 Nov 2009, 10:42 am

anahita wrote:

I myself have a genetic disease “cystinuria”. I now think there must a correlation between cystinuria and my depression. My doctor (for cystinuria) said to me if you want to have a diet you must avoid eating milk, dairy, fish, meat, and you must drink gallons of water to avoid kidney making stones. But now the problem is not kidney stones, it is high depression. I don’t know I must have diet or not. I want to psychologist tomorrow for the first time, for depression and autism do you think it helps?

The reason for the low-no meat, fish, egg, and dairy diet is because they tend to be high in methionine, which aggravates cystinuria, ... is that right? And you are wondering if the low-protein-high-carbohydrate diet might be causing your depression?

If you are gluten-intolerant then eating a lot of bread, pasta, pizza, and other sources of gluten, could very well be causing depression. If you think that gluten, ( in wheat, rye, and barley ), may be a factor you could try cutting out all glutenous grains, ( for a week or more to see how you feel ), and eat rice, and potatoes, instead, or no starchy carbohydrates at all, ( which I do more and more, I feel so much better on it ), just lots of salad and vegetables, most of which are safe, I think, even recommended, for cystinuria.

If you want to get professional testing for gluten-intolerance, make sure you ask for them to test IgG ( rather than IgA ), because it is the "G" antibodies which cause the neurological problems, ( when they are not the result of deficiencies caused by malabsorption ). But a 5-7 day exclusion diet should give you some idea.

Your depression could also be the result of vitamin and/or mineral deficiencies ( Vit B6, B12, and Zinc are essential for mental health, for instance, and are found mainly in animal foods ), caused by eating very little meat, fish, eggs, and dairy, at the same time as drinking lots of water. Certain animal foods are lower in methionine than others, and might be worth re-introducing, and lots of fresh vegetables and salad might help. I don't know if there are multi-vitamin and mineral supplements which are low in methionine, I've never really got into supplements myself, but it might be worth considering.

About a psychologist; I don't know. I've only ever been to two for a few weeks each, years ago now, and although it was nice to talk, it made no difference, whereas changing my diet did.

PS. Are you getting enough saturated fats? Like butter? And meat fat, bacon dripping, etc? They are not proteins so won't contain methionine, but are very important for mental health ... and avoid sugar like the plague; it makes me, aswell as mice and rats, very anxious.

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