Celiac disease and mental illnesses

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Has anyone had experience with gluten being definitively linked to mood disorders such as bipolar or borderline personality?

I think it's very interesting that allergies can cause emotional disregulation in children according to studies (definitely fits with my own childhood experience). I wonder if the "adult" version of these childhood tantrums could be psychiatric mood disorders. Has anyone had experience with removing gluten or other allergens from their diet and having it eliminate a mood disorder such as bipolar or borderline?

I found out having a lactose intolerance, actually very late, because my problems with my stomach were only just explained by having too much stress in the past until I stoped drinking milk what also helped my mood I had the feeling.

But I tryed the same with gluten, but it didn't change anything, so I still eat gluten.

The theory that mental disorders are linked to gluten or other allergies is fallacious. It is widely circulated by the natural health industry in western countries in order to sell more products. Any improvement noted by someone as a result of a diet change is most likely coincidental. A good friend of mine, who is intelligent but not scientifically minded, did her 'resesarch' and recently went through the process of removing gluten from her diet in order to alleviate her depression. She has been doing it for a long time now and it has not made any difference whatsoever, except to give her a feeling of control over the depression.
Gluten makes no difference to my mood either. I recently went to another country and ate exclusively wheat. The only difference that a vegetarian diet with lots of pulses and grains made (plenty of milk too), is that I became physically healthier and lost a lot of weight.
People who do not have an understanding of maths and science will always be easily fooled by clever narratives and stories.

I don't think that gluten or milk can cause mental disorders, but I think that ppl with mental disorders get affected by physical problems more easily.

For example I very often have trouble to distingish between an upcomming flu and an upcomming depression.

Of course flu doesn't cause depression, but me as a person with a mood disorder get affected by physical changes a lot more easily and they can change my mood a lot more easily.
So it is not surprising to me, if I live healthy and look after myself, that I also feel mentally better.

While I was suffering due to my coeliac before I found out about it, I was extremely depressed. I don't know if that was directly because of the coeliac or because of the pain or what. I also felt like I was less capable, less intelligent and had this constant, horrifying feeling of losing myself. I ate a lot of bread and biscuits and processed meat, though, so I may have even been malnourished or something since I couldn't digest gluten properly. Coeliac is very noted for having non-specific symptoms outside of the direct bowel issues, however. It affects everyone differently. I was diagnosed with it by a doctor; you can try a gluten free diet otherwise but, at least in the UK, an official diagnosis will let you get some food on prescription. A lot of gluten free alternatives are more expensive although you could also go with just getting clean cuts of meat, fruit, vegetables, anything that isn't made from flour or covered with batter or breadcrumbs for the most part. A lot of sausages, chips and that sort of thing also have gluten in them to bulk them out. Always read the packaging.

As for the original point, it's possible for the Coeliac to make a disorder worse or even cause you to have one while it's in effect, but they will most likely be something you're predisposed to anyway.

That actually sounds like me and like BPD. I am going to get tested for celiac.

I just want to clarify something about what I said earlier. When I made my point before about the link between mental health problems and gluten intolerance, I wasn't talking about people who do actually have coeliac disease, evidenced by the symptoms you describe above, and in your case, and other people who have real coeliac disease, there is an indirect link, such as you describe. What I was talking about were people who have mental illnesses, who don't want to accept the fact of their mental illness, and try to find something else to blame it on. This is a normal human process to finding out you have a serious illness - it's a kind of loss, and you go through denial, barganing and so forth. Unscrupulous sales people, and even well meaning health professionals, will try to take advantage of someone who is grieving over their own illness, or of parents who are grieving over their child's disability, in order to make money off them, or to promote themselves as some kind of miracle saviour. This I believe to be the origin of the 'gluten causes mental illnesses'story. They can construct an argument which seems very plausible on a fallacious premise - and the inclusion of some real facts in the story distracts you from the falsehood it is based upon. Once you are convinced, you then decide that the evidence you see to the contrary must therefore be false. So, if you get convinced that gluten is the real cause of your mental illness, you must then conclude that the psychiatrists are the ones who are the liars, and instead of taking prescribed medication you then go and spend lots of money on their alternatives. This pattern doesn't happen just in mental illness but in other areas of disability too. This is not what I meant is happening for people like Urist, who is having trouble digesting the gluten and was experiencing depression as a side effect or secondary effect, or as an exacerbation of a preexisting problem - in such cases managing the gluten intolerance will make a real difference to the depression.

Question is, before she eliminated gluten (which I haven't yet btw), did she confirm that she was, in fact, allergic to gluten? I think it makes perfect sense that someone who is not allergic to gluten may get no benefit from removing it from their diet.

Gluten is completely harmless the vast majority of humans.

If you google for "studies on food allergy and schizophrenia" you will find plenty of verification for your theory. I only googled for schizophrenia as I read such a study many years ago, but if you google for other disorders am sure you will find plenty of info.

Re the correlation with depression, I know from personal experience that it can be, but do some googling first and I will be back to talk about my personal experience later. littlebee...

There is evidence that brain allergies such as caffeine can mimic mental illness. My current theory is I'm misdiagnosed as schizophrenic when I'm actually suffering from caffeine anaphylaxis.

Bull s**t! stopped reading there.

http://books.google.com/books?id=v1z_IP ... gy&f=false

It's interesting. I've noticed that I do not digest certain vegetables and have horrible stomach aches after eating them. Same with coffee (also high in salicylate acids?). Possibly the same with gluten, though I'm not sure since I typically ate bread with a lot of stuff in it. Gluten didn't seem to be as bad as some of the other stuff, though I've noticed it can cause insomnia and throw my "manic" episodes into a more extreme phase. I ate a lot of bread last night after trying to abstain for awhile and ended up not being able to sleep until 6:00 am.

I'm wondering if I have a salicylate intolerance and, if so, whether this could mimic symptoms of a mood disorder. I am ordering some tests for dairy, celiac disease, and tomatoes/other things this week.

+1 on googling "food sensitivities and schizophrenia."

I personally eat a high-fat gluten-free and dairy-free diet, and it keeps my mood even and stable. I feel really pleasant and happy eating this way. For every change I made in my diet, I thought, "I could never do that! I could never give up bread/dairy/etc." I thought people who did were nuts. Then I'd meet other people who had given up bread or dairy or whatever and saw the improvement it made in their lives and functionality, and I'd test it out. That being said, SOME PEOPLE DO JUST FINE WITH BREAD AND DAIRY. What works for me does not apply to everyone. I am only relating what has been helpful for me.

Alson 2006, I met an amazing autistic woman named Chou Chou Scantlin who mentioned that she ate a high-fat diet, which piqued my interest. She had an array of health problems in addition to autism, and healed herself with a change of diet.

Autism and ketogenic diets:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evo ... enic-diets

See the comment from Chou Chou about high-fat and her autism:
http://nourishinghope.com/2007/04/high_quality_an/

An interview with Chou Chou:
http://emmashopebook.com/2012/09/25/per ... chou-chou/

I get most of my fats from fatty fish, uncured bacon, sausage, deviled eggs, coconut oil, almond butter and duck fat. I cook with duck fat and try to avoid vegetable oil. When I was eating dairy, one of my daily meals was a bacon caesar salad or a salmon caesar salad. I also have coconut oil in coffee or chocolate teecino...AND IT'S LIKE HEAVEN. It's so silky.

Be warned! My last year has been down the rabbit hole of dietary interventions for mood! Definitely my primary obsession for a long time...it's fascinating stuff!