Coeliac Disease and Depression - Gluten Free Guerr...

On reading most articles it certainly walls-up the idea of keeping well away from any form of gluten .. and one positive thing to remember when changing our diets is that primitive people who never experience eating a modern diet of wheat, barley, rye and oats never suffer from any form of depression whatsoever ..

deep-ecology-hub.com/primit...

in reply to Lynxcat12 years ago

Lynxcat, that last article presents an interesting hypothesis. I wonder about the process (evidence/research) which led them to prove that a) indigenous people don't suffer from depression and b) this is diet-related. Social theorists (Durckeim, Weber, Marx, etc) have connected depression/alienation with urban society and lifestyles (e.g. poverty and industrialisation), and there is evidence to suggest that racial discrimination (for instance in a post-colonial situation) causes higher levels of mental health problems, but I have never seen research to suggest that diet is the pivotal factor.

I think the use of the phrases "non-civilized" and "primitive people" indicates that this is not a serious source of information, but perhaps the origins of their information is some kind of study - ? They don't cite any sources.

Lynxcat in reply to 12 years ago

Hi Hollyann,

I popped the last article in as it was in an easy-to-read and reasonably light-hearted fashion, as well as a short one. There are thousands more online, many are extremely lengthy and full of medical terms.

Here's another one - but you will find many more if you Google for depression ones with more detailed sources. In the meantime heres one below and a further two more that contain informaiton on nutrition:

experiencelife.com/article/...

inst.org/nutrition-courses/...

seventhwaveuk.com/content/5...

in reply to Lynxcat12 years ago

We may have to agree to disagree on this issue. Some people feel better on a high protein/low carb diet, which is great. The debate over the science will run and run.

The nutritional guide is conventional (if you're depressed, eat some protein and avoid foods/habits that will leave you with low blood sugar) and seems like good advice for everyone. Aside from the nutritional course, none of the links really hold up for me; none of these articles cite any reliable sources or research.

The use of the word "primitive" (as both an adjective and a noun) to refer to indigenous people was also a red light.

Lynxcat in reply to 12 years ago

You may well be right Hollyann - and I am probably wrong. It just seems to me that many of today's illnesses are just that today's illnesses - there seems little record of most of them before we changed the basic way that we ate. Everyone sites the madness of King George when they look at history and mental health but in recent times it was found that even his illness was not what historians had previously thought. In recent times he was found to suffer from porphyria which was made worse possibly by ingestion of arsenic:

news-medical.net/news/2005/...

Other illness often appears in populations that consume sugar and processed foods. It was often the case a century or so ago that people mainly expired through childbirth, plague, pestilence, war, consumption or wounds that led to blood poisoning. Women who developed forms of depression or mental illness had usually had childbirth in which it was thought that part of the placenta had been left behind often leading to total madness and eventual death. People ate nearer to nature and had a wide range of foods although most ate quite frugally - perhaps that is why my eagerness is there to believe that many problems are also either caused or made worse, etc by what we eat including the consumption of gluten. But, of course, I admit that I may be quite wrong - perhaps to me it appeared to be a plausible reasoning. x

NorthernSoul in reply to Lynxcat12 years ago

Depression is an absolutely universal disease and has been described in texts that are thousands of years old. It was the Greeks who coined the term melancholia. That last article is just the patronising (and actually pretty offensive) opinions plucked out of the air by someone with access to the internet.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major...

I mean, if you're using 100 years as your cut off point then just try and think of the historical figures who had depression who lived prior to that point. Keats, Tolstoy, Dickens, Byron, Monet, Munch, Abraham Lincoln, Blake, Martin Luther, Mozart, Newton, Van Gogh, Alexander the Great, Tchaikovsky, John Adams, Darwin... I could go on and on.

Also, do find me a peer reviewed scientific article that causally and completely links sugar and processed food consumption to depression. Because we barely understand the disease process itself and to simplify its cause down to nutritional intake with the exclusion of a huge plethora of genetic, personal, cultural and socioeconomic factors is naive to say the least.

Finally, I have no idea what you're talking about with regards placentas... Post-partum depression or psychosis is not linked to retention of placentas. Why on earth would it be? In fact, retained placenta can lead to life-threatening haemorrhage (I have had the unfortunate experience of seeing a woman require 6 units of blood as a result of this) or infection.

If you're going to link to 'scientific articles', please use a) a reputable source which provides references or b) the actual research paper itself.

Lynxcat in reply to NorthernSoul12 years ago

Hi Northernsoul. Strangely enough, placenta problems with both madness and death were advice that was given to me before I had my children. If you say that you haven't been taught this or had this advice on childbirth then perhaps they no longer think that there is a risk. Perhaps they always extricate the entire placenta. When I had my children we were told if any of the placenta remained in the body then poisons could find their way into the bloodstream resulting in madness and death.

nursing.manchester.ac.uk/uk...

Regarding the sugar and processed foods - I never indicated or stated that their consumption leads to depression. I implied that there are now diseases that were not prevalent years ago that look as though there are connections to the consumption of these two new food groups.

NorthernSoul in reply to Lynxcat12 years ago

Retained placenta can cause death, yes- as I pointed out. Post-puerperal depression and psychosis, no. Who on earth told you that? Not a healthcare professional, judging by the medieval language of 'poisons' and 'madness'...

And yes, the placenta is always delivered. Either with drugs to speed it up or naturally. And if it isn't or if it's not delivered intact then anything left in there is removed manually as the risk of haemorrhage or infection is so great. No idea what sort of 'madness' you're talking about. Delirium secondary to infection, perhaps?

Did you actually read the link you just gave me? Because I suspect you just googled 'childbirth' and 'madness' (as it's the first thing that came up). In fact it's a 19th century account of post-puerperal mental illness (encompassing disorders that are now well recognised). Not a single placenta in there.

One of the most basic rules of statistics is this- correlation does not equal causality. People don't wear corsets these days either, maybe that's the reason why (according to you) depression is more prevalent now. Or maybe it's the motor cars. Or perhaps it's the fact we wear clothes made from artificial fibres. Or perhaps you're right and it is the food but rather that we eat more bananas now than ever before. Or maybe it's fact that the earth is now rotating at an minutely slower pace than it was a hundred years ago... Do you see what I'm getting at?

I do hate the fact that so little of the information that goes around this site is actually evidence based... At it's best, it's misleading and inconvenient for those who follow it. At it's worst, it could be downright dangerous...

Lynxcat in reply to NorthernSoul12 years ago

I cannot help what I was advised around the time of giving birth. I was given wonderful care in hospital. Apparently the breathing technique that I was taught in anti-natal classes was back-to-front to what they required in the hospital but I followed what the midwife team advised and had a natural birth. It was nearly thirty years ago - I had a very old-fashioned and wonderful midwife who attended me back at home and she advised that I drink a bottle of Guiness each lunchtime to make good quality milk for my baby and assure that we both had a peaceful night.

And I did read the article - I thought the first part indicated problems or concerns with Thackery's wife after the birth of her third child. Never mind though, we are of different generations so we will never meld our ideas.

in reply to Lynxcat12 years ago

Lynxcat, I've taken issue with the links that you've posted.

I see the "Paleo" diet (Stone Age, low carb, whatever you want to call it) as an aggressively marketed product so I'm cynical about the "science" behind it, and even more cynical about all the pseudo-science that people make up on the internet. That doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with eating good, fresh, unprocessed foods in whatever combinations allow you to feel as well as you can. I'm glad you've found something that works for you.

12 years ago

Firstly I am sorry if you are suffering from depression Mia. I'm also surprised as you have made some very positive comments like how you treat yourself with a massage or how you make home made chips as a food treat. Ever since you made these comments I have thought what a good Blog this would make so you have sown the seeds of inspiration in me. I also like your inoffensive manner as you do not eat codex yet you do not upset those that do like I seem to sometimes, inadvertently on my part I'd like to add.

Sometimes by being able to be open and honest about our feelings can make us feel better so if you want to have a rant etc you carry on. And if I've got the wrong end of the stick, I'm good at that LOL.

I think Lynxcat has given you some great links so just to add to this, it has been discussed a few times on GFG and if you go to the search box at the top right hand side of the page just under your name and type in depression and the previous blogs will be listed. Like the black dog tribe by Fiona and others.

meanioni in reply to 12 years ago

Jerry you should not apologise - you know a lot about your subject and at the end of the day its your body and you have a right to feel strongly about things.

The difficulty is that different people have different views and inevitably there will be differences of opinion. That's what makes this an interesting forum - let's be honest it would be dead dull if everyone just went "I agree"....

Actually it was you who made me first aware of the codex situation which I knew nothing about.

Mia1057 in reply to 12 years ago

Thanks Jerry I never find any of your postings upsetting and they are always informative. I will look up the past postings on the site. Thanks for your kind words

Mia

Lynxcat in reply to Mia105712 years ago

Hope that you soon feel well again Mia.

12 years ago

Gosh, there's a surprising amount of information out there. I had no idea there was a connection. I haven't read them in their entirety, but these all look interesting, and the Celiac.com page is a list of more articles.

informahealthcare.com/doi/a...

celiacdisease.about.com/od/...

celiac.com/categories/Celia...

Good luck! I hope they're helpful. x

NorthernSoul12 years ago

Here's an interesting article I found- a smallish survey on depressive symptoms and disordered eating in women with coeliac disease:

live.psu.edu/story/56902

As far as depression itself goes, I highly recommend mind.org.uk and, as someone has already mentioned, blackdogtribe.com

Laura7812 years ago

if your gut is stressed then your brain suffers - i've always believed this and there is a lot of evidence in the science world about it...

i'm having a hazy day so here's some articles rather then me try to incoherently put my thoughts on this...

you can read this instead...

chriskresser.com/treating-d...

scientificamerican.com/arti...

nutritional imbalances that come with having a damage gut due to lack of absorption of nutrients can make our brains tired/exhausted and probably contribute to depression in some folk.

oh and this is interesting

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...