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The reason I'm wondering about this is that I read psychology books, about
depression for example, that talk about therapy and they talk about
psychiatric drugs for depression.

And I think, is there a HUGE BIG thing missing?  Food intolerance?  Gluten
intolerance?

And I wonder:  would these authors object:  only about 1% or 1/2% of 
people have celiac disease according to blood tests or biopsy.  So while
celiac sometimes has severe psychological effects, it's not that common so
it's not that big of a hidden problem.

But how far does the underdiagnosis of gluten/other foods as a cause of
psychological issues go beyond the underdiagnosis of celiac disease?  How
many people are affected emotionally and psychiatrically and 
neurologically by gluten who would test negative on the standard celiac
tests?

One person gave me what looks like a good website: 
http://www.glutensensitivity.org

seven people told me they had positive blood tests or biopsy and they were
psychologically affected by gluten.

eight people told me they'd gotten the tests - while on a gluten diet 
apparently - and they'd been negative, and they were psychologically 
affected by gluten.

It's the roughest kind of guess about how many are psychologically 
affected by gluten while not being positive on the standard tests, but it
does indicate the problem goes beyond under-testing for celiac disease!

I was really, really severely affected.  I had severe anxiety which got a
lot better; being free of my food intolerances - including gluten - has 
made me more emotionally stable.  I used to get so tense when small 
annoying things happened that I would have to soak in a hot bath for hours 
before my muscles would relax.  I went crazy as a teenager (labeled 
schizophrenic, my brother labeled with manic depressive psychosis); I 
never went crazy after that - partly I think by shaping my life around
avoiding stress.  I
had mildly hallucinatory aspects to my vision though, off and on.  at one
time I saw the world as if behind cellophane, as if there were wriggling
under cellophane and the world under that.  I attributed this to repressed 
emotions and it went away after two years of the repressed emotions 
exploding, but I had other kinds of slightly hallucinatory perceptions. 
My mind was just generating a lot of these very vivid, very attention 
grabbing perceptions.  None of this any more on a gluten free diet.

I was suicidally depressed often for decades, this didn't go away on the 
gluten free diet but when I found out about 30-100 other food intolerances 
that had been hidden, it did go away.  I attributed this to fructose 
intolerance caused by eating gluten and is known to cause depression ... 
maybe other food intolerances can cause gluten intolerance too.

I'm just Enterolab-diagnosed.  I felt so much better after quitting gluten 
and other foods, after having really severe reactions to them after doing
an elimination diet/food challenges.  I wanted to start living a new life
without gluten, rather than tormenting myself with a gluten challenge, so
I never got the biopsy.  It hasn't quite been a new life so far.  I was
sick chronically for years on gluten - unexplained sickness - and I was
sick for a few years after quitting gluten, before I found out I actually
had hidden food intolerances to almost everything I'd been eating while on
gluten and maybe some intoleranes that I got after quitting gluten.  I'm
fairly healthy now except that I have 53 inhalant allergies which make me
sick often.

Other people said they were depressed, seizures, learning disorders,
extreme anger from gluten, brain fog ...

It's incredibly tragic ... for me, a life in internal imagery - very vivid
in one way, very limited in another.

Laura

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