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Craig:

As it happens, I have my own copy of "An Internist Looks At
Schizophrenia", a reprint of the U of Penna MEDICAL AFFAIRS right at hand.

It's been 13 years practically to the week that I myself had my first clue
that my psychiatric problems were somehow linked to eating wheat.

But I've only been correctly diagnosed as gluten intolerant since 1990.

Anyway, this list has been *THE GREATEST* for me in figuring out what'
going on with schizophrenia & gluten intake.

And I tend to fall back & call it gluten intolerance instead of celiac
disease because while Dohan noted that there is a higher incidence of
schizophrenia among celiacs,  it is not so linked that *every* celiac
develops schizophrenia.  There's something else going on.

I don't think you see many references to schizophrenia on this list (I was
off from October to Jan., but on for 18 months prior)...what you do see
posted frequently are posts from parents of autistic children.  This was
very enlightening to me.  I had an uncle who was diagnosed schizophrenic
... a child who was finally labeled as being in the autistic spectrum...
getting that label was important to me....know what my guess is?  My guess
is that schizophrenia and autism are pretty much the same, depending on it
occurs.  I invite comments on this, but it looks to me like there are
those of us who are susceptible, and the use of the term "spectrum"
describes it well.  Let's say 1 is high functioning, 10 is low
functioning.  Say you're about a 5.  With proper diet & care you move up
to a 1 or a 2, and no one ever suspects there's anything unique about you.
Or say you're a five, and you have a "trigger", and/or you don't eat
properly...then you move down to the lower end of the spectrum.

Perhaps this theory isn't altogether correct, but let's say it's valid
enough to build on.  It's a matter of nature (genetic predisposition)
working along with nuture.

When I realized that 1) celiac disease does not automatically result in
schizophrenia, and 2) there were a lot of good, knowledgeable
people who were solid in the autism field, I started asking the most
important question:  What makes us different?

The best answer I could come up with revolved around our extra need for
 the omega three oils in our metabolism.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here.....but when you're looking of an
incidence of 1 in maybe 300 for gluten intolerance, there has to be a
reason how this particular intolerance to gluten got to be fairly
common.   I don't think this is a freaky genetic mutation or deviance
from normal....not at all.   I think my metabolism is normal...for a
hunter/gatherer/forager that lived in Northen Europe 20,000 years ago.
When it came to genetic material, I just didn't get the upgrade.

Apparently, one of the diet specifications at the time was a diet
richer in omega 3 oils and lower in complex carbohydrates.  My
ancestors were not farmers.  They may have been the original hippies,
just groovin' and living off the land.  They may have evolved along the
shores of the sea & eaten a great deal of cold water fish...rich in
omega 3 oils...and this is important, because the omega 3's contain a
substance called docosahexanoic acid.  Additionally, our brains are
mostly lipid in content.  we need this stuff even now "to grow" the
brain..I don't know, but being cognizant that schiz's typically have
smaller brains, you wonder if there is a link.

But there's more to my theory about our nutritional needs.  If you
accept that our ancestors were foragers, ya gotta wonder what nature of
food they typically gathered (in addition to cold water fish, and
seasonal fruits and vegatative matter).  I'm going out on a limb here,
but I'll bet that the women and kids of these primitve tribes did a lot
of nest raiding.  Birds, fledglings, rabbits, small animals...and
without Miss Manners around to teach the etiquette of fine dining, I'm
suggesting that these small animals were crunched, not delicately
skinned and filleted.

I admit I've been lazy on seeking out the proper bone mineral
composition, but I strongly suspect that some of the trace minerals we
need for strong bones are also psycho-active.  Magnesium, which is a
co-efficent to the B vitamins;  boron, which is said to improve memory,
manganese....geez, I'm reading this right off the label for a Twinlabs
product Tri-Boron Plus..."trace minerals....which are integral
co-factors for several enzymes involved in bone metabolism."

For 99.8% of our evolution (states Crawford & Marsh in Nutrition and
Evolution) man and woman have eaten a "wild" diet.  I don't know if you
are cognizant of the wheat cultivation article that may still be
available out on the web, but it points out that wheat cultivation started
in the Near East.  Our people in Northen Europe never intermarried with
the "foreigners"...migrants from wheat-cultivating areas who had this
genetic adaption to metabolise gluten.  Our genes are more of the older
type, and I think when we don't respect our metabolic requirements, we go
on to develop this psychiatric problems.

This is my theory,  This is not the view of any one else on the list, but
I offer it just as an opening gambit for discussion, based on my 14 years
worth of readings and observations.  We are the children of the Lost
Tribes of Europe....