I have been depressed on and off ever since my early teens. At just-about-27 now, it’s something that I am fairly used to coming and going, however strange that might sound.
But what if I told you that the ultimate cause of my depression might have been down to food, nutritious food, which I happily and unwittingly ate for the first 25 years of my life?
Two years ago, I was diagnosed with coeliac disease, an autoimmune disease triggered by gluten intolerance. It was a tumultuous path to diagnosis, mostly because my “obvious” gastro symptoms only started a short while before diagnosis. The only cure for coeliac disease is strict adherence to a gluten-free diet for life. That’s right. No gluten. Ever again.
To be thrown out into a world where I suddenly couldn’t eat bread, cakes, pasta or pizzas for the rest of my life was distressing enough, but once I started reading up about coeliac disease, I realised just how early the disease had started affecting me, before the bloated stomach and cramps had even materialised. Suddenly the puzzle pieces began to form a picture, and my seemingly unconnected health problems started to make sense.
Although largely a gut complaint, coeliac disease affects your whole body. When you eat gluten, your immune system starts attacking the body. “Classic” coeliac disease would see the lining of your gut completely flattened and unable to absorb nutrients, but the way it manifested in me caused frequent mouth ulcers, colds, coughs, tonsillitis and a nasty bout of flu, twice in 5 years.
Additionally, a very common side effect of coeliac disease is depression. It is not known exactly why this is, but there is some evidence to suggest that coeliac disease can affect the nerves and parts of the brain. But the thing about depression is that you don’t usually know why you’re depressed. It can have a trigger, such as the death of a loved one or the loss of your job, but for those with chronic depression, you just ARE depressed. It becomes a part of your identity. So perhaps the disease affected my brain physically. Perhaps my lingering depression was as a result of being ill frequently, or an overachieving environment. It’s so hard to know for sure, but I suspect it was a combination of all these factors.
When I stopped eating gluten, within two weeks my stomach problems had stopped. Within two months I noticed I hadn’t had any mouth ulcers recently, and after a year I’d had a single, measly cold – which was a record achievement for me.
Almost two years on, I can’t say that I don’t still get depressed sometimes. But the bleakness, the brain fog, the inability to rationalise with myself has, very slowly, begun to lift. The episodes are getting shorter and lighter, and I’m managing to cope with them better.
I think in my case (and of course every case is different), eating gluten created an environment of impaired functioning in my brain, particularly with regards to mood. Because I felt down, my mind tried to rationalise why I felt that way, and because I felt down, I rationalised that things were hopeless and depressing.
Because my behavior has adapted to the symptoms I was unknowingly suffering for years, it will take a while to retrain myself. I have had to make a concerted effort to make positive changes that have been proven to be good for me – good diet, exercise, sleep.
But little by little, I’m getting there.
NB: If you suffer from depression as well as anaemia, mouth ulcers, bloating, frequent diarrhoea, infertility or multiple miscarriages, ask for a blood test for coeliac disease from your doctor, before removing gluten from your diet.
Samantha Stein runs www.thehappycoeliac.com , a website devoted to gluten-free recipes, coaching, reviews and more. Her first book, “Gluten-free Baking at Christmas” will be out at the end of November.
