Don’t Keep It to Yourself
A recent television advertisement for a popular national dating site depicts a couple seated at a table for two in a restaurant on what seems to be a first date.
Celiac disease, a physical condition in which the digestive tract does not process gluten.
The guy rattles off a long list of labels to describe himself, many of which refer to ideologies and physical conditions, one of which caught my attention: gluten free. The woman’s facial expression in the advertisement shows that she is greatly pained and more greatly bored and could have avoided meeting this gastronomically challenged creature if she’d used the advertiser’s service.
I try to only eat gluten-free food. I do not describe myself as gluten-free because I am not, myself, food.
I have celiac disease, a physical condition in which the digestive tract does not process gluten. I was diagnosed when I was fifty-three years old. Decades before that when I, at the age of four walked the four long blocks to my first kindergarten classes, celiac disease was pretty much unknown. Undiagnosed and untreated celiac disease lends itself to poor motor skills and overall fidgetiness. I received not so great grades in “deportment” and “handwriting.”
I have read in several places that the first inklings that a possible digestive epidemic existed was when northern Europeans reported feeling ill after bread became more available following WWII.
When a person has celiac disease, gliadin, a chemical component of the protein gluten which is found in wheat, barley, rye and sometimes oats, is released into the upper intestine. It is there that the trouble starts. Gliadin attacks and flattens the intestinal villi, which are finger like intestinal protuberances whose surfaces absorb nutrients such as calcium, iron and B12. Once celiac disease process begins, people with celiac disease experience digestive pain and everything that goes with it. Digestive pain coupled with vitamin malabsorption leads to poor focus and foggy thinking. When I was a child it was considered impolite to mention certain sorts of pain and considered very impolite to try to compare digestive process experiences with anyone. Very often, sufferers of celiac disease are not diagnosed until they reach their fifties, at which point, their upper intestines no longer rebound and the pain can no longer be ignored.
Peter H.R. Green M.D.’s “Celiac Disease a Hidden Epidemic,” links celiac disease to certain malignancies including melanoma, neuropathy, migraine, epilepsy, diabetes, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and alcoholism. Research suggests that trauma, and undiagnosed and untreated illness is trauma, can itself lead to depression, so-called mental illness and substance abuse. In fact, celiac disease involves biochemical internal trauma not visible to the onlooker. Vitamin B deficiencies can cause cracks in the corners of the mouth which are visible, but which alone might not trigger testing for celiac disease.
My thinking has gotten much clearer since I stopped consuming gluten. My needed caffeine consumption, yes, I am probably an addict, has dropped by half. I still like my coffee. And, despite suffering much internal damage from other long ago causes, and despite having lived with a considerable brain injury of which I was not aware until I was in my late fifties, I have continued to feel better because I consume a gluten free diet.
Consciousness starts with the senses.
Psychologist Charles Fernyhough’s “The Voices Within” suggests that adults who hear voices might not be hallucinating the disconnected phantoms of mental illness, but might be experiencing forgotten conversations, their own subconscious thoughts, or still-to-be-named emotions from the past. Serotonin plays a large part regulating mood, appetite and sleep, and, from day one, our central nervous systems process memories of our days’ events, growing and pruning neural connections as we sleep. (Some neuroscientists believe autism results from inefficient neural pruning.)
Celiac disease is not common. Gluten sensitivity might be. Our guts rule us.
Most serotonin resides in our digestive tracts and our first communications with ourselves and the world stem literally from our gut feelings. An infant’s first “words” are screams and how those screams are met lead to expectations, hopeful or diminished. A therapist once gave me an audiotape on spirituality which suggested that the first “god” anyone meets is the person looking down at them as they lay helpless in their cribs. Perception flows from there. Language starts there. We enter our wider worlds speaking words and using body language that mimic our early experience and imagine how emotionally fraught life is when families cannot stop a child’s pain. Specific knowledge of how internal neurochemicals and external substances affect how we think and feel might create more shared societal value for individual well-being and homeostasis.
We benefit from good information. There is no shame in sharing some.
