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NPR's Shots has an article discussing the correlation between infections and depression and other mental illness:
Late last year, [associate professor] Turhan Canli published a paper [...] asserting that depression should be thought of as an infectious disease. "Depressed patients act physically sick," says Canli. "They're tired, they lose their appetite, they don't want to get out of bed." He notes that while Western medicine practitioners tend to focus on the psychological symptoms of depression, in many non-Western cultures, patients who would qualify for a depression diagnosis report primarily physical symptoms, in part because of the stigmatization of mental illness.
"The idea that depression is caused simply by changes in serotonin is not panning out. We need to think about other possible causes and treatments for psychiatric disorders," says Canli.
His assertion that depression results from infection might seem far-fetched, or at least premature, but there are some data to bolster his claim.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gaaark on Wednesday October 28 2015, @01:06AM
I'm a firm believer in food allergies/gastro-intestinal issues being a BIG cause in mental issues: i thought my mother was going INSANE when i was a teenager. Then she found out she was lactose intolerant and when she switched off milk/dairy, she became sane again.
My son was off the wall (literally: when he was about 3, he'd run straight into a wall or door (his spacial/body awareness sucked and when he ran, he would watch his feet to see where they were in relation to other things): he'd go 'smack' into hard things, rub his forehead, then run on. Other kids would cry for an hour. He'd climb book cases, stand on top and stand there laughing insanely: he'd sit staring into space and laugh at nothing... turns out his gut turns gluten into a kind of opiate (http://www.greatplainslaboratory.com/home/eng/peptide.asp [greatplainslaboratory.com]) (from a quick google search) and he was high half the time.
I know myself that my lactose intolerance can turn my mood and behaviour to the worse, and don't even want to talk about gluten in my bowels....
I've heard that schizophrenia could be caused by food allergies, and more and more they're discovering that the gastro-intestinal system is the root of our whole body system.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Wednesday October 28 2015, @09:59PM
turns out his gut turns gluten into a kind of opiate (http://www.greatplainslaboratory.com/home/eng/peptide.asp) (from a quick google search) and he was high half the time.
To me, that would be more of a blessing than a curse. I avoid gluten most of the time anyway - eat some toast for an opium buzz? I'll take it!
I am a crackpot