If you have just perused the symptom questionnaire that I use for prospective patients, you may be surprised to see anxiety, depression and swings of mood listed among the more conventional allergy manifestations, as well as other mental and emotional symptoms. Your surprise is understandable (and will be shared by most doctors too) but is not based on fact. Allergies can affect the brain just as much as the nose, lungs and skin, as any hay-fever sufferer will tell you on high pollen days. The classic story in a food-intolerant patient is of inexplicable swings of mood, happy and sunny one moment then morose and resentful the next, irritable at the slightest thing (it can wreck families and marriages). Vegetable toxins can also affect the brain in spite of the famous blood-brain barrier that is supposed to protect the brain from toxins (any cannabis or morphine user will attest to that) and so can nutritional deficiencies.
Many nutrients are involved in maintaining a healthy nervous system and thereby an equable mood and a clarity of thought. Vitamin B12, the anti-anaemia vitamin, is a classic example. Loss of balance, memory loss, weakness of limbs, hallucinations, disorders of mood, changes in personality, slowing of mental processes, depression, delusions, hallucinations, agitation and even mania can all be caused by deficiency of this one vitamin alone, even in the absence of any anaemia [1,2].
Major psychotic illness (schizophrenia and manic-depressive psychosis) is not caused by allergy or other ecological hazards, but can certainly be aggravated by them. Two American studies of hospitalised schizophrenics reported “a quiet ward” and earlier discharge of their inmates once grains and milk (the commonest food allergens) were eliminated from their diets [3,4]. I remember one young schizophrenic man who consulted me for allergy testing while in remission; he told me he could hear “the screaming of the devils in Hell” while I was skin-testing him for diesel fumes.
A substantial body of research literature links food allergies, addictions and nutritional deficiencies with mental/emotional disturbances, even in the absence of any formal psychiatric diagnosis [5,6]. The most intensely studied condition is probably ADHD (childhood hyperactivity), and this frequently responds well to dietary and nutritional manoeuvres, coupled if necessary with desensitisation [7,8]. Hyperactive children are at considerable risk of growing up into antisocial, violent and/or criminal adults and our jails are probably full of them. Young burglars in Cardiff Prison confided in the nutritionist who was teaching them domestic science that they used to “get high on coca-cola before doing a job!” (Lashford S, personal communication). In a pioneering study over a decade ago, Police Superintendant Peter Bennett persuaded some of the worst juvenile offenders in Shipley,Yorkshire (and their parents) to ban junk foods and drinks from the children’s diets and had them consume instead a balanced nutritious diet, with nutritional supplements as appropriate. In almost all cases the behaviour and educational standard of these children improved, often to normality [9]. In food intolerance states the picture is often considerably complicated by the simultaneous presence of chronic hyperventilation.
The average adult human chest can accommodate about 5-6 litres of air when the lungs are fully inflated, but this capacity is normally only fully used in forceful exercise. In quiet respiration only a fraction of that capacity is required, perhaps one-tenth, and the chest wall rarely moves much. Whatever breathing is required for quiet tickover is achieved by the diaphragm, a bell-shaped sheet of muscle that divides the chest from the abdomen. When that muscle contracts, the diaphragm flattens somewhat, sucking in some air (and pushing the abdominal wall somewhat outwards). When the muscle relaxes again, about three seconds later, the natural elasticity of the lungs squeezes the air out again. If you watch a baby or an animal asleep, you will see that the chest hardly moves at all, only the front of the abdomen moves rhythmically in and out. After vigorous exercise, of course, much more air exchange is needed and the chest rises and falls as well, to increase ventilation.
In chronic hyperventilation it is often the chest that moves instead of the tummy, in spite of which the patient feels breathless. He (more often she) is using only the top part of her lung capacity, and cannot take in any more air because the chest is already full. She therefore finds herself unable to take a satisfyingly deep breath, and is astonished to discover, when you instruct her to breathe out fully, that she now has plenty of capacity to take in air. Chronic hyperventilation appears to be mainly caused by allergy to or intolerance of dietary or inhaled substances and perhaps represents the body’s attempt to rectify the tissue acidosis (body fluids becoming more acid) resulting from an allergic inflammation somewhere in that body. It should be carefully distinguished from acute hyperventilation, which is a normal response to any powerful emotion good or bad, be it fear, anger or passion, part of the adrenaline fight-or-flight mechanism. In women this results in the classic bosom-heaving of romantic novels, which is entirely normal and physiological.
Hyperventilation of either acute or chronic type lowers the blood carbon dioxide level too far, which in turn deranges the calcium distribution in the circulation, and that in turn causes a host of unpleasant symptoms ranging from muscle cramps, bad memory, poor concentration and anxiety [10] through to panic attacks and the most classic symptom of all – a powerful conviction that one is about to die. It can be controlled in the acute phase by (a) an intravenous injection of calcium gluconate or (b) breathing in and out using a paper bag held over the mouth and nose, to increase the carbon dioxide level of the blood. In the longer term it is often amenable to calm explanation and controlled breathing exercises aimed at restoring the correct mode of breathing, i.e. still chest and mobile tummy. These excercises are best practised in bed before sleep.
References
1) Lindenbaum J, Healton EB, Savage DG et al. Neuropsychiatric disorders caused by cobalamin deficiency
in the absence of anaemia or macrocytosis, New Engl J Med 1988, 318: 1720-8
2) MacDonald Holmes J Cerebral manifestations of vitamin B12 deficiency, Br Med J 1956, 2: 1394-8.
3) Dohan FC, Grasberger FJ. Relapsed schizophrenics: earlier discharge from hospital after cereal-free,
milk-free diet. Am J Psychiatry 1973, 130: 685-8
4) Singh MM, Kay SR. Wheat gluten as a pathogenic factor in schizophrenia. Science 1976, 191: 401-2.
5) Schoentaler SJ, Bier ID. Food addiction and criminal behaviour. In (eds) Brostoff J, Challacombe SJ,
Food Allergy and Intolerance 2ed, Saunders Elsevier, London 2002, pp 731-46.
6) Anthony H, Birtwistle S, Eaton KK, Maberly J. Environmental Medicine in Clinical Practice.
BSAENM Publications, Southampton 1997, p270.
7) Egger J. The hyperkinetic syndrome. In (eds) Brostoff J, Challacombe SJ, Food Allergy and
Intolerance 2ed, Saunders Elsevier, London 2002, pp 703-14
8) Ward NI. The potential role of trace elements in child hyperkinetic disorders. ibid 715-29.
9) Bennett SJ, McEwen LM, McEwen HC, Rose EL. The Shipley Project: Treating food allergy to
prevent criminal behaviour in community settings. J Nutr Environ Med 1998, 8: 77-83
10) McEwen LM. Allergy and EPD. McEwen Laboratories, 2002, pB12.13.
