The gut and the brain are essential parts of the body related to each other because of how much they affect each other. A lot of growing research shows how much influence the digestive tract has on the brain and vice versa. Usually, food intolerance causes digestive symptoms like diarrhoea, stomach pain, and bloating, among other food intolerance symptoms. let’s uncover the mental health effects of food intolerances
Food intolerance symptoms are often not immediate, and it can take upto three days for these symptoms to show up and even longer for them to disappear. Even though it’s common to associate digestive symptoms with IgG antibodies, they can also manifest other issues like joint pain, headaches, depression, and anxiety, which are often overlooked and not readily associated with the food you’ve eaten.
There is communication between the gut and brain, which is controlled by the immune system. Additionally, the endocrine system, immune system, and central nervous system are all under the influence of your gut bacteria. Factors like pollution, stress, diet, and medications also influence these bacteria.
Your gut microbiome composition also affects your susceptibility to food sensitivities and intolerances.
Can food intolerances affect mental health?
Food intolerances and your mental health are closely tied together. The gut microbiome, your body’s immune system, and the brain are closely related and affect each other easily. Your digestive tract has a wall that provides a barrier between what you eat and the rest of your body. When you have an unhealthy gut, it can result in increased levels of inflammation.
When you have inflammation, it can leave your intestinal walls vulnerable to structural damage. The intestinal walls have cell junctions that keep large food molecules and bacteria from entering the bloodstream. However, if these cells in your intestinal walls get damaged, they can cause food to get into your bloodstream that’s not supposed to be there.
When proteins that aren’t supposed to be in the bloodstream get into it, they cause an immune system reaction. This reaction is triggered by the IgG antibody, which is abundant in the body as it helps protect against food antigens and viral and bacterial infections. The immune system can keep recurring even though the body can easily clear food antigens.
When you have such a recurring chronic immune system response, it can impact you in many ways. This chronic immune response that keeps recurring can affect your brain by damaging its structural barrier known as the blood-brain barrier.
The Blood Brain Barrier works similarly to the intestinal barrier. It is selective, allowing certain metabolic products like short-chain fatty and amino acids to pass into the brain from the body’s circulation. However, it also prevents potentially damaging components from passing through the barrier.
When your Blood-Brain barrier has been damaged, it can allow bacterial invasion, which can easily alter the function of immune cells responsible for regulating inflammation. Chronic inflammation is also tied to many mental and physical health problems. Therefore, caring for your gut health is wise because it directly correlates to poor mental health.
So, if you have a compromised intestinal wall barrier, this can directly impact your brain barrier, causing inflammation throughout the body, which can cause many chronic illnesses.
The link between depression and inflammation
Since an impaired intestinal barrier can cause inflammation, there have also been links tying inflammation to depression. A study examined 14,275 people, and it found that those with depression also had 46% higher levels of C-reactive protein in their blood samples, which is a marker of inflammatory disease.
Studies similar to this look further pave the way towards understanding the pathology of mental health conditions and how diet and stress can impact them. The best way to know your food intolerances is by taking an Intolerance Test. This IgG test is a popular way to determine your sensitivities so you can avoid those foods and alter your diet accordingly.
If you have food intolerance symptoms, it’s best to know the foods impacting you and avoid those in your diet. Health professionals also need to consider food intolerances as a cause of mental health problems like anxiety and depression.
How to heal your gut
If you’ve been suffering from food intolerances for a long time and it may have impacted your intestinal health, you can always reverse such issues with some care. The first step is taking an Intolerance Test to ensure you know the foods you need to eliminate from your diet. Knowing which foods you must remove from your diet pushes you towards realizing your goals.
When considering foods to eliminate, you must consult a professional thats because removing foods from your diet can sometimes cause deficiencies. You must consider the nutritional profile of the food you’re eliminating, then replace that food with something similar so you can still get the same vitamins and nutrients.
You should also consume foods rich in collagen, glycine, and proline, which are good for healing connective tissues, which the intestines comprise. The best food that’s rich in these elements is bone broth. Traditional foods that can help with gut health include fermented foods like kefir, kimchi, and sauerkraut.
Fermented foods contain probiotics, the “good” bacteria the body needs to balance and protect the intestinal barrier from toxins, pathogens, and parasites. Once you have introduced these foods daily and paired them with a healthy, balanced diet, you can restore your gut health, which will also impact your mental health.
It’s also possible to reintroduce some foods you were intolerant to before and find that your body can tolerate them more often. However, you need to be careful when doing this to prevent undoing all the hard work. If you notice you get digestive symptoms from a food you’ve reintroduced, then it’s best to leave it from your diet.
Final Thoughts
Food intolerance can impact your physical and mental health and well-being. If you notice you suffer from digestive symptoms often, you must find out if you have food intolerance through an Intolerance Test. When you know which foods are impacting your digestive tract, you should eliminate them from the diet since they also likely cause you anxiety and depression. Only eliminate a food from your diet by replacing it with something that will offer you the same vitamins and nutrients to avoid deficiencies.
