Got a Gut Feeling

It's been a month since I started the gluten-free diet. It hasn't been going too well.

I'm not sure if going gluten-free is to blame, but I've been extremely depressed lately. And extremely angry. In fact, it's possible I've never been so depressed and angry. It's bad.

The other night, I was taking a walk and there was such a dark cloud over me. I was at a recreational park with a bunch of baseball fields and soccer fields and such. While I was walking through the parking lot to this place, there was a car-full of kids making a ton of noise while they waited for their dad to stop talking to another group of parents. I found the noise rather annoying. I had this strong urge to look over to the dad and say, "You really ought to tell your kids to shut the fuck up." I didn't say it, but I wanted to, really, really bad. I felt a vile venom inside of me. It was nasty.

It didn't hit me until much later that, shit, dude...they were just kids on summer vacation, man. They were probably just being goofy, yet my extremely negative mental state saw it as annoying. That wasn't me. That's not the kind of person I am. It has honestly been like something has been possessing me. 

Is it the Lyme? No, I don't think that's quite it, though it might be. Lyme has been known to corkscrew itself into the brain, kind of like syphilis and, also like syphilis, can make you somewhat mental.

Am I just feeling depressed about my current state of affairs? Maybe. I certainly don't like the fact that it's been over a year now since I was diagnosed with Lyme and I still can't walk more than about a half a mile at a time. Admittedly, I also don't like that I can't drink (even a little) beer (read about why in my previous post). Also, I've been feeling so isolated and lonely. Most friends have kind of moved on with their own lives, and I lack the ambition to make new friends. I also don't know whether I should be dating given my current physical state and whom I should be dating and how I should "break the news" of my condition to them and all that shit. It's literally like I have to start my life over completely. But that's not easy to do at 36 years old and when you're only halfway healthy.

Or???

Maybe my depression is actually physiological but not necessarily because of the Lyme. My theory is that toxins could be to blame. Some of these toxins are neurotoxins from Lyme die-off that still haven't been flushed from my body. But I also think many of these toxins are from candida die-off, which has been exponentially greater lately due to my gluten-free diet.

Candida lives off gluten. If you eliminate the gluten, candida can no longer survive and you get a die-off. When die-off occurs, nasty endotoxins like aldehyde, ethanol and ammonia get released from the candida carcasses and these endotoxins can be nasty (source). My theory right now is my depression/anger has been intensified by a larger presence of endotoxins due to going gluten-free.

But, yes, depression and anger are perhaps my biggest symptoms right now. And, oh, my gut issues (read about these in my previous blog), which, by the way, are likely linked with one another. According to articles I found while browsing the web, if your gut is in bad shape, your mood is in bad shape and vice versa. The gut is responsible for absorption of neurotransmitters and if your gut flora is all out of whack, then your neurotransmitters will be out of whack, thus making your mood all out of whack, too. 

Also, according to another article I found, "Gut microbiota influences serotonin and dopamine production. In, fact, 90% of the body's serotonin is found in the gut" (source). Serotonin is the "feel good" neurotransmitter that is largely responsible for happiness. It's also responsible for regulating gastrointestinal motility, or "peristalsis" is the more technical term, the movement of food materials through the digestive tract. So, if serotonin is lacking, both your mood is horrible and your gut is dysfunctional (source).

Indeed, the key to my mood issues probably lies in my gut "microbiota", also known as flora, which for whatever reason is abnormal right now. Is it abnormal because of candida, or is it due to some other issue? Right now I'm thinking candida, but that's still up in the air. 

Then again, maybe my gut is only off because of anxiety, depression and other mood-related issues. You know, it's the chicken or the egg dilemma. Did the mood mess up the gut or did the gut mess up the mood? Yeesh. More confusion. More complexity.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/magazine/can-the-bacteria-in-your-gut-explain-your-mood.html

https://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/link-between-depression-anxiety-and-gut-health/

https://rawlsmd.com/health-articles/the-leaky-gut-epidemic-modern-causes-natural-solutions?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=leaky-gut&utm_content=gut-health-interest-vp-rmd

http://blog.probacto.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-herxheimer-candida-die-off/