Depression: Mental condition or gut disorder?

[MeSci]

This is an interesting article on the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) website. Not all the stuff on their site is necessarily good or correct, but some is.

As well as depression, the article suggests links with urticaria and rhinitis, dermatitis herpetiformis, type I diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.

It refers to a number of scientists and topics that have been discussed on Phoenix Rising, and includes reference to a clinical trial by a team including Michael Maes, using curcumin from turmeric.

 

[misskatniss]

Very cool! The more I get into the biological, neurological etc. stuff here, the more I see how much interdependence moods etc have with merely physical reasons. I would never have thought that the link between body and soul is that strong and how much effects nutrition and supplements could have on feelings etc.. E.g. seeing how well curcumin seems to do for me regarding anxiety. So glad that natural stuff can influence gut and brain and help.

 

[MeSci]

I've just read a bit more, and this looks interesting and relevant:

By taking our ‘old friends’ out of the equation through constant antibiotic use, says Prof Raison, we have broken a key line of communication between our immune system and the environment. The ‘atomic bomb’ of our innate immune system has taken over at the expense of the ‘stealth sniper’ of our adaptive immune system; an energy-intensive, messy recipe for systemic inflammation – and its consequences – over the long term.

I see there are some other threads on Phoenix Rising referring to Charles Raison - must try to find time to read them!

 

[caledonia]

The gut is where something like 80% of the neurotransmitters are produced. Therefore if your gut is not working well, you can have neurotransmitter issues and thus mental health issues.

The other thing they didn't mention is that methylation is involved in neurotransmitter production. Therefore if you have poor methylation, you can have neurotransmitter issues and thus mental health issues.

Besides genetic reasons for having poor methylation, lead and mercury can also poor methylation.

So the reasons for having a mental health condition can be gut issues, genetically caused methylation issues or environmentally caused methylation issues (or a combination of all of the above).

 

[misskatniss]

... which is just astonishing as I had slight improvement due to beginning with methylation and lowering histamine; and I am also up to gut treaments (very soft ones) because if the gut doens´t work, resorption of NEM or whatsoever to be better will not work or work poorly. It is tricky how much is interrelated here!

 

[MeSci]

I see there are some other threads on Phoenix Rising referring to Charles Raison - must try to find time to read them!

Yikes - have just seriously gone off Charles Raison after checking out one of the other threads referring to him. This is a page that it links to.

The patients who challenged themselves to improve their condition within the context of CBT or graded exercise got much better on the whole than did those who accepted their disabled fate and tried to live with it within the guidelines of the adaptive pacing therapy. If you’ve got CFS you’ve got to fight for your health by pushing against your pain and exhaustion to get in better mental and physical shape...even though we don’t understand what causes CFS, it can be treated with behavioral interventions that anyone with the illness can, at least in theory, avail themselves of.

(and that means angry in my case, not 'mad' as this emoticon claims to represent. Definition of 'mad' in Cambridge Dictionary:

mentally ill, or unable to behave in a reasonable way

I am sane.

I don't find this colloquial use of the term 'mad' to mean 'angry' at all appropriate, especially in the current context.

PLEASE can we have literal definitions for the emoticons. 'Woot' is another one - what on earth is 'woot'? It could be especially confusing for people for whom English is not a first language.)

 

[2manyhobbies]

Sherry Rogers has an interesting book entitled " Depression Cured at Last" and though it was written before the human genome project she has a pretty good handle on the plethora of causes.

She gives a nod toward methylation in the chapter on B12 going as far to say it borders on malpractice to fail to check Mma and serum B12 before making a diagnosis----this alone could save thousands of people a lot of misery as the antidepressants do not fix the B12 deficiency---same for methyfolate.

The gut issue always ties in with methylation issues as heavy metals wreak havoc on probiotics and good flora.

Depression is a multifactoral illness or more precisely a symptom of an imbalance somewhere in the biochemistry and modern medicine should focus on causation rather than treating a symptom as a disease.

 

[misskatniss]

oh @MeSci sooo glad that we finally discovered it! We only need to say goodbye to our acceptance of our fate as being ill and will get in better physical and mental shape! Yeah!
Let´s take a look.
Goodbye, acceptance! I´m no longer ill!
Ummmh. Doesn´t work. Maybe my will power is not strong enough.
Hey, wrecked body, I´m no longer ill! Push! Push!

Crash.

Ok, irony off.

Is that guy serious?????? If I were some peer of his, I´d at first ask him whether those who recovered better might have had anything but CFS. If they got better by will, they must have different mitochondria or gut microbes etc. than I have. Mine are very reluctant to my will power *devil*

 

[stridor]

...and the reason that 70+% of the immune system hangs out in the gut is that the body seems to think that it is our first line of defence. The gut lining needs to be replaced every two to three days or something like that. The body will plunder the amino acids from wherever it must in an attempt to retain integrity of this system. And this includes amino acids destined to be neurotransmitters.
This is one of the many reasons why those with chronic bowel problems often contend with psych symptoms as well (says the guy who used to have Bipolar and no longer has a colon).
I am late making a move to improve gut health - I'm kinda embarrassed about that, but I seem to be doing better. Most probiotics emphasize bacteria of the lower gut.

 

[misskatniss]

Oh. And what can be done for the small bowel? Are probiotics useful as well? And how do I defy imflammation in the small bowel? Thank you...

 

[MeSci]

She gives a nod toward methylation in the chapter on B12 going as far to say it borders on malpractice to fail to check Mma and serum B12 before making a diagnosis----this alone could save thousands of people a lot of misery as the antidepressants do not fix the B12 deficiency---same for methyfolate.

Sorry - what's Mma?

 

[MeSci]

Hey, wrecked body, I´m no longer ill! Push! Push!

Crash.

I have a few health notes from 1995 - the year I became ill. It includes "Trying to get fit." I was cycling. What a good idea that was...not.

 

[MeSci]

Oh. And what can be done for the small bowel? Are probiotics useful as well? And how do I defy imflammation in the small bowel? Thank you...

There are lots of threads on how to fix the gut in these forums:

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?forums/gastrointestinal-and-urinary.97/

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?forums/the-gut-de-meirleir-maes-h2s-leaky-gut.9/

 

[2manyhobbies]

Sorry - what's Mma?

Methylmalonic acid rises when your body is B12 deficient and is easily tested for via urine test. It is much more sensitive than a serum B12 test according to what I have read.

You can't push things when your gut isn't healthy--you aren't extracting enough nutrients to do so. I firmly believe gut health is prerequisite to healing anything with nutrition. You have to absorb it before any healing can take place.

S. Rogers claims you need to kill the bad bugs (parasites/bacteria)--replenish the flora--and employ L-glutamine to heal the damage done to the lining. Another player is Butyrex (Neesby's) and is helpful but glutamine is the big hitter IMO.

 

[MeSci]

Methylmalonic acid rises when your body is B12 deficient and is easily tested for via urine test. It is much more sensitive than a serum B12 test according to what I have read.

You can't push things when your gut isn't healthy--you aren't extracting enough nutrients to do so. I firmly believe gut health is prerequisite to healing anything with nutrition. You have to absorb it before any healing can take place.

S. Rogers claims you need to kill the bad bugs (parasites/bacteria)--replenish the flora--and employ L-glutamine to heal the damage done to the lining. Another player is Butyrex (Neesby's) and is helpful but glutamine is the big hitter IMO.

I have learned something today - I hadn't heard of methylmalonic acid.

Exertion makes the gut wall leaky, so definitely contraindicated for those of us prone to leaky gut. I am very attracted to the leaky-gut theory of ME and have blogged on it here. Glutamine is part of my gut-healing regime.

 

[2manyhobbies]

I have learned something today - I hadn't heard of methylmalonic acid.

Exertion makes the gut wall leaky, so definitely contraindicated for those of us prone to leaky gut. I am very attracted to the leaky-gut theory of ME and have blogged on it here. Glutamine is part of my gut-healing regime.

I have a theory that stress of any type(including exercise induced) depletes methylfolate at a high rate (probably Zinc as well) and thus slows down the replication of rapid growth tissues such as the G.I. tract lining.

I believe that many of those with Crohns and IBS could benefit from high dose methylfolate AFTER they eliminate their bad bugs. Stress is know to exacerbate both of the above mentioned conditions.

A personal experience is that when I am training I recuperate faster with added methylfolate and methylobalamin. It may be the added folate increase protein metabolism?

 

[misskatniss]

Can I kill the bad bugs without antibiotics? I do not tolerate them well...

I strongly believe, too, that the gut is where to start from. Excellent stuff here in the gut threads.

 

[misskatniss]

PS: Had that sudden association with Starship Troopers: "Kill the bugs! Kill the bugs!" ;-) lol

 

[2manyhobbies]

Can I kill the bad bugs without antibiotics? I do not tolerate them well...

I strongly believe, too, that the gut is where to start from. Excellent stuff here in the gut threads.

I don't tolerate antibiotics well either and have found that herbals are extremely effective for about any type of dysbiosis . If it contains Golden Seal, garlic, gentian and perhaps black walnut and wormwood I think it is a pretty safe bet that the critters are in trouble.

Tyler encapsulations has a product called Para-Gard that works very well on multiple types of the little trouble makers.

The balancing act is getting rid of them and getting strong enough not to relapse. I have been back and forth killing them off---getting better--relapsing. It takes some time to rebuild and the secret is not to push too hard too soon and allow a tincture of time for healing.

 

[MeSci]

Can I kill the bad bugs without antibiotics? I do not tolerate them well...

I strongly believe, too, that the gut is where to start from. Excellent stuff here in the gut threads.

I haven't used antibiotics except the natural one Grapefruit Seed Extract (not to be confused with grape seed extract, and they are both often shortened to GSE). Grapefruit Seed Extract is also known as Citricidal.

But diet alone may sometimes suffice to correct gut dysbiosis. Give it the right substrates and the right bugs will proliferate and crowd out the bad ones, or to be more accurate, it will reach the right balance. Gut bacteria are mostly not completely 'good' or 'bad' - it's the balance that matters.