FOOD INTOLERANCE NETWORK FACTSHEET
Depression and food intolerance
Depression,
anxiety, unexplained tiredness, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts and actions,
obsessive-compulsive disorder and social phobia can be associated with foods.
One father
in the
'I had a
violent reaction within a few hours and have never felt so awful in all my
life. Here are some of the symptoms: depression, suicidal tendencies not just
thoughts, melancholy, looking for an argument, feeling the whole world was
against me, lethargy, shakes, pressure on the skull and tingles in the
extremities, feeling of hangover, inability to focus on thoughts, ringing in the
ears, inability to sleep. The hungover feeling lasted until the next day. Not
the best 24 hours but at least I know there is a cause for symptoms that I have
experienced in the past.’
People who experience symptoms like this are in the
most sensitive category for food intolerance. They are likely to react to a
large number of food chemicals and even small mistakes in their diet can cause
long reactions. Amines are not the only food chemicals associated with symptoms
of depression – any food chemical can be a problem, and people are different
which is why the elimination diet is needed to clarify which food chemicals
affect each individual. You will probably suffer withdrawal symptoms at some
time during the first two weeks, and your symptoms will probably recur during
challenges, so it is important to be supervised by an experienced dietitian,
doctor or counsellor during your diet.
In a medical journal
Several years ago, a report in a medical journal
described the case of a 25 year old
patient from a stable and caring family. A university graduate, the
patient had a history of attention deficit disorder without hyperactivity,
motor tics, generalised anxiety, social phobia, panic attacks,
obsessive-compulsive disorder manifested mainly in checking compulsions and
five years of severe depressive episodes which were non-responsive to a range
of psychotropic drugs. After four weeks on the RPAH elimination diet, his mood
and other symptoms had improved considerably. Double blind placebo controlled
testing revealed that the patient was severely affected by salicylates and
later tests showed effects of food additives. While staying on the diet, the
patient was able to remain symptom free. When reviewed after a year, he had
been able to return to full time work. The Mood Disorders Unit at the Prince of Wales Hospital,
Randwick, Sydney, is now carrying out further studies into the food-depression
link.
Women at risk
Due to
female hormones, women are more at risk during their childbearing years,
particularly while premenstrual and after giving birth. One woman I’ll call
Margaret described herself as ‘a chronic bitch for two weeks out
of every month’, also suffering from severe cramping, heavy bleeding and
frequent clots. After her first baby, she suffered from postnatal depression:
‘Straight
after my son’s birth I knew something was wrong. When I got home I just sat in
bed staring into space. I couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t do anything,
couldn’t sleep. I would start panicking when I heard the baby cry. My mother
had to come and look after us, doing all the work and bringing my son to me for
feeds.’
When her second child was born, the same thing
happened, but this time she started the elimination diet for her breastfed
baby's eczema when her baby was four months old. 'I felt better than I had for
months,' Margaret recalled, but after weaning went back on her normal diet and
again started feeling anxious, overwhelmed and unable to sleep despite
antidepressants. She knows now she should have realised she needed to go back
on the diet but it seemed too hard. 'I was in denial. For me, giving up
chocolate was a really big thing'.
It took Margaret 18 failsafe months to wean herself
slowly off antidepressants. During that time her PMS, other menstrual problems
and depression all disappeared and challenges showed that she was sensitive to
‘nearly everything’. She says ‘If someone had told me when I first got
postnatal depression that my problems were due to food intolerance, I would
have gone on the diet straight away.’
Children can be affected too
An anxious seven year old with learning difficulties
improved so much during a three week elimination diet that as a reward his
mother offered him anything he wanted in the supermarket. He chose an icypole
with seven artificial colours, BHA (320) and artificial flavours. That day
there was no reaction, the next day there might have been a problem, then on
day three, the family saw a massive 'bad and sad' reaction. First, the boy
'turned into a monster' and no one wanted to have anything to do with him. Then
he sank into a deep, dark depression. He wanted to hurt himself, he wanted to
be dead. As his mother said, 'It was awful and so dramatic. He was aware of
what caused the reaction and never wants to eat one again'. Yet this family,
like so many others, had never noticed any effects of foods, because when
problematic food chemicals are eaten every day, effects appear to come and go
with no obvious cause.
Another
family discovered through the elimination diet that their eight year old
daughter's depression was linked to amines. After two years on failsafe, the
mother wrote:
'Pre-failsafe she was mildly
depressed, as well as lethargic, pale, anxious, dizzy and "spacy".
Her amine challenge resulted in severe depression including bouts of suicidal
thoughts and almost psychotic agitation. Based on pre-diet behaviours, she had
been classified as having a highly anxious temperament. A number of health
professionals have told us they expect to see her back during her teenage
years, meaning so they can give her antidepressants. However after two years
failsafe she shows no signs of mental illness in any form and no longer seems a
candidate for anxiety and depression.’
From story
[474] My 10-year-old daughter recently started becoming tearful and depressed
sometimes - I was amazed when she worked out it was a reaction to sharing her
Dad's chips - 'It's the flavour enhancers Mum, they just make me want to cry
for no reason'.
Fumes and perfumes
As well as
food chemicals, you might need to consider your exposure to volatile organic
compounds (VOCs) or smelly chemicals such as pesticides, airfresheners, perfumes
and perfumed cleaning products, toiletries, solvents, building chemicals and
some flame retardants which have been linked with sick building syndrome. This
condition includes a range of symptoms such as eye, skin and throat irritation,
headaches, lethargy, dizziness, nausea and memory disturbance, and some VOCs
have been linked with depression. In particular, certain flame retardants in
soft furnishings such as mattresses and lounge suites could be a problem. When
flame retardant TCPP (trichloropropyl phosphate) was tested on thousands of
laboratory rats, four studies out of nine listed ‘depression’ as the main
clinical sign while the others listed hunched posture and lethargy. This
chemical has never been tested on humans. Although the Australian National
Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS) reported
neurological effects and recommended more testing, it didn’t happen and the
product is now in widespread use. For more details, watch for an update of the
Fumes and Perfumes factsheet.
Antidepressants, suicide and
withdrawal symptoms
The new
class of antidepressants known as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors which include Prozac, Zoloft and paroxetine, also known as Aropax,
Paxil, Seroxat) were viewed as relatively harmless when they came on the market
in the 1980s. However, starting in 1992, a number of SSRIs have been linked to
a condition called akathisia. Unpublished data suggests that up to one patient
in four may suffer from this condition.
Also
described as inner restlessness, akathisia consists of severe agitation,
sometimes accompanied by motor restlessness such as the inability to sit still
or feeling the need to pace. It can be an extremely distressing experience and
can lead to mental confusion and suicidal ideas arising from the unbearable
discomfort and restlessness. Unfortunately it is not possible to anticipate
which patients will be affected.
In 1997,
British psychiatrist Dr David Healy wrote a report recommending the use of
psychotropic drugs in children but changed his mind about antidepressants when
he noticed his in-tray 'filling with files on teenagers committing suicide
within a week or two of commencing Prozac'.
The risk is
highest when just starting or stopping the drugs and may extend to violent
behaviour. In July 2001, a jury in Wyoming ordered manufacturers
GlaxoSMithKline to pay $US 6.4 million to the relatives of Donald Schell after
Schell, 60, shot and killed his wife, daughter and baby granddaughter before
killing himself. He had no previous history of violence and been taking
antidepressants for just two days.
Dr Healy
estimates that at least 250,000 people worldwide have attempted suicide because
of Prozac alone and 25,000 have succeeded. He has conducted trials which showed
that SSRIs caused even some healthy volunteers to become agitated, and in some
cases, suicidal.
A trial of
93 children in the US found that depressed children who took paroxetine did
better than on placebo or older drugs. But ten of the children suffered serious
psychiatric problems within weeks of going on the drug. Most of them had to be
hospitalised. Five had suicidal thoughts and gestures.
Last year
the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) set up an
expert panel to review the safety and efficacy of SSRIs, starting with their
use in under-18s. By December, it had banned all the SSRIs except Prozac for
this age group, citing poor evidence of efficacy and a raised risk of self-harm
and suicidal thoughts. Meanwhile in the US, pharmaceutical giant
GlaxoSmithKline is being sued by the New York state attorney-general in a civil
lawsuit alleging the company suppressed research findings that indicate its
antidepressant paroxetine is not only ineffective in adolescents and children
but also increases the risk of suicide.
Withdrawal symptoms
In Britain,
paroxetine heads the list of drugs associated with reports of withdrawal
symptoms, with more complaints than all other drugs put together.
According
to manufacturers, technically these complaints are 'discontinuation’ rather
than withdrawal symptoms because they do not constitute addiction, defined as
the need for increasing doses of medication.
They advise
patients who find they are unable to stop taking their medication because of severe
withdrawal symptoms to start taking their medication again, then taper the
dose.
A woman who took antidepressants for
six years after developing postnatal depression described how after going
failsafe, she felt she no longer needed the tablets but was unable to stop
taking them due to severe withdrawal symptoms. “Don’t get me wrong’, she wrote,
‘for a few years I needed it but this medication is addictive’. Eventually, she
managed to wean herself off antidepressants over a period of nearly 18 months by
proceeding slowly, with a minimum of two to three months for each reduction
stage, reducing to one tablet every second day (every day date divisible by
two) then gradually extending the medication free days in-between until she was
down to one tablet every seven days. Now she is ‘managing well so long as I
keep failsafe’.
Reports of
withdrawal symptoms include electrical 'shocks' to the brain, dizziness,
extreme nausea, crying spells, lightheadedness, vertigo, coordination problems,
gait disturbances, sweating, vomiting, high fever, abdominal discomfort, flu
symptoms, agitation, irritability, aggression, sleep disturbance, nightmares,
tremor, confusion, memory and concentration difficulties, lethargy, malaise,
weakness and general fatigue. There are more details, and information about how
to wean yourself off antidepressants, at www.QuitPaxil.org.
Update
1)
Depression and illness linked to air fresheners and aerosols
Mothers are
more likely to experience headaches and depression in homes where air
fresheners and aerosols such as deodorants, hairsprays or polishes are used
daily, according to a new study. Babies in high use homes are at significantly
higher risk of earache and stomach ache, diarrhoea and vomiting. Researchers
led by Dr Alexandra Farrow from the University of Bristol’s ongoing Children of
the 90s project believe the problems may be a result of exposure to VOCs
(volatile organic compounds) used in aerosols. The study will be published in
the Archives of Environmental Health. Daily Mail, London, 20/10/04.
2) Depression
and aspartame
There is a
compelling account of a teenage girl’s ‘living hell’ due to aspartame
(artificial sweetener 951) addiction. In three years, she went from being a
‘vibrant, outgoing person’, top student
and athlete competing in the world championship games in Europe to being a
depressed, overweight ‘lump of flesh on the family-room couch’ drinking 10-15
cans of diet drink a day.
Unable to
deal with her depression, and after unhelpful experiences with a series of
doctors, the teenager finally saw a news report on aspartame and decided to
stop drinking diet drinks. When she first tried to stop use she experienced
shaking, nausea and a tremendous urge to have a diet drink. She wasn't able to stop immediately so she
gradually cut down the number of cans each day until she had quit altogether
... and her depression finally lifted.
There are
also reports of chest pains, blurred vision, skin rash, headaches in temple
area, behaviour outbursts and seizures related to aspartame in chapter 2, The
Aspartame Story, in Feeding the Brain by Dr CK Conners (published Guilford
Press, 1989 – he’s the same Dr Conners who developed the well-known Conners
rating scale for children’s behaviour).
Reader’s
story: [390] Mixed depressive disorder with anxiety and obsessive ruminations
including self harm due to salicylate sensitivity (March 2006)
My 6 ½ year old son, Tim (not his real name) is currently undergoing
investigation of mixed depressive disorder with anxiety and obsessive
ruminations. We have used the failsafe diet in the past with one of our other
children, but had not ever thought of foods being linked to Tim’s mood
problems. When you mention the “gifted and depressed” child in your recent talk
my ears immediately pricked up and took note. Tim has been identified as highly
gifted and everyone has been saying that is the cause of his problems but I
have always felt there was something else underlying that was contributing. We
will be contacting our GP today and hopefully starting the failsafe diet ASAP…
Two months later …
Since starting the elimination diet Tim has not self harmed once! He is
much calmer and has noticed this in himself. He no longer seems to be as
restless and has been falling asleep easily at a reasonable time in the
evenings. We started with the salicylates challenge this week and there seemed
to be no reaction, until day 5/6 when we started to notice his behaviour was
getting worse. We will stop this challenge tonight and wait to try some other
groups. His GP and Clinical Psychologist are both thrilled with the change as
are well!
One week later ….
After I emailed you we finally had the BIG reaction we were looking for.
It happened on Day 7 of the salicylate challenge - we had already stopped the
challenge that morning. Tim went to bed as normal then began to write swear
words all over his bed, his sheets and his body. ("I was angry with you
because I couldn't fall asleep") This is the behaviour and obsessive
ruminations this poor boy was experiencing on a daily basis before the
elimination diet, which we have not seen until this challenge.– by
email.
[447] ‘Fear of the dark’
really a food reaction (August 2006)
We started the diet nearly a year ago for my son, a sweet 5 year old who
would become an aggressive, extremely hyperactive and an emotional monster
nearly every day. I saw you on A Current Affair and after taking muesli bars
and sultanas (which I had thought were healthy) out of his diet I noticed most
of his aggressive behaviour disappear.
After that we started the full diet and not only did our son become an
angel, we noticed that our daughter was a very strong amine reactor, becoming
uncontrollably emotional, depressed and ‘full on’, as well as having frequent
nightmares and bedwetting. Unfortunately since we have moved 2 months ago our
son has gone backwards fast, I now think as a result of amines in meat from new
butchers. It is so upsetting to see all the progress disappear, and he has had
HUGE problems at school this term. I have traveled back to our old butchers to
stock up on meat and am started to see some improvement after one week.
The biggest shock for me however, was when I recently discovered I was a
food reactor!! I was a junk food addict and would eat about 5kg of chocolate a
week. I can’t believe now I had so many symptoms, and I never even put them
together as symptoms, let alone found the source of the problem! I was getting
migraines, I constantly had a headache behind my eyes, I felt very faint and
disoriented, had stomach pains that felt like needles - usually after eating
lollies, and I was always bloated - something which really upset me.
The weirdest thing to attribute to food however was my extreme ‘fear of
the dark’ as I called it. I would be terribly scared of the dark, I would think
that my mind thought it could see little people and things out of the corner of
my eye, even though I knew they weren’t there, I would open my eyes every 10
seconds while trying to get to sleep, just to check if there were monsters or
robbers there, and every time I closed my eyes all I could picture in my head
was horrible things that would scare me. I was a bit worried I was starting to
go crazy, then I stopped eating chocolate and didn’t even notice all these
symptoms disappeared.
It wasn’t until I splurged on a whole chocolate cake over two nights
that I discovered what had caused these problems. After eating the cake I was
completely on edge. I couldn’t sit down for ten seconds without turning around
to make sure there were no monsters or robbers behind me. Eventually I had to
sit with my back to the wall so I wouldn’t think there were things behind me.
That was the last time I ate chocolate, and the thought of ever eating it again
scares me! – by email.
Q. I have a son in
his thirties who has been on the diet since the age of 6 (salicylates,
preservatives, colours and dyes are the problem, not amines). Unfortunately, he
has recently begun getting quite serious depression and is seeing a psychiatrist
who just keeps prescribing different anti-depressants as none seem to
work. I recently wrote a letter to the
psychiatrist explaining my son’s dietary problems and the symptoms he gets. The
psychiatrist told him that all food intolerance is psychosomatic. You can
imagine how much help that was. Are there any psychiatrists or counsellors who
understand this chemical sensitivity problem? While he does try to stick to his
diet, I do suspect there may be too frequent diversions from it or something is
catching him out he is not aware of. Trying the elimination diet again is
something I think I shall try to persuade him to do.
A.
Symptoms of food intolerance can change throughout the lifespan, and it is not
uncommon to find the foods that caused hyperactivity in childhood can cause
depression in adulthood. There is case history describing a young adult with a
history of childhood ADD whose severe treatment-resistant depression improved
dramatically on a low salicylate elimination diet (Parker G and Watkins T,
Treatment-resistant depression: when antidepressant drug intolerance may
indicate food intolerance, Aust N Z J Psychiatry, 2002). The article concludes
that clinicians should be aware of food intolerance-related depression and that
it may be worsened by psychotropic medication. You can request our list of
supportive health professionals - including some psychologists – from confoodnet@ozemail.com.au. It may be
worth consulting a dietitian, as safe foods for this diet change constantly and
your son could be following an out-of-date diet. To send the article’s abstract
to your son’s psychiatrist, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Select+from+History&db=pubmed&query_key=1
Further information
See the
Failsafe Cookbook by Sue Dengate. Pages 11-12 deal with food chemicals most
likely to be related to depression. Thank you to the failsafe families who have
shared their experiences so that others can benefit. You can read more of their
stories [340]-[344] in Readers Stories.
References
‘report in
a medical journal’: Parker G, Watkins T, Treatment-resistant depression: when
antidepressant drug intolerance may indicate food intolerance, Aust N Z J
Psychiatry, 2002:36(2):263-5.
'akathisia':
Hamilton MS and Opler LA, Akathisia, suicidality, and fluoxetine, J Clin
Psychiatry 1992;53(11):410-6.
‘one
patient in four’: Kingsland J, The rise and fall of the new wonder-drugs, New
Scientist vol 183 issue 2454, 03 July 2004, p36.
'suicidal
and violent behaviour in some patients': Healy DH, Correspondence between Dr
David Healy and the Medicines Control Agency, www.socialaudit.org.au/58000-00.htm,
'teenagers committing suicide', letter to the CMA dated
'healthy
volunteers to become agitated': Healy D, Lines of evidence on the risks of
suicide with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, Psychother Psychom,
2003;72(2):71-9.
'In a trial
of 93 children', transcript of BBC Panorama program, 'The secrets of Seroxat',
first shown on ABC Four Corners
‘banned all
SSRIs except Prozac’: Kingsland J, cited above
‘sued by
the New York state attorney-general’: Glaxo lawsuit, New Scientist, vol 182
issue 2451, 12 June 2004, p4.
'complaints
of withdrawal reactions': Medicines Control Agency, The top 20 medicines
associated with reports of suspected withdrawal reactions on the
'Patients
who find they are unable to stop': www.QuitPaxil.org
The information given is not intended as
medical advice. Always consult with your doctor for underlying illness. Before beginning
dietary investigation, consult a dietician with an interest in food
intolerance. You can find a supportive dietitian through the Dietitians
Association of
© Sue Dengate
update January 2007
