Some of my nemeses are food based.
I didn’t discover this until my late 30’s, 2012-ish. Unfortunately for my discovery, the scientific papers regarding gluten and casein negatively affecting mental health and certain conditions like schizophrenia and autism, while out there (in legit medical journals) are still not widely known and read. (Though widely available- go ahead and look it up; it’s scary-wild.)
That part isn’t a big deal, for me, really. I don’t go out to eat at restaurants or other people’s houses very often. I’m responsible for the grocery shopping in my house.
The problem comes when I get lazy. Living gluten/casein free requires a certain kind of iron will. And sometimes you just crave, with maddening need, a mozzarella stick or a plain bagel.
Cheese has long been known to have effects similar to, but less than, opiates. Turns out, if your body doesn’t process gluten or casein “correctly,” while you may not have celiac disease, you get a double whammy of that opiate feeling.
Which means one moment of weakness often results in a downward slide in which I casually stuff my gob with the foods I know don’t work out so well for my brain, justifying it all with “it isn’t that much,” “I barely have any most of that time,” and “just one serving a day won’t hurt.”
Oh, gods. Casein and gluten. Om nom nom. Noshing on that provides an immediate rush of feel goods in the brain.
Then I start to drag. The mind fog gets worse. The energy levels, already low, dip catastrophically. The ability to do this thing called “focus,” turns into a joke.
And because I’m a brilliant American, it takes me a little while to realize what I’m doing different to affect me so badly. Which then, for some reason I don’t understand, I am forced to research if gluten and casein brain fog are a thing (duh), which I already know are, just to get it confirmed by another medical journal abstract entry.
I think I’m subconsciously trying to find research that proves it doesn’t. But I know from years of personal experience, gluten and casein mess with me, hard.
Which then sends me back into the cold-turkey, raw-willpower, withdrawal to get back on the straight and narrow.
This is a rough time of year for me.
Leave a Reply