Link Between Your Gut And Your Mental Health

Click to read the full interview

This post was inspired by an interview we (Dan and Evelyn) read by Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride. Dr. Campbell McBride found that digestion plays a major role in healthy development, mood, and mental health. Are you taking the appropriate level of care for your gut? Are you monitoring your sugar, gluten, and casein intake? Have you taken antibiotics, pain killer, steroids recently? Have you been or are you currently experiencing a high volume of stress? Is your diet filled with sugar and processes foods? Below you will find some key points that were addressed in the article. Click the button above if you would like to read the full article.   

• Most psychiatric patients suffer from digestive problems. They have unhealthy inner ecosystems where there is an overgrowth of bad bacteria, yeast and fungus which does not allow them to be able to digest food properly.
• This creates a large number of neurotoxins that can move from their intestines through the damaged intestinal lining into the blood stream where the toxins are carried to the brain.
• This reality makes digestive health imperative for anyone with a mental disorder. Correcting digestive health can treat the disorder, and in some cases heal it.
• One source of neurotoxins is digestion of certain foods, especially processed foods like sugar, flour and milk products.
• Many people who suffer from depression, schizophrenia, ADD,ADHD, and autism also have an overgrowth of a yeast called Candida albicans. Candida and other yeasts feed on glucose from sugar and digest it differently from the good bacteria in your gut.
• Candida albicans (and other yeasts turn dietary glucose into alcohol (ethanol) and its by-product acetaldehyde, which is a colorless volatile water-soluble liquid aldehyde C2H4O used chiefly in organic synthesis that can cause irritation to mucous membranes(according to Merriam-Webster dictionary).

These toxic products of impaired digestion can:

• Reduce stomach acid
• Damage your gut lining
• Impair your immunity
• Affect your metabolism
• Cause brain damage

For many people with digestive problems, consuming sugar is like consuming alcohol.
Gluten and casein are two other dietary substances that are difficult to digest and may contribute to mental health problems.
Gluten is a protein found in grains, and casein is a protein found in milk and milk products. Many people with digestive dysfunction (and mental disorders) struggle to digest the proteins in gluten and casein. Their bodies turn these proteins into substances similar to opiates like morphine and heroin.

• Researchers believe that these substances get into the brain and affect it just like the drugs would and could be a cause of schizophrenia, depression, and other mental disorders.

Some common culprits that damage gut flora include:

• Antibiotics
• Over-the-counter pain killers
• Steroids
• Birth control pills
• Diets full of sugar and processed foods
• Disease
• Stress

​Diet and lifestyle are two key factors that can cause schizophrenia, depression, autism and other mental disorders. Similarly, diet and lifestyle can heal mental and physical health.

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