Schizophrenia / Mental Problems and Celiac Disease

The following was written by Dr. Kalle Reichelt who is a leading celiac disease researcher at the Pediatric Research Institute in Oslo, Norway. Please direct any questions regarding this article to him at: Open Original Shared Link

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What most people ignore is that both peptides and trace (biologically significant amounts) amounts of proteins are taken up across the gut mucosa (1,2). Because one molecule of gluten contains at least 15 opioid sequences it is quite clear that this could cause a problem. Increased peptide excretion is found in the urine of celiacs before treatment (3) (Reichelt et al in prep). This is confirmed by a series of papers that demonstrate intact food proteins in mothers milk (4-7). A Canadian group has confirmed that gluten does change a brain enzyme and monoamine levels in cats (8). Their findings a significant even though cats are not gluten eating animals. There is increasing evidence that components from food can indeed cause serious psychiatric (9-12) and neurological (13-16) diseases. Even rheumatoid arthritis may have a link to food proteins (17), and it well established that stress increases gut permeability. Nobody denies the possibility of reactive depression, but there is little reason why this could not be made worse by dietary factors. Because antibodies are indeed induced by peptides it may even be so that dietary peptides by mimicry to endogenous cell surface peptide sequences, may be responsible for many autoimmune diseases (18).

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