- Do you suffer anxiety, jitteriness,
panic attack, phobias?
- Have drugs failed
to help?
Consider that your symptoms could
come from something you ate.
Food is a drug. What we eat directly impacts the physiology
and biochemistry of our brain and can create a barrage of symptoms misdiagnosed
as psychiatric. Take the case of Charles Darwin.
Shortly after 27 year-old Charles Darwin returned to England in 1836
after his five-year voyage on the Beagle,
the father of evolutionary theory began complaining of “constant attacks” –
heart palpitations, trembling, shortness of breath, vomiting, extreme fatigue,
depression, and “swimming in the head.”
He declined a secretaryship at the Geological Society of London because
“anything that flurries me completely knocks me up afterward.” Two years later the adventurous explorer
retreated to his country home in Kent and became a recluse, rarely
leaving his home and then traveling in a carriage with darkened windows.
Darwin
never learned the true nature of his malady.
For forty years, he complained to over twenty doctors who diagnosed his
problems as anything from “dyspepsia with aggravated character” to “suppressed
gout.”
Today, many books and papers have explained Darwin's mystery illness as psychiatric – as
psychosomatic, hypochondria, bereavement syndrome, an expression of repressed
anger toward his father, or genetic, noting a familial vulnerability to the
symptoms Darwin
described. But the general consensus has
been that Darwin
probably suffered panic disorder with
agoraphobia, which would explain his secluded lifestyle and difficulty in
speaking before groups and meeting with colleagues.
Other researchers have looked for an organic cause,
including arsenic poisoning, Chagas' disease from an insect bite in South America, or multiple allergies. Drs. Campbell and Mathews of the Darwin
Centre for Biology and Medicine, Milton, Pembrokeshire, UK believe otherwise. To them, all evidence suggests a food
link: lactose intolerance which appeared to run in his family.
Lactose intolerance results when the body doesn’t
produce enough lactase, an enzyme needed to break down lactose, the main source
of carbohydrates in milk, into simple sugars.
Two to three hours after he ate, the time it takes for lactose to reach
the large intestine, Darwin
experienced vomiting and gut problems. Darwin
only got better when, by chance, he stopped taking milk and cream.
If these researchers are correct, Darwin’s heart palpitations, trembles,
shortness of breath, vomiting, extreme fatigue, and “swimming in the head” were
signs not of anxiety and panic but food sensitivities. His agoraphobia was not a fear of leaving the
safety of his home but of being too ill to do so. Likewise, the solution to his woes was not
probing his psyche but not ingesting milk products.
