Food Allergy and the Brain

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The Book of Brain provides an overview of brain function and psychology, understood from a biological point of view. Eating and drinking behaviors are discussed in terms of brain function and innate tendencies. Known food-related brain dysfunction and disease is revealed. A synopsis of the major neurological disease follows with suggestions for intervention in mental and neurological disorders using the Alpha Nutrition Program as a diet revision algorithm.

Table of Contents

Author S. J.Gislason MD

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The problems of adverse brain effects of nutrient deficiencies, the toxic effect of molecules derived from food, and the immunogenic potential of food proteins and peptides are under-recognized. There are a host of clues that link the food supply to mysterious and threatening neurological diseases. We suggest that a prudent person suffering early brain-dysfunction symptoms would be wise to pursue vigorous, thorough diet revision at the earliest opportunity. Because some brain dysfunction compromises judgment learning, and motivation, family members, friends and professional advisor often have to provide the right direction and support.

Stephen Gislason MD

Some old knowledge is very valuable, but is forgotten. Dr. Walter Alvarez, a well-known physician of the Mayo clinic and popular medical writer for several decades, provided a personal perspective on food-mind interactions, many years ago, in his introduction to the text, "Allergy of the Nervous System": "For years I knew I was highly sensitive to chicken, I suffered from what I called "dumb Monday," when I was too dull to do much constructive work like writing. Finally, I discovered that bad Mondays were due to the Alvarez family's habit of having chicken for Sunday dinner... My most remarkable personal experience with brain dulling due to food allergy came many years ago when... I ate a whole broiled chicken. Next day I had severe diarrhea and with this I became so dulled I could not read with comfort. And that night I had a hallucination of sight, such as I had never had before and haven't had since."

Alvarez and other astute physicians knew about food allergy and its mental effects for many years. , , Food allergy was implicated in depression, anxiety, hyperactivity in children, epilepsy, migraine, Meniere's syndrome, Multiple Sclerosis, and Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Unfortunately, this clinical wisdom, shared by many prominent physicians for many years, has somehow been lost to subsequent generations of physicians and needs to be renewed.

Important disturbances of brain function occur during immune activity in the body with the strongest influences on the autonomic nervous system and mood-emotion circuits. Changes in arousal, mood, sleep-waking patterns, appetite, thirst and temperature regulation are regularly reported by food allergic patients. For example, fatigue, progressing to sleepiness with increased thirst, frequent urination, hot and cold sensations, and attention-memory deficits are routinely reported together in various combinations.

Immune activity produces mental-emotional symptoms. Anaphylaxis victims are said to have "panic attacks", if they end up in the psychiatry department. Children with food allergy may have nightmares, tantrums, and fail to learn at school because of attention deficits. Some of these children grow into troubled adults with "learning disability". Others remain hyper, moody, and volatile. Delayed pattern food allergy patients are sometimes described as "depressed" or "neurotic". Migraine sufferers may have neurological symptoms that suggest a stroke or a seizure. The occasional patient will have food-triggered epilepsy. Often changes in sensation, motor control, balance, and vision accompany food allergy and suggest the diagnosis of serious neurological diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis or Alzheimer's disease.

Our food allergy model postulates that foods immunize us against a very large number of antigens. This continuously changing immunity produces, by a variety of mechanisms, dysfunction and disease, including brain dysfunction. Brain dysfunction is expressed as disordered thinking, feeling, behaving, and remembering. The food allergy illness patterns in children and adults involve typical clusters of digestive, respiratory, skin, and behavioral disturbances. The illness patterns occasionally involve inhalant allergies, defined in the usual way by skin and blood tests but can operate independently through other, more complex immune mechanisms.

Few food-provoked symptoms are "psychological" as many physicians have claimed. Adverse reactions to foods or "food allergy" have a physiological basis, and can be explained by proper insightful medical biology. Dr. Aas, a Norwegian allergist and researcher, remarked at the Marabou symposium on "Food Sensitivity" : "In my institute I am the only experimental monkey that we have and from several passive transfer experiments on myself, with occasional rather severe reactions, I am the first to admit that allergic reactions are accompanied with intellectual and emotional disturbances. If you have not experienced that, I ask you to be a volunteer in my laboratory."

Dr. Joseph Egger, who published excellent studies showing the effect of foods in children who developed migraine headaches, epilepsy, and hyperactivity, has stated: "Taken together, the available research suggests that particular types of adverse food reactions sometimes correlate with neurological and psychiatric symptoms. The diversity of foods involved...is suggestive of allergy, and the adverse effects may correlate with immunological abnormalities."

The concept of allergy as reacting defensively to foreign materials with damage to ourselves can be extended to our nervous system which also reacts to world events with defensive procedures. Both immune and nervous systems interact when things go wrong at the level of molecules and cells. The molecular-cellular mechanisms are monitored (but not controlled!) at the level of consciousness. The experience of symptoms is the monitor image in consciousness of problems at the molecular-cellular level. In technical terms, we can speak of information and noise in the system of person and environment. Information noise is the disorder and chaos in experience that confuses or interferes with a successful relationship with our environment, the achievement of our goals with associated peace of mind. Molecular noise is the disorder or chaos created by substances flowing through our body-brain. At certain levels in us information noise is equivalent to molecular noise. At the level of equivalence we cannot tell the difference between a molecular problem and a personal problem. As noise increases, the system becomes more unstable or hypersensitive. We feel this instability as emotional disturbance and physical symptoms.