My son is allergic to green peas and his reactions are life threatening. He is intolerant to a lot of other foods as well, and as we’ve found out, so am I.

We changed our family diet some years ago now, for the sake of us all. I used to cheat, but I also kept track of my diet, and after a while my wife noticed that when I ate certain foods I would become very depressed 2 days later. (Almost to the hour.) Unfortunately chocolate was the worst! She mentioned this bizarre discovery to our allergy specialist who said “Yes, food does cause mood swings!”

Food allergies and intolerances are very different things. Food allergies trigger the immune system, and the sufferer’s body reacts, for example with swelling or hives. Food intolerance is about thresholds. You can eat the foods that you’re intolerant to, but you’ll have a reaction if you go over your threshold. Food intolerance is very common; much more than people seem to realize.

The reactions can be amazing. In me the intolerance causes depression. My wife feels bloated and lethargic. The kids get aggressive and irritable. Other people report anxiety, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts, obsessive compulsive behaviour and even social phobias. Migraines and stomach aches are also common.

So, avoid the colours, flavours and preservatives! Yes. But normal fresh foods also contain natural chemicals like salicylates, amines and glutamates. Many people eat these in abundance, and even on their own they can cause plenty of problems. The chocolate I eat may be free of colors, flavors and preservatives, but it is very high in natural amines which causes me plenty of grief.

If you eat problem foods every day, and take the symptoms of intolerance for granted, then you may be missing something that is key to your mental health. If this could be you, then it is really worth following it through.

Our family kept to a strict chemical-free diet for some years to remove the problem foods. A common way for an allergy specialist or dietician to test for the culprits is to prescribe a strict chemical free diet for a few weeks until symptoms disappear. They will then give a series of oral “challenge tests” to see which food chemicals and artificial additives are causing problems.

I once took aspirin as a challenge, and it won. Apparently aspirin is pure salicylate, and it sent me out of my tree.

More information:
RPAH Allergy Unit
Food and Mood Guide

It may be counter-intuitive but I’ve come to believe that depressive episodes are predictable if you know the things that trigger them and you can pick the early signs. That knowledge has helped me stay well for long periods of time. But this recent episode came as a big surprise.

The brain is arguably the most nutritionally sensitive organ in the body, so food plays a big role in maintaining its health. As I’ve mentioned before I have some food intolerances. But I don’t break out in hives, I break out in irrational behavior. In a similar way, many people react with mental meltdown to excessive coffee, alcohol, too much or too little fat, additives like artificial colors, flavors and preservatives and many other things. Red cordial and kids don’t mix, for example.

I’ve been taking the same multi-vitamin for about 3 years, due to nutritional advice specific to my diet (or lack thereof). It has a different formula to most multi-vitamins. In particular it contains a high dose of the B group vitamins.

So I ran out of these harmless, benign, unimportant pills about 10 days ago, and discovered that the manufacturer had gone out of business and the line had been stopped.

That first evening, after not taking the multi-vitamin in the morning for the first time, my mood tanked. I was puzzled by it, but I didn’t make a connection with the vitamin. Over a week later I started on a new, similar product, and shazam! I’m back to normal.

Here is the nutrient breakdown:

Recommended Daily Intake Vitamin B6 (Australia and New Zealand)

RDI 1.3 mg
Upper Limit 50 mg

Multi-vitamins

Macro M 5 mg
(original one)

Men’s Ultivite 30mg
(new one)

I don’t know what my normal daily intake is, but on the day my mood dropped I had reduced my B6 intake by 4 times the recommended daily amount, and the day I went up I had increased it by over 20 times. Now that’s interesting.

As an aside, the Nutrient Reference Values for Australia and New Zealand has an excellent calculator that will give you all of your RDI values by sex and age at the click of a button.

It is well-established by research that B6 is a commonly, perhaps the most commonly, found vitamin deficiency in people with depression. It has a crucial role in putting the final touches on serotonin production, serotonin being one of our favorite mood-enhancing neurotransmitters. There’s no coincidence there.

But the jury is still out on whether increasing B6 will relieve symptoms or by how much. I have my own anecdotal evidence based on a one-person trial in my home, but that won’t convince the medical community.

And the bad news? Only one person in five consumes an adequate amount of vitamin B6.

The major sources of vitamin B6 include: cereal grains, potatoes, bananas, vegetables (carrots, spinach, peas), potatoes, milk, cheese, eggs, fish, pork, beef.

Sources and Further Reading

Factsheet of Vitamin B6
Medline Plus (US National Library and National Institutes of Health)

Develop a Personal Pyramid Plan
United States Department of Agriculture

Healthy Eating and Depression
Mental Health Foundation

Mind Guide to Food and Mood
Mind (National Association for Mental Health UK)

Nutritional Supplements
McMan’s Depression and Bipolar Web

Foods to Fight It
Dr Melvyn Werbach