Nicole Ceil is not a medical doctor, and nothing herein constitutes medical advice or a patient-provider relationship. Please consult your healthcare provider before undertaking a healthcare regimen. Never disregard medical advice or delay seeking treatment.

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The idea that food sensitivities can affect your health has become pretty common. Most of us either have ourselves, or know someone who has, a food sensitivity. Sometimes, food sensitivities are diagnosed by a medical professional, but more likely than not, you simply noticed that eating a specific food gave you a digestive reaction, skin rash, or some other kind of body pain like a headache or sore joints. But were you ever able to correlate your mood, or brain health with the foods you were eating?

It’s not something we think about often, but food sensitivities seriously affect the overall function of the brain, contributing to symptoms of anxiety and depression as well as trouble with attention, focus, memory, and learning.

What is a food sensitivity?
Food sensitivities are a little bit different than food allergies. In the case of a food allergy, the immune system is creating a specific type of response to foods called antibodies. Antibodies help direct the immune system towards an invading molecule. Most food allergy tests are looking for antibodies, as the presence of antibodies for a specific food indicates that your immune system has responded to that food before.

In the case of food sensitivities, the body might, or might not create antibodies to the food. Instead the body generates chemicals that create inflammation in response to that food. Food sensitivities are sometimes so mild that they are hard to detect (you might not feel that bad after you eat a food you are sensitive too). They can also take a few hours or days to manifest, making it hard to map your symptoms onto any particular food you ate. Finally, they can be cumulative. You may not feel bad if you eat just one food you are sensitive to, but if you eat three, the reaction is magnified. To top it off, not many lab tests assess food sensitivities, although some functional lab tests do.

So what does this mean for food sensitivities and the brain?

Food sensitivities cause leaky gut
Food sensitivities can contribute to, and form because of, a condition called leaky gut. Leaky gut (more officially referred to as intestinal hyper-permeability) is a situation where the cells that line the small intestine become inflamed. When this happens, the junctions between these cells open up, and partially digested molecules of food can leak through these junctions. As a result, the immune system goes a little haywire, and starts generating inflammation in response to these foods. When we eat foods that we have a sensitivity to, the inflammatory response to those foods can inflame the lining of the small intestine. When that lining is inflamed, we are more likely to develop more food sensitivities. It’s a vicious circle.

Leaky gut changes the microbiome
If we’re unknowingly (or perhaps knowingly) eating foods that we have a sensitivity to, the environment of the digestive tract becomes vulnerable to colonization by opportunistic microorganisms. It’s normal and healthy to have a thriving colony of microbes in the digestive tract, but when this colony becomes imbalanced (called dysbiosis) unhelpful microbes create biochemicals that affect the function of our nerve cells and the production and abundance of neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin (two key neurotransmitters for good mood). This leads to changes in the health of the brain and changes to mood.

Poor nutrient absorption
Finally, inflammation in the gut leads to damage to the villi of the small intestines; the delicate structures responsible for absorbing nutrients from food. In this case, even the healthiest diet isn’t sufficient to supply all the nutrients needed for the maintenance of the body. This spells trouble for the whole body, but especially the brain, which is very metabolically active, and requires a lot of energy and a large proportion of nutrients to function properly. When the brain is not receiving sufficient nutrition two things happen. First, the function of existing nerve cells is compromised and as a result, they are less able to communicate effectively with each other. Second, the structure of these cells suffers, because there aren’t enough raw materials (nutrients) available for their repair and regeneration. Anytime there are changes to the structure or function of the brain, mental health and cognitive function can suffer.

With this in mind, it’s clear that addressing food allergies is key to supporting mental health. Addressing food allergies is an essential component of any effective nutritional protocol, and there are several methods for doing so including elimination diets, clinical evaluation, and functional food sensitivity testing. If you’d like to learn more about using these methods to support your mental and physical health, please book a complimentary phone consultation, and enter your email below to receive these informative updates as I publish them.

Can food sensitivities affect your mental health?