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Comment by code_duck | Hacker News Reader

A lot of your symptoms sound similar to some things that I have been through. I found out that I have celiac disease, after suffering through a lot of physical symptoms which were sometimes paired with mental symptoms such as confusion or mood swings, which are common with celiac. The exact cost seems to be a mixture of things… release of neurotransmitters and immune system chemicals, disrupted gut flora, chronic pain and discomfort, and malnutrition from poor absorption.

Like yours, it’s a long story.

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I don't have any statistics, but judging from the number of sites and blogs that have popped up that deal with similar conditions, this seems to be an increasingly common problem. It seems like you could now speak about brain fog and everyone would understand what you meant, and I don't think that was the case 15 years ago.

I've only ever made 2 top-level comments related to this issue on HN and they have surprised me with the amount of attention they generated.

A lot of people are going through desperate times because of conditions like this. It's hard to appreciate how bad it can be just by trying to imagine the symptoms for an instant. It's much harder to imagine what it feels like to experience that for months; years; decades.

I think the conversation about that came up with chronic fatigue. These days it’s used to describe mild hangover-like states, mostly. What people with celiac suffer is more like the confusion that comes with multiple sclerosis. As far as other people’s ‘brain fog’ I think they’re referring to a much more mild condition.

Self described sensitivity to gluten is on the rise. Possibly some gluten intolerance is on the rise, too. However, incidence of -actual- celiac disease as confirmed by biopsy has not changed, but screening and diagnosis have gotten a lot better.

There are actually some very interesting studies looking at blood samples from the 1950s, for instance, that indicate that celiac is much more common than it used to be. See for instance "Increased Prevalence and Mortality in Undiagnosed Celiac Disease" in the journal Gastroenterology, July 2009.

Seems interesting. That was written by a doctor I saw this summer, too.

This is a bit more readable: https://www.the-scientist.com/features/the-celiac-surge-3143...

I recently learned about epigenetics and it's mind blowing.

In a nutshell: the expression of a gene within an individual can change over their lives, and the changes can be inherited. There are multiple mechanisms of alteration and inheritance.

The field is still in very early stages of research, but here are some paraphrases from Wikipedia to hook you:

* Children born during the Dutch famine of 1944–45 were smaller than those born the year before the famine and the effects could last for two generations. They also were at increased risk of glucose intolerance in adulthood.

* Children of women who were abused during pregnancy were significantly more likely than others to have methylated glucocorticoid-receptor genes, which in turn change the response to stress, leading to a higher susceptibility to anxiety

* Male mice that participated in voluntary physical exercise resulted in offspring that had reduced fear memory and anxiety-like behavior in response to stress.

For further reading:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_i...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_anxiety_and_str...

--- Pure conjecture ---

As an engineer, this sounds like coarse short-term evolution; a dimmer switch for various genetic functions which can improve offspring fitness relative to a sudden environmental change, possibly with negative side effects, until the environment stabilizes or genetics can adapt with new functionality.

Only now, our population is mixing over broad geographic areas subject to an unprecedented acceleration of environmental changes, with often no prior genetic training, as cultures shift towards sedentary, inside, less-social lifestyles that have fewer children at greater ages.

An inter-generational epigenetic analysis of celiac, autoimmune, and other "new" diseases could be ground breaking. I'm wondering to what degree they are emergent symptoms of possibly conflicting epigenetic adaptations accumulated over multiple generations. The timing is just so suspicious.

The mouse study of stress tolerance also suggests follow-up studies that may have fascinating political ramifications.

Interesting. As far as heritability, my symptoms closely resemble my mother’s, who is also diagnosed with celiac.

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