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Comment by asylteltine | Hacker News Reader

Gut health is absolutely linked to mental health. Besides actual scientific research that backs this up, I didn’t really get my mental health under control until I took care of my gut issues like IBS and stuff. Also avoiding certain foods, not gluten obviously that’s a crock of shit, but things that obviously don’t work with my body like cream sauces or whatever

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> not gluten obviously that’s a crock of shit

Celiac disease [1] is a real and potential serious autoimmune disorder. Whether non-celiac gluten intolerance is a real thing is another question, though there's some evidence for it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease

Celiac is real, but very rare. I think GP was referring to gluten intolerance where there’s not much evidence to support it.

It's not that rare anymore. And while it's true that there's a ton of low-quality evidence for non-celiac gluten sensitivity, I think it's become clear that there's something important there (and more research is needed, as if that needed saying).

Non-celiac gluten sensitivity is not believed to be fictional-- rather, experts disagree about the details of what it is, how it works, how it is identified, how we should classify different presentations, etc. So yes, the science is shaky, but there is plenty of evidence that it's "a thing"... or "some things".

Celiac is about 1% of the US population [0], so really rare.

[0] 1 out of 133 according to https://www.beyondceliac.org/celiac-disease/facts-and-figure...

I don’t consider that very rare. Everything else being equal, a celiac customer would be a daily occurrence at almost any restaurant.

The prevalence is on the same order of magnitude as peanut allergies.

It's not very rare, it's just highly undiagnosed.

My kid got diagnosed with celiac and it's hereditary so me and my SO had to get tested. I didn't have it, they do. Undiagnosed for decades.

Switched to gluten-free diet and they feel SO much better now. But the thing is that humans are really adaptive, you don't know what "good" feels if you've been feeling bad all your life - that's your normal level.

Celiac isn't that rare. Global prevalence is estimated to be 1.3-1.8% [1].

[1] https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(20)35165-9/...

I suspect there may be something else going on, at least for some people. My girlfriend has digestive issues when she eats wheat, but rye and barley don’t seem to bother her. So I assume it’s not gluten specifically, but eating gluten free resolves the problem.

Plenty of evidence for gluten intolerances in non-celiac autoimmune diseases. Not conclusive, but I find it frustrating that there’s a growing number of people who dismiss gluten intolerance as a myth when we barely understand most autoimmune diseases as it is. It’s far more complicated and nuanced than people want to make it out to be, but it’s increasingly treated like homeopathy or worse. Patients with diseases like this that find an improvement in quality of life after a dietary restriction is implemented deserve our respect.

It's hard to know if it's the gluten restriction that's improving quality of life. Processed foods are often glutenous in addition to being over-sterilized, seed oil laden cattle feed. If you're cutting out gluten, you're mostly forced to cut out "food" from our wonderful conglomerates.

Modern grains are really weird, especially when combined with industrial leavening agents.

I get _really_ bloated if I eat "industrial" wheat bread. Like beach balloon levels of ridiculously bloated.

Sourdough wheat bread: pretty much zero issues. Same with rye bread with no other leavening agents than yeast.

I think this is part of the reason why people feel better when they leave out gluten, it's not the gluten per se but all the other stuff that usually comes with glutinous grains.

I didn’t really get my mental health under control until I took care of my gut issues like IBS and stuff.

Honestly, if you had some chronic, untreated issues with your ankle and foot - something that plagued you daily - it would be hard to take care of your mental health too. Same if you had lupus, for example. Having something wrong with you - especially something chronic - always makes it hard to take care of your mental health. It makes sense that when you don't have the stress of pain and the other things that go with it, you find the mental energy to work on the brain.

Yours just happened to be in the gut, which makes it seem like these articles might be talking about you.

For you gluten might be fine, but for others it’s not fun, just like cream sauces for you. Everyone’s different.

> not gluten obviously that’s a crock of shit

Not really. Gluten makes me ill. I thought it was just the supermarket type bread so I bought my own bread maker.

Still hell.

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