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Comment by ganzuul | Hacker News Reader

Reducing my intake of short carbohydrates in combination with changing to a gluten-free diet has vastly improved my mental health and emotional stability.

ED: Can't reply because of rate-limiting. So;

It breaks down a bit differently. Foods which are gluten-free are quite different in several ways. There are a lot of unhealthy things I avoid while also avoiding gluten.

I think that short carbs influence the dopaminergic system which intestinal health influences the serotonergic system. Both are feel-good hormones. I suffer from chronic depression which seems to mean permanently reduced levels of one or both of these. I'm an 80s kid, meaning my formative years happened during a time which was crazy on many levels. I don't have diabetes, fortunately. Aside from chronic depression I'm in very good health.

Take this as you will.

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Are you coeliac or you just think that gluten is bad for you?

I know it's popular to make fun of people who don't eat gluten and don't have celiac disease and I'm the first one to correct people who says gluten is "bad for you", however this is not the full story.

There are people who are "gluten sensitive" and my wife is one of them. More specifically, she is only sensitive to gluten in American products. She cannot eat anything with gluten here in the US without immediately having very painful stomach cramps and bloating. We spend about one month per year in Spain, where she is from, and she eats all the bread and gluten that she wants with absolutely no problems.

So, all I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't be quick to judge people who don't eat gluten and don't have celiac, unless they're just doing it because they heard it was bad.

"only sensitive to gluten in American products" I have a hard time believing that the nationality of the gluten has anything to do with her reactions. Perhaps you are confusing correlation with causation? I think the more likely cause of her reactions is something else in the products in the US that are causing her reactions. An interesting study for you to take a look at as well: http://www.businessinsider.com/gluten-sensitivity-and-study-...

True, it could be something other than the gluten, however it must be closely related because she does not have problems with gluten-free products. Unlike the participants of the study, I don't believe that her problem is mental. It happens at least once a month that she feels terrible, as if she has eaten gluten, but claims that she hasn't. It's only after careful consideration of what she has eaten that she realizes there actually was gluten in some ingredient like a sauce that probably had flour added to it to thicken it.

In regard to the study, I didn't read all the info, but I'm not sure that 37 people is a convincing sample size. I've also heard other Europeans complain about exactly the same thing.

Which do you think had the bigger impact?

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