CAN GAS IN DIGESTIVE TRACT CAUSE MENTAL ILLNESSES?

Scanning the world news scene, no one is yet predicting that the pandemic has hit a peak and COVID-19 cases and deaths are beginning to decline.   With vaccinations increasing and the coming of spring in the Northern Hemisphere (for 90% of the human population is in the north), I feel comfortable in saying that, after this week, the inauguration of Joe Biden will hasten national and world recovery.

Watch this video by Arnold Schwarzennegger, former Republican governor of California.  How fitting that the incoming president is Joe Biden.  He will be a one-term POTUS because of his age, and is safely non-threatening to Republicans and Democrats.  If anyone can bring the nation together after what happened in the Capitol last week, it is Joe.  Congress will help by the House impeaching Donald Trump and the Senate sometime over the next few months convicting him and assuring that he can't run again.  

It is constitutionally uncertain whether you will need a majority or two-thirds vote to do this, but it will go up to the Supreme Court and they will concur.  A statue will someday be erected to dishonor the Worst President Ever in the USA, and my blue-bar friends are ready.

I now and then suffer from gas in the digestive tract.  The combination of the food I eat and my gut biosystem produces more gases, causing more than embarrassment.  I did some research, and learned the following about flatulence:

• The average person farts 14 times/day.
• Most of this vapor product is carbon dioxide, but oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and methane are also present.

• 
  The bad smell comes from compounds of sulfur.  Worst comes from:
• broccoli and cauliflower
• dairy products
• bok choy
• beef and pork
• onion and garlic
• beer

• 
  Carbohydrates result in most of the produced gases in the intestines.  
• This a surprise, but rice does not cause gas. Mind you, it does have a lot of calories. 
• Soluble fibers do.
• Fats and proteins cause little gas.
• These do:  beans, cabbage, onions, apples, whole grains, soft drinks, fruit drinks, milk products, sorbitol, but they only represent almost everything else you eat.

• 
  Some people swallow a lot more air than others.  These gases are mostly the ones that cause belching.  Slower eating can help reduce this problem.
• Medication can be taken with the consultation of your personal physician.
• Activated charcoal tablets do reduce gas formation in the colon.
• Enzyme lactase aids with dairy products.

This ten-month period of the pandemic has definitely changed my diet.  Instead of golfing twice/week, it's more like twice/month.  As a result, I have reduced carbohydrate input and significantly increased vegetables, plus a little more fruit.  No desserts and few snacks.  Alcohol drinking probably dropped a bit because there is social pressure to imbibe more alcohol at a dining table.  For these many months I've had three meals delivered to my room.

The results were rather astonishing:

• My weight dropped from 161 pounds to 156 pounds, plus or minus two pounds.
• My blood sugar level, which has been high for a very long time, dropped.
• Cholesterol, which was low anyway, stayed the same.

• 
  My gut biome adjusted:
• As my body needs more energy, since I provide less, more of the ingested food was converted.
• As a result, my stool is harder, making my daily output sometimes difficult.
• Also, the output is much lower.

I can't say these past ten months had a large effect, but:

• With fewer problems, my night sleeping actually became more adventurous in amount and difficulty.
• Possibly, naps caused this.
• The total number of hours of sleep/day stayed around the same.
• No change in dreams.

The most noticeable effect had to do with gas in my digestive tract:

• Not any more, but there was confirmation in two areas:
• There is a direct affect to heart and arm pain:  I can immediately reduce both by belching.
• Mental.

For the past couple of years, maybe twice or three times/per year, when I try to sleep, I am overcome with a high sense of insecurity, involving some claustrophobia and breathing fears.  Always, when I walk around and look outside, the effect dissipates.  Last night, I noticed that I was also suffering from a lot of gas in my digestive tract.  After both some flatulence and a lot of belching, things normalized.  I thought, just maybe this was the cause of previous incidents.

Which led me to the obvious conclusion:  CAN EXCESSIVE GAS IN THE DIGESTIVE TRACT CAUSE MENTAL ILLNESSES?  Instead of analysis and/or pills, perhaps the answer is nutrition?  I checked into this possibility, and found little evidence of this solution.  But there was one, for in the Journal of Psychiatric Research I saw an article entitled:  Gastritis and Mental Disorders.

• Gastrointestinal disorders can cause mood and anxiety problems.
• Among them were panic attacks, social phobia and depression.

Also, from the Indian Journal of Psychiatry:  Understanding Nutrition, Depression and Mental Illnesses.

Few people are aware of the connection between nutrition and depression while they easily understand the connection between nutritional deficiencies and physical illness. Depression is more typically thought of as strictly biochemical-based or emotionally-rooted. On the contrary, nutrition can play a key role in the onset as well as severity and duration of depression. Many of the easily noticeable food patterns that precede depression are the same as those that occur during depression. These may include poor appetite, skipping meals, and a dominant desire for sweet foods.[1] Nutritional neuroscience is an emerging discipline shedding light on the fact that nutritional factors are intertwined with human cognition, behavior, and emotions.

In the immediate above, though, these researchers suggested that deficiency of nutrients, not gas in the digestive tract, was the cause.  No question that the medical profession should more closely investigate how nutrition can affect gut-formed gases which in turn might be the cause of certain mental illnesses.

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