CAN GAS IN YOUR DIGESTIVE TRACT CAUSE MENTAL ILLNESSES?

I stumbled across a draft of the following posting that was supposed to be published on 11 January 2021, five days after that awful day in the U.S. Congress when Donald Trump, still in office as president, was attempting to orchestrate a coup.  In a rare error of this type, it turned out I had no blog on 11 January 2021.  So I'm inserting it today unchanged.  Note:

• My optimism about this pandemic was unwarranted.  But the Delta variant, this B.1.617.2 strain, had not yet been detected.  Read this article, which indicates that the first notice was in India in February, with some speculation that it was more transmissible.
• I even went on to suggest that Congress would impeach Trump and the Supreme Court would concur.  Of course, this did not happen, which is slowly pushing the Republican party into someday fracturing.  Then again, perhaps I again might be too optimistic.

• 
  The reason why I am posting this article today is that I recently woke up in bed with an uncomfortable sense of claustrophobia, high anxiety and difficulty in breathing.  Then I remembered that the last time I felt this way, all I had to do was walk around a little bit and eliminate any gas in my stomach by burping.  The mental problem dissipated.  This led me to find this posting today that was not published, for I more and more feel that one reason for some mental illnesses could just simply be gastritis, that can be helped by proper nutrition.
• Just the simple act of realizing this connection can help some people, like me.

So here is that draft of nearly 8 months ago:

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 causes some embarrassment and fears about mental illnesses.  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.  (I might add that eight months later I now fluctuate in the range of 149-154 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 8 months later add that my body further adjusted, and am back to normal.)

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

• With fewer problems, my night sleeping actually became more adventurous in amount and difficulty.
• Possibly, naps caused this.  (Yes, napping was the problem, so I now only very rarely take a short nap, and only during those occasions when I get less than 5 hours sleep at night.)
• 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:

• Two things can happen:
• Every couple of months I get a severe pain in my upper arm (either side, but usually on the left, and sometimes in my chest) that feels like I'm having a heart attack.  All I need to do is belch, for some gas in my intestinal tract is always the cause of this symptom.  The relief is almost immediate, meaning within 30 seconds.

• Then a couple times/year, this awful feeling of claustrophobia.
• I asked my doctor about this gaseous problem, and she prescribed Simethicone.  I bought 18 chewable tablets, but have not felt it necessary to even use one yet.
• The solution that has always worked for both is burping.

Thus, 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 a  few research reports of this brain-belly connection.  Another from the Journal of Psychiatric Research 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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