|Friday, April 26, 2024

Bread can destroy your brain 

It sounds incongruous, but bread almost destroyed my brain. About two years ago my memory was being obliterated. Couldn’t remember conversations. Couldn’t even remember things I had said two minutes ago. Repeated myself in frightening fashion, Serbia Povertyunaware I was repeating myself. The world and my involvement in it was becoming opaque.

And then my wife read of a study at the Mayo Clinic that found that for people with celiac (an allergy togluten, a protein found in wheat) eating a gluten-freediet could help with thinking and memory difficulties. I figured I could try it. What did I have to lose?

Within two weeks of going gluten-free my brain was healing. When I gave up bread, crackers, cookies, pizza, bagels and everything else made with wheat (I gave up oats, too), my memory made a big leap back to almost normal. Today, my mind may not be perfect but I no longer fear slowly falling into an abyss of nothingness.

So when researchers in Britain point out that for some people gluten allergies may help trigger brain problems like schizophrenia, it doesn’t surprise me. I know what giving up gluten meant for me.

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