r/NutritionalPsychiatry

Over a year ago I had a pretty bad episode of food poisoning, and since then my digestion and mental health have felt completely different.

Before that, I could eat more or less normally. Since then, foods that seem high in FODMAPs, lactose, and gluten appear to trigger very intense psychiatric symptoms in me. I am not talking about mild discomfort or just feeling a bit off. I mean intense dread, brain fog, intrusive thoughts, panic attacks, a sense of doom, and feeling almost like my nervous system has been hijacked.

The pattern seems to be that after eating certain foods, especially things like wheat/gluten-containing foods, lactose, onions/garlic, legumes, or other FODMAP-heavy meals, I can become anxious and foggy for hours or sometimes days. It feels very physical, not like normal psychological anxiety. Sometimes it comes with gut symptoms too, but the psychiatric symptoms are the part that scares me most.

In the meantime, I have also been diagnosed with a hiatal hernia, which seems to have been caused by the intense vomiting during the original food poisoning episode. I know that hiatal hernias can potentially cause reflux, vagus nerve irritation and all sorts of autonomic/nervous system symptoms, but what I do not understand is why the triggers seem so specific: FODMAPs, lactose and gluten.

I have tried cutting things out and I do seem to feel a lot more stable when I avoid gluten, lactose, and high-FODMAP foods, but I am still trying to understand what is actually going on. I am wondering whether the food poisoning could have triggered something like post-infectious IBS, SIBO, histamine intolerance, microbiome changes, gut inflammation, vagus nerve issues, or some kind of gut-brain axis dysfunction. I am also wondering whether the hiatal hernia could be amplifying the whole thing.

Has anyone here experienced something similar after food poisoning or a gut infection?

I would be especially interested to hear from people who developed anxiety, dread, panic attacks, intrusive thoughts, or brain fog that seemed clearly linked to specific foods. What helped you? Did you find a root cause? Did it improve over time?

I spent 35 days doing keto where my BHB probably averaged around 1.5 but near the end averaged closer to 2.5 and at times hit 4. I felt awful and my mental health was in a very bad place. I feel much better after breaking the diet. I broke my keto diet because I was very close to suicide and thought it didn’t matter since I’d be dead anyways. I ended up changing my mind obviously, and decided to start taking trileptal for my bipolar 2 (I thought keto would work faster and medication would be unnecessary) and am thinking of easing into keto this time around as I was aiming for 2:1 and then later 3:1. Has anyone else had worse or no improvement for mental health? Has anyone else benefited from easing into it? I’m thinking of doing 1:1 or 2:1 for a bit and then going to 3:1 later. Thanks for any advice!

Hello, I’m 20 years old and was medicated falsely for 10 years of my life on high doses of lithium seroquel and trieltpal. I was 7 months off medication and was doing fine just on vitamin d3. I then suffered a concussion from a boxing match where I had brain fog sound sensitivity etc which everything went away after 7-10 days except sound sensitivity but even that was getting way better. I then stupidly went on and off supplements like magnesium glycinate, vitamin d3, safroon, etc. i did that for a month which caused a cognitive shutdown anxiety and bad sleep. I then stupidly continued that cycle for 2 more months. It’s now been 4 months off supplements, anxiety is better, sleep is way better but cognitive shutdown still persists and my physical energy is decent but not where it was at. Note I was eating junk food a lot during this time. I’ve had windows and waves a little bit which I weirdly never really had when getting off psych meds. Anyways starting the lion diet experimenting with different fats such as Wagyu, angus, using Kirkland beef patties frozen. I’m wondering, will this diet really lift the rest of my anxiety and cognitive shutdown caused by supplement kindling? If so how long would that take?