Im Not Crazy Essay
"I'm Not Crazy...I'm Allergic!" - An Interview With Author Sherilyn Powers
Imagine waking up one day to discover that the crushing depression you've lived with for decades is actually a symptom of allergies? The relative of author Sherilyn Powers didn't have to imagine. This was her life. After 50 years of taking various prescription drugs to manage her "depression", she found out she wasn't crazy, but allergic.
In this interview, Sherilyn Powers discusses her new non-fiction book, her "hot-button" issue, and why she believes more and more patients are taking to the Internet to find answers to their nagging mystery symptoms. "How did you come up with the title of your book, "I'm Not Crazy...I'm Allergic!"? I LOVE it!
Thank you! I love …show more content…
it, too, and I wish I could take credit. Most of the book is about a relative, Julie, and our discovering that what she had been told for over 50 years was mental illness, really wasn't. This was complicated by Julie's background in psychology and her absolute insistence that anything alternative was all media hype and placebo.
One day Julie had an accident with a full air filter that contained mould and dust... two of her top allergens. Within minutes, she went from happy and energetic to sobbing and feeling hopeless and worthless—and suicidal.
When she recognized the direct relationship she phoned me sobbing, and when I finally realized what happened, I asked if she had taken her antihistamines.
She sobbed out, "No, I wanted you to hear first. I'm not crazy... I'm allergic!"
Allergies can cause the symptoms of mental illness. Can you explain how this happens?
This is a rather complicated process which I do go into detail about in the book, but as simply put as I can (without quoting the entire book!), allergic reactions and even sensitivities create certain responses in the body.
One of the biggest responses is inflammation. Inflammation creates all sorts of issues, but the most important thing to remember, if you have inflammation from anything but a direct injury to a body part, that inflammation probably is not located only from the neck down!
And medical studies have shown that inflammation in the brain can contribute to things like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's as well as affecting cognition and learning, and contributing to the development of depression and even schizophrenia.
The other thing that happens with the body's response to what it perceives as a threat is the increase in chemicals such as cytokines. These chemicals can affect the brain and body in many
ways.
With cytokines for example, depending on whether they are pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory, they can cause insomnia or the exact opposite, extreme fatigue and sleeping all the time. Those two effects alone severely interfere with a person's mental health, especially if they are suffered long term. Another really common reaction is panic attacks. This is very easily explained. You come into contact with something the body identifies as an invader, and it goes into red alert.
This red alert mode is frequently misinterpreted as a reaction to something mental or emotional. If your heart starts pounding and your blood races and you are short of breath... are you really going to wonder if something in a sandwich you ate an hour ago has anything to do with it? Probably not. What are some common food/environmental triggers of emotional imbalance? Anything that causes a reaction can upset emotional balance. It is impossible to say what each person's emotional or mental reactions will be. Julie experienced crying and what she thought was nostalgia whenever she smelled fresh-cut grass.
When she first started the desensitization shots she was told to stay away from people mowing their lawns as that stirs up mould and would bother her mould allergies. It wasn't until she had gone through several months of desensitization shots that the crying stopped completely when she was exposed to grass mould. That doesn't mean everyone with mould allergies will cry. Or that everyone who consumes dairy will experience panic attacks, like another person I know. Some people "only" get stomach pain and diarrhea from milk.
But would they notice that after the diarrhea attack that they were a bit more sensitive than normal, easily angered, or tearful? Doubtful. They just aren't feeling very good.
An example of an emotional response to an allergy attack:
"Well geez, I just had to spend half an hour on the toilet spoiling the most wonderful evening because of a stupid allergy, and then that waitress looked at us funny and my steak was overcooked, and why do you always..."
Sure. Dairy just affects the stomach. I'm not making light of a reaction like this, but trying to show how easy it is for us to explain things away. If it happens once, it probably doesn't mean anything, but if every time you eat dairy the whole world is suddenly against you... maybe your reaction is more than just the stomachache.
Then one day you binge on dairy, and the next day you are so depressed you can't get out of bed. You hate your life and the only thing that makes it better is ice cream. Even at this point, most people wouldn't think of the two of them as being related in any way.
Imagine waking up one day to discover that the crushing depression you've lived with for decades is actually a symptom of allergies? The relative of author Sherilyn Powers didn't have to imagine. This was her life. After 50 years of taking various prescription drugs to manage her "depression", she found out she wasn't crazy, but allergic.
In this interview, Sherilyn Powers discusses her new non-fiction book, her "hot-button" issue, and why she believes more and more patients are taking to the Internet to find answers to their nagging mystery symptoms. "How did you come up with the title of your book, "I'm Not Crazy...I'm Allergic!"? I LOVE it!
Thank you! I love …show more content…
it, too, and I wish I could take credit. Most of the book is about a relative, Julie, and our discovering that what she had been told for over 50 years was mental illness, really wasn't. This was complicated by Julie's background in psychology and her absolute insistence that anything alternative was all media hype and placebo.
One day Julie had an accident with a full air filter that contained mould and dust... two of her top allergens. Within minutes, she went from happy and energetic to sobbing and feeling hopeless and worthless—and suicidal.
When she recognized the direct relationship she phoned me sobbing, and when I finally realized what happened, I asked if she had taken her antihistamines.
She sobbed out, "No, I wanted you to hear first. I'm not crazy... I'm allergic!"
Allergies can cause the symptoms of mental illness. Can you explain how this happens?
This is a rather complicated process which I do go into detail about in the book, but as simply put as I can (without quoting the entire book!), allergic reactions and even sensitivities create certain responses in the body.
One of the biggest responses is inflammation. Inflammation creates all sorts of issues, but the most important thing to remember, if you have inflammation from anything but a direct injury to a body part, that inflammation probably is not located only from the neck down!
And medical studies have shown that inflammation in the brain can contribute to things like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's as well as affecting cognition and learning, and contributing to the development of depression and even schizophrenia.
The other thing that happens with the body's response to what it perceives as a threat is the increase in chemicals such as cytokines. These chemicals can affect the brain and body in many
ways.
With cytokines for example, depending on whether they are pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory, they can cause insomnia or the exact opposite, extreme fatigue and sleeping all the time. Those two effects alone severely interfere with a person's mental health, especially if they are suffered long term. Another really common reaction is panic attacks. This is very easily explained. You come into contact with something the body identifies as an invader, and it goes into red alert.
This red alert mode is frequently misinterpreted as a reaction to something mental or emotional. If your heart starts pounding and your blood races and you are short of breath... are you really going to wonder if something in a sandwich you ate an hour ago has anything to do with it? Probably not. What are some common food/environmental triggers of emotional imbalance? Anything that causes a reaction can upset emotional balance. It is impossible to say what each person's emotional or mental reactions will be. Julie experienced crying and what she thought was nostalgia whenever she smelled fresh-cut grass.
When she first started the desensitization shots she was told to stay away from people mowing their lawns as that stirs up mould and would bother her mould allergies. It wasn't until she had gone through several months of desensitization shots that the crying stopped completely when she was exposed to grass mould. That doesn't mean everyone with mould allergies will cry. Or that everyone who consumes dairy will experience panic attacks, like another person I know. Some people "only" get stomach pain and diarrhea from milk.
But would they notice that after the diarrhea attack that they were a bit more sensitive than normal, easily angered, or tearful? Doubtful. They just aren't feeling very good.
An example of an emotional response to an allergy attack:
"Well geez, I just had to spend half an hour on the toilet spoiling the most wonderful evening because of a stupid allergy, and then that waitress looked at us funny and my steak was overcooked, and why do you always..."
Sure. Dairy just affects the stomach. I'm not making light of a reaction like this, but trying to show how easy it is for us to explain things away. If it happens once, it probably doesn't mean anything, but if every time you eat dairy the whole world is suddenly against you... maybe your reaction is more than just the stomachache.
Then one day you binge on dairy, and the next day you are so depressed you can't get out of bed. You hate your life and the only thing that makes it better is ice cream. Even at this point, most people wouldn't think of the two of them as being related in any way.