Rebuild from Depression Blog

My chiropractor suggested that corn in my diet was contributing to my depression. Symptoms include depression, disturbed sleep, fatigue, headache, joint pain, and many others.

My rational side began to become very skeptical and, of course, my irrational side became irate. Surely something as benign as corn was not the cause of this madness. At this point my mom started seeing my chiropractor as well and she, too, had corn allergies. My mom said that we would try the one-month no-corn diet that the chiropractor recommended. I would have never done the diet without her prodding. It simply made no sense to me at the time.

But because of my mother's leadership, we followed the no-corn diet. We discovered that corn was in nearly all processed foods and so for one month, we made all our own dressings and sauces and cooked from scratch.

It was a difficult month for eating. I dreamed all month of my corn feast day. My chiropractor had explained that we were to give up corn entirely for one month and then we would have one day when we feasted on it. She explained that if we were allergic to corn, this test would tell us.

My corn feast dream included two bowls of corn flakes for breakfast, lunch at a Mexican restaurant starting with corn chips and ending with at least two tamales, and dinner at another Mexican restaurant with more corn chips and enchiladas. Perhaps I would have additional bowls of corn flakes as snacks throughout the day. And surely somewhere I could find some of those "corn nuts" that I hadn't seen in years. I deserved them.

Corn feast day came some time in early January of 2003. I ate my corn flakes and excitedly headed to a Mexican restaurant downtown for an early lunch. I ate a whole basket of corn chips by myself and sat editing a report while waiting for the enchiladas. This restaurant did not have tamales, so I was a bit disappointed. I ordered the crab enchiladas-they are made with the imitation crab that includes corn starch. I was in corn heaven.

By the time I was finishing my enchiladas, my vision began to get blurry. I had a difficult time reading my report. My head became fuzzy and I lost my focus. I finished my enchiladas and made a beeline home. As I drove home I hoped that I would make it. My vision got more blurry and my head began to pound. I arrived home and headed straight to bed as I announced to the household, "I feel like shit with legs!"

It appeared I had a corn allergy. It was hard for my rational or irrational side to refute this very clear evidence, although I still had depression. What I discovered was that corn allergies are actually very common and the symptoms include depression and fuzzy thinking.

Apparently corn allergies can be due to overexposure of corn. Corn is in everything these days. It is used in foods as fillers, its oil is used to fry foods, and it is the most common sweetener in soft drinks and other sweet processed foods. Some years after my corn feast day and years of avoiding corn, I can eat corn now and then. I keep planning to eat popcorn again, someday.