Does eliminating wheat from your diet improve symptoms of post-concussion syndrome?
My experience with eliminating wheat
Years ago, I was really stuck in my recovery or lack of recovery from post-concussion syndrome. Then one day, my wife, who’s had a lifelong history of migraine headaches, said she was going to try removing wheat from her diet for 90 days, to see if that reduced the frequency and severity of her headaches.
To make it easier for her to do this, and to see if it might help my post-concussion syndrome, I said we should do it together. I figured, hey, I can do anything for 90 days. There’s little to lose here, and potentially much to be gained. When your long-term health and happiness is at stake, why not try this experiment?
Prior to suffering for such a prolonged period of time, the idea of cutting out wheat from my diet would seem like a non-starter. Who wants to lose all the things made from our society’s staple crop? Who wants to hear all the withering comments from friends and family gorging themselves on delicious bagels, doughnuts, bread, pizzas, stuffing, etc.
It didn’t take the full 90 days for me to realize that removing wheat from my diet had a profound effect on my brain. Within about a month, I could tell it was really making a difference. I’ll get into what kind of difference in a minute.
Am I talking about a gluten-free diet here? Yes, although in the Western diet, wheat is the source of gluten 99% of the time. There are a few soy sauces and barley and rye (think beer) that include gluten, but to the novitiate (including me back in the day) I think it’s easier to conceive a wheat-free diet than a gluten-free one. Because what the hell even is gluten? And to my knowledge, it isn’t 100% certain that gluten itself is the culprit, although it may be.
Approaching this as a wheat elimination diet also puts you in the driver’s seat when buying products—packaging may or may not say “gluten-free” but if there’s wheat in it, you know for sure it isn’t for you.
Whatever you want to call it, wheat-free or gluten-free, making this change was a pivotal point in my recovery and I’m confident that if I had just kept eating wheat I would’ve continued to suffer.
There are a lot of theories about why wheat might aggravate or perpetuate problems in the brain. I’ll mention a few of them briefly.
One idea is that, in a concussive injury, the blood-brain barrier can sustain localised damage. This would allow things like allergens (including wheat) to chronically irritate and inflame those parts of the brain, preventing healing. Perhaps we improve for reasons that are unclear to us, then feel horrible again and not know why.
Obviously, if the blood-brain barrier is compromised, then wheat wouldn’t be our only problem—but since it's a mainstay of the Western diet, it may be the biggest problem from a volumetric standpoint. It isn’t difficult for wheat to be included in every meal.
Those with autoimmune issues know that eating a potential allergen on a daily basis can befoul the mechanisms that keep one’s brain and body healthy. If someone has autoimmune issues and a brain injury or a compromised blood-brain barrier, a clean diet would be a critical component of recovery and health.
Even in a healthy, uninjured brain, it appears that ingesting wheat on a daily basis can be problematic. Some of the issues appear to be caused by eating varieties of wheat cultivated in the United States. These have apparently been bred in specific ways that make them different from the older varieties of wheat that human beings ate for centuries (and still eat elsewhere in the world).
American wheat can also receive very different pesticide treatments than wheat grown elsewhere, and consuming these may pose additional health risks, especially if one has a compromised blood-brain barrier. Some of these pesticides are bred into the wheat’s genome.
In my own experience, it doesn’t seem to matter whether I eat organic (pesticide-free) wheat or conventionally grown wheat in America. When I took a two-week trip to France, early on I had a croissant, and I didn’t have the same kind of reaction I normally would to wheat. I found I could eat wheat freely while there, and experience no issues. Never has a baguette tasted better.
After that experience, I tried importing flour from France and from Italy, but to no avail—these flours still gave me the same reaction I would get from eating domestic wheat.
And what is that reaction? Almost immediate brain fog. A shift in mood that almost feels like being a bit drunk. Rather, post-drunk, without the euphoria of getting drunk. A low-grade altered state. A mental dampening. A slowdown in information processing and speech. Gut pain.
Despite all this, every few months, I will have a slice of toasted sourdough, or a slice of real pizza, or a croissant, or a burger with a brioche bun. There is no gluten-free substitute for these things, and once in a great while it’s worth the suffering, and I enjoy the hell out of those meals before the aftermath kicks in.
Being married to someone who gets migraines, I’ve learned there are over a dozen different things that can trigger one. You can eliminate some of them. Others you can greatly reduce. But you can’t avoid 100% of the migraine triggers 100% of the time.
A similar approach can be taken to brain health. There’s a wide range of things that can compromise your brain and body, your nervous system. When you suffer a brain injury, doing what you can to create a healthy environment for your brain becomes paramount.
The absence of certain nutrients can slow or prevent recovery, and consuming certain things can do the same. While we can’t be perfect 100% of the time, we can exert a great deal of control over the health of our brain and body. In this context, wheat is one of the more straightforward items to address.
My aim in writing this is to reach someone who might be in the same position I was in many years ago. You may find that eliminating wheat (or gluten) from your diet makes a big difference. Or you might not. Consult the appropriate medical professionals and see what works for you.
Brainwave is an informational resource for people whose symptoms haven’t resolved after a concussion or mTBI. I endeavor to present this information in a clear and concise way, spelling out what’s backed by science and what remains unknown. Nothing here is meant as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. I am not a physician or a healthcare practitioner of any kind; I’ve simply had a lot of sports-related concussions and had to learn this stuff the hard way. If you found this information helpful or know someone who might benefit from it, please share and subscribe to Brainwave.