Can the Keto Cure revolutionize mental health treatment?
Some people with severe persistent mental illness like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia have been seeing dramatic results on a keto diet. Research is still really new in this field, but in one study of patients who were hospitalized with severe disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar, and depression started were treated with a medical ketogenic diet. 28 out of 31 of them stuck with the approach and 100% of them saw improvements in their symptoms and 43% achieved remission! This is pretty incredible results for such severe conditions.
Today we’re going to talk about why metabolic treatments work for mental health conditions, what they are, and how they may be the future of mental health treatment.
Keto and intermittent fasting
OK, so first let’s start with some stories, then we’re going to move into the science of why metabolic treatments like Keto seem to be so effective at treating mental health conditions.
First- let me tell you about my friend Kjrstin, she’s a therapist who’s been struggling with debilitating migraines for over a year, she tried a ton of treatments, a bunch of medications, chiropractors, doctors, physical therapists, etc, and when she started seeing a migraine specialist he encouraged her to try a medical keto diet.
Why Keto You May Ask?
The keto diet has a well-established history as an effective treatment for epilepsy, especially in children who do not respond well to medication. The reduction in seizures has been linked to the production of ketones, which help stabilize neuronal activity. This effect on stabilizing brain function is super interesting to mental health researchers who are beginning to see big improvements for people with other brain disorders. So what is Keto and how does it do it?
What Is A Medical Keto Diet?
The medical ketogenic diet is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate, and moderate-protein diet specifically designed to force the body into a state of ketosis. You’re not limiting calories, or starving yourself, you’re switching the fuel that you’re burning from carbohydrates to mostly fat. Ketosis is a metabolic state in which the body produces ketone bodies as an alternative fuel source. The diet is carefully formulated and is generally 80-90% fats, (um yes, that’s a lot) with the rest being proteins and carbohydrates.
So back to Kjrstin, she got on keto and within a few weeks her migraines had almost completely gone away.
Keto and Mental Health
But what about mental health? Not just migraines. You’ve got to hear about Lauren’s experience. You may know her from the channel “Living Well with Schizophrenia”
“My name is Lauren Kennedy West and over the last six years, I’ve been publicly sharing my experience of living with schizoaffective disorder on YouTube on my channel, Living Well with Schizophrenia. In December of 2023, I decided to give using metabolic therapy, specifically ketogenic therapy, or what I’ve referred to as medical keto, a try in terms of seeing if it could help manage or even treat my mental illness, schizoaffective disorder. Before this, I had primarily been using treatments like medication and therapy to manage my illness, but I still had breakthrough symptoms that included things like hallucinations or delusions or paranoia, and especially the negative symptoms that were really never touched by medication.
I also had really bad side effects of a lot of the medications that I tried and used to treat my illness, and yeah, I just was curious if there could be a better way, or a more effective way. My care team didn’t know a lot, or really anything, about medical keto, and so it was crucial for me to get a professional on board who could kind of advise us on how to effectively do it.
However, I have been completely blown away throughout this process at how drastically it has improved and changed my experience of my illness.
I no longer experience symptoms, positive symptoms, negative symptoms, cognitive symptoms. They’ve all been vastly improved and my experience of my illness and subsequently my experience of my life has completely changed. I wasn’t planning to change anything with my medication either while trying this new intervention, but quickly it became necessary for me to go down on it because medical keto was improving my brain health so much that I was then over medicated.
And over the course of the last 10 or 11 months, I’ve gradually reduced my medication further and further to a point where I am now. Completely off of my psychiatric medication and more stable than ever. I’ve been documenting this process extensively on our YouTube channel over the last 10 or 11 months and you can check that out there.
Our YouTube channel is actually now named Living Well After Schizophrenia.
Lauren’s story is pretty mind blowing. She had schizophrenia, a disease that most people have previously considered to be a disorder that you just “manage” or “cope with”, but with metabolic treatments people are starting to see remission with it.
How do metabolic treatments work?
So how does this work? Dr. Chris Palmer, a Harvard affiliated psychiatrist, has been passionately researching the connection between metabolic disorders and mental health disorders. He’s the author of the book Brain Energy, which lays out the case for mental health conditions being caused by metabolic disorders, and has seen dramatic results using metabolic treatments like keto, intermittent fasting, sleep and exercise to treat them.
What does the research say? Do we know why it works for some people, and not for others?
Dr. Palmer “So the underlying theory really is that the brain disorders that we call mental illness are largely metabolic disorders impacting the brain.
And although this gets, metabolism gets really complicated fast, the reality is that there are some treatments that are actually quite simple, diet, exercise, sleep, lifestyle factors. that can actually play really a foundational role in treating mental illness. And I think the shocking thing, so most people hear that and they think, well, yeah, of course good diet is good for your health and maybe mental health.
The shocking thing is that when you actually understand the science, you can use specific dietary interventions, for example, like the ketogenic diet. To treat really serious, severe, chronic brain conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other mental health conditions.”
And to me the thing that’s so hopeful about stories like that, is that it’s not that medical keto is going to cure everyone, but it, opens up entirely new ways to understand these illnesses and
completely different strategies. Other than just try another pill. It opens up completely new strategies that we should be considering.
Research indicates that the keto diet may positively impact certain mental health conditions due to its effects on metabolism, neurotransmitter function, and inflammation.
Ketones have been shown to improve mitochondrial function, reduce oxidative stress, and protect neurons, which is beneficial for cognitive function and may help with conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment.
Dr. Palmer: Metabolism is actually kind of fundamental to the definition of living organisms. So it is, Massive, super complicated. The simple version is food into energy and building blocks.
And that’s what powers our brains, that’s what makes us function, that’s what makes us healthy and or not healthy. And when there are problems with metabolism, fundamentally there will be problems with the way cells function and when cells in your brain are not functioning properly. you can have symptoms of mental illness.
There’s also some evidence that it may be helpful for alcoholism, PTSD and even eating disorders.
Dr. Palmer And what I’m here to say is there is hope. There is hope for those people, for you. If people understand the metabolic theory, the metabolic basis of brain disorders, we can help people heal and recover. And as we talk it helps us understand current treatments a little better, but it also opens up entirely new possibilities in terms of new medications.
We might think about weight loss drugs, maybe for your brain health as well, but also dietary interventions like the ketogenic diet or other diets. Exercise, sleep and other things.
Right now we don’t have enough research to tell us exactly why the ketogenic diet may be so helpful, we know that it changes metabolism for the better. But it also might help reduce inflammation, increase the levels of GABA, a calming neurotransmitter, and stabilize blood sugar levels- preventing fluctuations that are linked to irritability, anxiety, and depressive symptoms.
In an interview with NPR, psychiatrist said “Once you trend towards more normal mitochondrial function and metabolic health, that’s restoring neurotransmitter systems, it’s even restoring blood flow to the brain.”
Is It Practical?
To summarize- keto can be really effective for some people with some conditions, including massive benefits for some really severe conditions. But the next question is- is it practical or sustainable?
So that’s a really common question. And the reality is it is sustainable and First, I want to just point out that if you’re using a ketogenic diet for a mental health condition, it’s not at all clear that you need to do it for life in the, so this is an evidence based treatment for epilepsy.
It can stop seizures even when medications don’t. And usually when people use it to treat their epilepsy, they only need to do it for somewhere between two and five years. So it’s not a lifetime treatment. It’s usually for a few years. And then you can stop the diet and your seizures stay away. And what we’re hoping in the mental health field is that the same brain benefits will apply so that people can do a ketogenic intervention for a couple of years.
And the reason it’s so sustainable for them is this is perplexing to a lot of people because a lot of people have trouble losing even five or ten pounds. Oh, yeah. And keeping it up. Most people do. So it’s like how do these patients with severe mental or neurological health conditions, how do they do it for so long?
These people are fighting for their lives. They’re fighting for their brain health. It is so much easier to do a ketogenic diet than to have severe crippling suicidal depression. It’s not a, it’s not even a close contest. It is so much easier just to do a diet. The friend that you just described who had migraine headaches that were treatment resistant.
It’s probably a lot easier to do a keto diet than to have migraine headaches and be in bed incapacitated. I asked her, I
said, is it hard to stick with? She’s been doing it for six months now and I haven’t stuck with a diet for six months. First off. I’m not really pro dieting. I’m not like, I’m not a restrictive dieter.
I don’t encourage that. But second, I was like, well, is this hard? Like, do you miss? And she’s like, no, it’s not. I choose between. Eating keto or being in bed with a migraine. It’s like an easy choice.
Admittedly, changing to a keto diet can be challenging, you have to restrict so many foods, and this can take time, energy, money and restrict social interactions. This can add stress to life. Plus, it can be hard to get adequate nutrients without eating things like beans, legumes, etc. I also wonder about the impact on the gut/microbiome when there’s so little fiber in the diet.
It’s still too early to know what works and why. But this is a promising approach.
There are still a lot of questions to be answered. For each person, it’s important to weigh the risks and benefits of each treatment option. And if you’re considering this, you should work with a doctor/nutritionist/psychiatrist who understands metabolic treatments to decide what is the best treatment for you. Dr. Palmer recommends that you find a clinician who can help you navigate the process, I’ll link some resources below. I just think that it’s great to have another tool in our toolbelt, another option for people to try. I hope you found this video helpful, thanks for watching and take care.
