15 ms·

Pilot study shows ketogenic diet improves mental illness

126 points by wjb3 3y ago

gnabgib 3y ago
Discussion: [0] (61 points, 6 hours ago, 89 comments) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39896423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39896423
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
captainbland 3y ago
*severe mental illness It's interesting though, I kind of wonder if this is a sort of paradoxical reaction as (relatively) mentally healthy people who I know tried it (e.g Atkins) had their moods significantly worsen.
- macspoofing 3y ago
  >people who I know tried it (e.g Atkins) had their moods significantly worsen Dieting is stressful?
  - NickC25 3y ago
    It can be. Sugar and other food staples are drugs, and can be habit forming.
lewispollard 3y ago
Haven't read the paper, but I can't tell from this summary article if they tested any other diet programs as a control - is it possible that the improvement comes from being more ordered and thoughtful about food choices, rather than from the specific diet used?
- jokethrowaway 3y ago
  Definitely worth doing other experiments with other diets - but having tried both I think there is a qualitative difference. I lost 10kgs twice in my life; the first time with a high carb, low fat diet and the second one with a no carb, high fat diet. Roughly same weight interval 84kg->70kg and roughly the same timeline (I was aiming at -1kg per week). The high carb diet was tough: I was hungry all the time and I had to count calories precisely. Mentally I felt roughly like I did before the diet. Mostly tired. I didn't do much adjusting to my diet, I just had less food than before in order to create a caloric deficit. The no carb diet was easy: I was never hungry, I had mental clarity for the first time in my life. After the occasional sleep deprivation I was feeling much better than before. I started eating twice a day with no snacks, then migrated to one meal per day with no hunger. Adjusting to the new diet came with some mistakes (eg. balancing elecrolytes to get the optimal level of energy) but after fixing them I was much better than before.
  - delichon 3y ago
    I was a world class yo-yo dieter (having lost and regained > 100 pounds four times) and I agree with you. After 50+ of years of trying many many diets I finally tried very low carb carnivore and that was the first thing that stopped the yo-yo. For 3.5 years now. I wish I had tried it earlier and life, but I was never a particular meat eater before, and an anti-meat vegetarian and vegan for years. It took extreme desperation to make me try it, and the benefits were almost immediate. I can confirm that for this N=1, both clean vegetarian and carnivore diets are a large improvement over the standard American diet health wise, but the later has been much more sustainable.
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      "both clean vegetarian and carnivore diets are a large improvement over the standard American diet health wise" I think this is why there is so many arguments about one or other, people get fired up over veg v carnivore. Because they are both better than the Standard American Diet. It is really important for people to note their starting position. If they were from Standard diet, almost anything is improvement. Just like someone can be a vegan but is eating vegan oreo's, then that is not healthy. Or carnivore and just downing ribs all day. Seems like just less processed is the best.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  Many elimination diets will help you lose weight. The main difference is sustainability over the long-term.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    That's the thing, diets are temporary, long term sustainability require lifestyle changes.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Zetobal 3y ago
  At least for bipolar and schizoaffective people it's pretty much this. A big part of ipsrt is about eating & scheduling when to eat.
  - lewispollard 3y ago
    Right; for ADHD a keto diet did very little to improve my symptoms, but when I was doing it I was still eating quite impulsively and without a proper schedule or meal plan. Doing those things, creating a routine, regardless of what I was eating, made a big improvement to my symptoms in that it created a lot of structure, routine and planning that was previously absent.
- keybored 3y ago
  Because that’s the causation that you prefer?
  - lewispollard 3y ago
    No? Scientific experiments should work to rule out alternative causes, that's the whole point of it. Introducing a lot of structure to someone's life that was previously very unstructured (as diet often is in mentally unwell people) could be part of the reason their symptoms improve, rather than necessarily the diet itself. It's an alternative cause that I think should be ruled out before assuming it's the content of the diet itself that caused the difference. Control groups are not "whataboutism". If adding that kind of control showed keto was specifically helping these people, then that'd be great; but since the study doesn't seem to have done that, it's hard to be confident in the conclusion. Instead, they gave the participants cookbooks, and assigned them a personal coach to help them plan and cook their meals and follow through with the diet change. Giving that kind of personal support to change habits and make more considered choices to someone with mental health challenges is bound to make them feel better, no?
jumpman500 3y ago
> On average, the participants lost 10% of their body weight; reduced their waist circumference by 11% percent; and had lower blood pressure, body mass index, triglycerides, blood sugar levels and insulin resistance. Any person that loses 10% their body weight through a diet is going to feel much better.
- 0xdada 3y ago
  Any overweight person. I gained 10% of my bodyweight in the last 6 months and I haven't felt better. (Mostly eating plants though.)
  - throwaway22032 3y ago
    Same here, though through eating meat. The complex people have around weight I find really strange. I'd be surprised if most of the mental health effects don't simply follow from the realisation that you are in control of your own weight. Feeling powerless is pretty shit.
    - slowmovintarget 3y ago
      It's not weight, it's BMI. If you shift your composition to muscle without changing your weight, that's still a dramatic improvement. This is not "a complex." Discussions of "losing weight" are typically short hand for reducing the percentage composition of fat in the body. If you're obese, changing composition will likely add many health benefits, and very often the overall weight of the person shifting said composition will be lower because they were carrying a lot of fat, and only added a reasonable amount of muscle if they took up exercise.
      - jonhohle 3y ago
        BMI doesn’t take into account muscle, just height. Bodybuilders, for example, usually have a “terrible” BMI and <5% body fat.
        deleted 3y ago
steveBK123 3y ago
Arguably pilots are outliers in some ways in that their job requires long periods of seating, uninterrupted.. and often bad sleep or an irregular sleep schedule. (edit- yeah I should have read the article, its not about pilots)
- MikeSchurman 3y ago
  I believe pilot study here means: small-scale preliminary study, not vehicle pilots.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    LOL im an idiot, thanks.
    - StefanBatory 3y ago
      You're not only one, before clicking on article I thought so too lmao
brodouevencode 3y ago
I think we're just starting to understand the link between diet and mental state. I don't know if keto is the best answer (I have opinions on keto having cycled through the diet many, many times) but it is reassuring that this unchartered area of science is being taken seriously.
- outime 3y ago
  >I think we're just starting to understand the link between diet and mental state "All disease begins in the gut" – Hippocrates (460 – c. 370 BC)
  - brodouevencode 3y ago
    Haha that's fair. Maybe I should have phrased that as "we're just now taking Hippocrates seriously".
  - slowmovintarget 3y ago
    https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/141/3/e20/4850980?login=false https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/141/3/e20/4850980?log...
  - sandspar 3y ago
    He also thought that hiccups meant liver disorder and that eclipses affect human behavior.
insickness 3y ago
As anecdotal evidence, I went on a strict keto diet three months ago and my mental state is far more stable. When I have a cheat day, I feel noticeably more anxious.
- brodouevencode 3y ago
  Do you think that the perceived stability is a result of the diet or a result of losing weight (assuming that you have)?
  - rpmisms 3y ago
    I have bodyfat below 10%, and keto improves my mental health. I have zero hang-ups about weight.
    - brodouevencode 3y ago
      That's kind of what I was thinking - and directly contradicts other claims in these comments that want to attribute it only to the weight loss. Personally I've cycled through keto a few times. I will say that while it did not line up with my goals sufficiently (you cannot powerlift/bodybuild long term on keto - your body _needs_ exogenous glucose for that) I was way more clear-headed and alert despite being tired all the time (presumably that's more because of the workouts).
- hackerlight 3y ago
  Does your cheat day involve processed carbs or whole grains?
- zoeysmithe 3y ago
  This is more evidence that you have an unknown food intolerance than keto being good for you. Red and processed meats are very clearly linked to heart disease and cancer. Most keto people eat large amounts of both. I have celiac disease and before it was diagnosed my anxiety and depression was much worse. I even tried keto once and felt better, because I wasn't eating gluten for the first time in my life. I think there's a larger conversation to be had about how we develop auto-immune issues and food intolerances as we age, but we really don't see that as a regular thing to worry about. Nor do we really have the tools to see what foods we cannot handle well other than elimination diets, which is what keto seems to accidentally be for many people.
stainablesteel 3y ago
i would argue that's the discipline it takes to go through with it but yeah, same outcome
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
> By the end of the trial, 14 patients had been fully adherent, six were semi-adherent and only one was non-adherent. Very small sample size.
oldpersonintx 3y ago
[dead]
tomohawk 3y ago
A friend went on carnivore diet (a ketogenic diet) and went from a person who always had lots of anxiety for several years to being much calmer. While that was the most stark transformation, I know 3 others who have made the same dietary change and are experiencing similar, although less pronounced results. They did not start out being obviously anxious, but it is clearly having an impact. Seeing these results, I made the same dietary change (although I am in decent shape and not overweight). I am seeing similar benefits.
tspng 3y ago
Keep in mind that the study is conducted with schizophrenic and bipolar disorder patents that are on medications, are overweight and gained weight while on their current medication and ..."with at least one metabolic abnormality, such as insulin resistance, hypertriglyceridemia, dyslipidemia, or impaired glucose tolerance."... Given this study design, I don't really find the results that surprising.
- cpncrunch 3y ago
  And it is completely uncontrolled.
- zug_zug 3y ago
  It may seem like armchair common sense to you, but I doubt any medical facility in the entire country would prescribe a ketogenic diet for those patients because there isn't a hard scientific basis to do so. Also going from insulin resistant to schizophrenia/bipolar is a bit of a surprise. So this is important work. It'll also be interesting to see if it replicates and generalizes.
  - heyoni 3y ago
    There is some evidence out there that links insulin resistance to depression via BDNF depletion, which is also implicated in schizophrenia. BDNF is also thought to be up regulated by exercise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-derived_neurotrophic_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-derived_neurotrophic_fac...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
photochemsyn 3y ago
Anyone considering getting on the latest dietary fad train should think twice; strict adherence to a modified dietary regime without monitoring by medical professionals can lead to unintended consquences. Often, the promoters of such diets use a handful of scientific studies to gain followers (hence revenue), even if such studies (such as the one in this article) aren't applicable for the general public. If you want to get on the train regardless, or are already on it, I suggest reading this entire review (2013) (it's dense, a chatbot can help). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3625904/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3625904/ It covers everything from basic biochemistry to unusual disease states, here's the diet-relevant bit: > "Ketogenic diets are often unpalatable, which leads to poor patient compliance. Additionally, such diets raise blood cholesterol and free fatty acids, increase the risk of nephrolithiasis, and cause constipation (23, 116, 201). Therefore, Veech and Clarke developed and tested ingestible ketone ester compounds, which can rapidly generate ketoses exceeding 5 mM in rats and humans (37, 103, 195), while sparing the adverse consequences of high-fat diets." Now these ketone esters are being marketed direct to consumers when they really should only be used under medical supervision as part of a coherent treatment program for specific issues: https://www.businessinsider.com/ketone-ester-drinks-claim-ketosis-without-keto-diet-2021-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/ketone-ester-drinks-claim-ke...
- thebigspacefuck 3y ago
  Nonsense. The only people making revenue are Kelloggs, Kraft etc. Not everything has a self-serving motive. Just look at obesity rates in the US and you know something is terribly wrong with the food we’re eating. If you care about people, heck if you just care about healthcare costs, you should want to figure this out. For keto, the main thing you need to know is that if you are on high blood pressure or diabetes meds you can have dangerously low blood pressure or blood sugar on keto. Seriously, don’t try it without medical supervision lest you pass out in the bathroom. For anyone not on meds, you may need more salt than you’d otherwise have. Otherwise it’s fairly safe. There’s nothing harmful about ketones. They can help with epilepsy. Maybe your brain runs better on them without epilepsy, so it’s worth a shot to find out. Docs prescribe bipolar people seizure drugs and it works for some reason, so it’s not an unreasonable hypothesis.
luxuryballs 3y ago
I read some studies about gut flora being tied to mental wellbeing. This is so complicated probably because there’s so much diversity at play, what might balance the gut for one person may unbalance another.
charlysisto 3y ago
Chris Palmer, Harvard Psychiatrist has written a book called "Brain Energy" about the potential effects of Ketogenic therapy. The crux of his theory relies on Mitochondria's health which play essential roles (serotonine dopamine regulation, epigenitic signaling...) apparently a lot more than just providing ATP. And you have millions of them in each neurone so trauma, addiction, chronic stress, malnutrition, brain insulin resistance... may have compromised those organelles and the neurones therefore become over or under excitable. Ketones provide a relief for Mitochondria (only alternate energy source for the brain, mitophagy of damaged cells, protection of healthy ones through uncoupling). It is a lot more than just basic common sense for good health - although getting all the essentials nutriments may be part of it as well ! Anyway in his book (or podcasts) there are many anecdotal but nevertheless fascinating cases of hopeless patients in total remission after a couple of months on keto therapy. It seems a lot of research is underway as well
consf 3y ago
[dead]

126 points by wjb3 3y ago

Discussion: [0] (61 points, 6 hours ago, 89 comments) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39896423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39896423

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

captainbland 3y ago

*severe mental illness It's interesting though, I kind of wonder if this is a sort of paradoxical reaction as (relatively) mentally healthy people who I know tried it (e.g Atkins) had their moods significantly worsen.

macspoofing 3y ago
>people who I know tried it (e.g Atkins) had their moods significantly worsen Dieting is stressful?
- NickC25 3y ago
  It can be. Sugar and other food staples are drugs, and can be habit forming.

lewispollard 3y ago

Haven't read the paper, but I can't tell from this summary article if they tested any other diet programs as a control - is it possible that the improvement comes from being more ordered and thoughtful about food choices, rather than from the specific diet used?

jokethrowaway 3y ago
Definitely worth doing other experiments with other diets - but having tried both I think there is a qualitative difference. I lost 10kgs twice in my life; the first time with a high carb, low fat diet and the second one with a no carb, high fat diet. Roughly same weight interval 84kg->70kg and roughly the same timeline (I was aiming at -1kg per week). The high carb diet was tough: I was hungry all the time and I had to count calories precisely. Mentally I felt roughly like I did before the diet. Mostly tired. I didn't do much adjusting to my diet, I just had less food than before in order to create a caloric deficit. The no carb diet was easy: I was never hungry, I had mental clarity for the first time in my life. After the occasional sleep deprivation I was feeling much better than before. I started eating twice a day with no snacks, then migrated to one meal per day with no hunger. Adjusting to the new diet came with some mistakes (eg. balancing elecrolytes to get the optimal level of energy) but after fixing them I was much better than before.
- delichon 3y ago
  I was a world class yo-yo dieter (having lost and regained > 100 pounds four times) and I agree with you. After 50+ of years of trying many many diets I finally tried very low carb carnivore and that was the first thing that stopped the yo-yo. For 3.5 years now. I wish I had tried it earlier and life, but I was never a particular meat eater before, and an anti-meat vegetarian and vegan for years. It took extreme desperation to make me try it, and the benefits were almost immediate. I can confirm that for this N=1, both clean vegetarian and carnivore diets are a large improvement over the standard American diet health wise, but the later has been much more sustainable.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    "both clean vegetarian and carnivore diets are a large improvement over the standard American diet health wise" I think this is why there is so many arguments about one or other, people get fired up over veg v carnivore. Because they are both better than the Standard American Diet. It is really important for people to note their starting position. If they were from Standard diet, almost anything is improvement. Just like someone can be a vegan but is eating vegan oreo's, then that is not healthy. Or carnivore and just downing ribs all day. Seems like just less processed is the best.
matthewdgreen 3y ago
Many elimination diets will help you lose weight. The main difference is sustainability over the long-term.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  That's the thing, diets are temporary, long term sustainability require lifestyle changes.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Zetobal 3y ago
At least for bipolar and schizoaffective people it's pretty much this. A big part of ipsrt is about eating & scheduling when to eat.
- lewispollard 3y ago
  Right; for ADHD a keto diet did very little to improve my symptoms, but when I was doing it I was still eating quite impulsively and without a proper schedule or meal plan. Doing those things, creating a routine, regardless of what I was eating, made a big improvement to my symptoms in that it created a lot of structure, routine and planning that was previously absent.
keybored 3y ago
Because that’s the causation that you prefer?
- lewispollard 3y ago
  No? Scientific experiments should work to rule out alternative causes, that's the whole point of it. Introducing a lot of structure to someone's life that was previously very unstructured (as diet often is in mentally unwell people) could be part of the reason their symptoms improve, rather than necessarily the diet itself. It's an alternative cause that I think should be ruled out before assuming it's the content of the diet itself that caused the difference. Control groups are not "whataboutism". If adding that kind of control showed keto was specifically helping these people, then that'd be great; but since the study doesn't seem to have done that, it's hard to be confident in the conclusion. Instead, they gave the participants cookbooks, and assigned them a personal coach to help them plan and cook their meals and follow through with the diet change. Giving that kind of personal support to change habits and make more considered choices to someone with mental health challenges is bound to make them feel better, no?

jumpman500 3y ago

> On average, the participants lost 10% of their body weight; reduced their waist circumference by 11% percent; and had lower blood pressure, body mass index, triglycerides, blood sugar levels and insulin resistance. Any person that loses 10% their body weight through a diet is going to feel much better.

0xdada 3y ago
Any overweight person. I gained 10% of my bodyweight in the last 6 months and I haven't felt better. (Mostly eating plants though.)
- throwaway22032 3y ago
  Same here, though through eating meat. The complex people have around weight I find really strange. I'd be surprised if most of the mental health effects don't simply follow from the realisation that you are in control of your own weight. Feeling powerless is pretty shit.
  - slowmovintarget 3y ago
    It's not weight, it's BMI. If you shift your composition to muscle without changing your weight, that's still a dramatic improvement. This is not "a complex." Discussions of "losing weight" are typically short hand for reducing the percentage composition of fat in the body. If you're obese, changing composition will likely add many health benefits, and very often the overall weight of the person shifting said composition will be lower because they were carrying a lot of fat, and only added a reasonable amount of muscle if they took up exercise.
    - jonhohle 3y ago
      BMI doesn’t take into account muscle, just height. Bodybuilders, for example, usually have a “terrible” BMI and <5% body fat.
      - deleted 3y ago

steveBK123 3y ago

Arguably pilots are outliers in some ways in that their job requires long periods of seating, uninterrupted.. and often bad sleep or an irregular sleep schedule. (edit- yeah I should have read the article, its not about pilots)

MikeSchurman 3y ago
I believe pilot study here means: small-scale preliminary study, not vehicle pilots.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  LOL im an idiot, thanks.
  - StefanBatory 3y ago
    You're not only one, before clicking on article I thought so too lmao

brodouevencode 3y ago

I think we're just starting to understand the link between diet and mental state. I don't know if keto is the best answer (I have opinions on keto having cycled through the diet many, many times) but it is reassuring that this unchartered area of science is being taken seriously.

outime 3y ago
>I think we're just starting to understand the link between diet and mental state "All disease begins in the gut" – Hippocrates (460 – c. 370 BC)
- brodouevencode 3y ago
  Haha that's fair. Maybe I should have phrased that as "we're just now taking Hippocrates seriously".
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/141/3/e20/4850980?login=false https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/141/3/e20/4850980?log...
- sandspar 3y ago
  He also thought that hiccups meant liver disorder and that eclipses affect human behavior.

insickness 3y ago

As anecdotal evidence, I went on a strict keto diet three months ago and my mental state is far more stable. When I have a cheat day, I feel noticeably more anxious.

brodouevencode 3y ago
Do you think that the perceived stability is a result of the diet or a result of losing weight (assuming that you have)?
- rpmisms 3y ago
  I have bodyfat below 10%, and keto improves my mental health. I have zero hang-ups about weight.
  - brodouevencode 3y ago
    That's kind of what I was thinking - and directly contradicts other claims in these comments that want to attribute it only to the weight loss. Personally I've cycled through keto a few times. I will say that while it did not line up with my goals sufficiently (you cannot powerlift/bodybuild long term on keto - your body _needs_ exogenous glucose for that) I was way more clear-headed and alert despite being tired all the time (presumably that's more because of the workouts).
hackerlight 3y ago
Does your cheat day involve processed carbs or whole grains?
zoeysmithe 3y ago
This is more evidence that you have an unknown food intolerance than keto being good for you. Red and processed meats are very clearly linked to heart disease and cancer. Most keto people eat large amounts of both. I have celiac disease and before it was diagnosed my anxiety and depression was much worse. I even tried keto once and felt better, because I wasn't eating gluten for the first time in my life. I think there's a larger conversation to be had about how we develop auto-immune issues and food intolerances as we age, but we really don't see that as a regular thing to worry about. Nor do we really have the tools to see what foods we cannot handle well other than elimination diets, which is what keto seems to accidentally be for many people.

stainablesteel 3y ago

i would argue that's the discipline it takes to go through with it but yeah, same outcome

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

> By the end of the trial, 14 patients had been fully adherent, six were semi-adherent and only one was non-adherent. Very small sample size.

oldpersonintx 3y ago

[dead]

tomohawk 3y ago

A friend went on carnivore diet (a ketogenic diet) and went from a person who always had lots of anxiety for several years to being much calmer. While that was the most stark transformation, I know 3 others who have made the same dietary change and are experiencing similar, although less pronounced results. They did not start out being obviously anxious, but it is clearly having an impact. Seeing these results, I made the same dietary change (although I am in decent shape and not overweight). I am seeing similar benefits.

tspng 3y ago

Keep in mind that the study is conducted with schizophrenic and bipolar disorder patents that are on medications, are overweight and gained weight while on their current medication and ..."with at least one metabolic abnormality, such as insulin resistance, hypertriglyceridemia, dyslipidemia, or impaired glucose tolerance."... Given this study design, I don't really find the results that surprising.

cpncrunch 3y ago
And it is completely uncontrolled.
zug_zug 3y ago
It may seem like armchair common sense to you, but I doubt any medical facility in the entire country would prescribe a ketogenic diet for those patients because there isn't a hard scientific basis to do so. Also going from insulin resistant to schizophrenia/bipolar is a bit of a surprise. So this is important work. It'll also be interesting to see if it replicates and generalizes.
- heyoni 3y ago
  There is some evidence out there that links insulin resistance to depression via BDNF depletion, which is also implicated in schizophrenia. BDNF is also thought to be up regulated by exercise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-derived_neurotrophic_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-derived_neurotrophic_fac...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

photochemsyn 3y ago

Anyone considering getting on the latest dietary fad train should think twice; strict adherence to a modified dietary regime without monitoring by medical professionals can lead to unintended consquences. Often, the promoters of such diets use a handful of scientific studies to gain followers (hence revenue), even if such studies (such as the one in this article) aren't applicable for the general public. If you want to get on the train regardless, or are already on it, I suggest reading this entire review (2013) (it's dense, a chatbot can help). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3625904/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3625904/ It covers everything from basic biochemistry to unusual disease states, here's the diet-relevant bit: > "Ketogenic diets are often unpalatable, which leads to poor patient compliance. Additionally, such diets raise blood cholesterol and free fatty acids, increase the risk of nephrolithiasis, and cause constipation (23, 116, 201). Therefore, Veech and Clarke developed and tested ingestible ketone ester compounds, which can rapidly generate ketoses exceeding 5 mM in rats and humans (37, 103, 195), while sparing the adverse consequences of high-fat diets." Now these ketone esters are being marketed direct to consumers when they really should only be used under medical supervision as part of a coherent treatment program for specific issues: https://www.businessinsider.com/ketone-ester-drinks-claim-ketosis-without-keto-diet-2021-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/ketone-ester-drinks-claim-ke...

thebigspacefuck 3y ago
Nonsense. The only people making revenue are Kelloggs, Kraft etc. Not everything has a self-serving motive. Just look at obesity rates in the US and you know something is terribly wrong with the food we’re eating. If you care about people, heck if you just care about healthcare costs, you should want to figure this out. For keto, the main thing you need to know is that if you are on high blood pressure or diabetes meds you can have dangerously low blood pressure or blood sugar on keto. Seriously, don’t try it without medical supervision lest you pass out in the bathroom. For anyone not on meds, you may need more salt than you’d otherwise have. Otherwise it’s fairly safe. There’s nothing harmful about ketones. They can help with epilepsy. Maybe your brain runs better on them without epilepsy, so it’s worth a shot to find out. Docs prescribe bipolar people seizure drugs and it works for some reason, so it’s not an unreasonable hypothesis.

luxuryballs 3y ago

I read some studies about gut flora being tied to mental wellbeing. This is so complicated probably because there’s so much diversity at play, what might balance the gut for one person may unbalance another.

charlysisto 3y ago

Chris Palmer, Harvard Psychiatrist has written a book called "Brain Energy" about the potential effects of Ketogenic therapy. The crux of his theory relies on Mitochondria's health which play essential roles (serotonine dopamine regulation, epigenitic signaling...) apparently a lot more than just providing ATP. And you have millions of them in each neurone so trauma, addiction, chronic stress, malnutrition, brain insulin resistance... may have compromised those organelles and the neurones therefore become over or under excitable. Ketones provide a relief for Mitochondria (only alternate energy source for the brain, mitophagy of damaged cells, protection of healthy ones through uncoupling). It is a lot more than just basic common sense for good health - although getting all the essentials nutriments may be part of it as well ! Anyway in his book (or podcasts) there are many anecdotal but nevertheless fascinating cases of hopeless patients in total remission after a couple of months on keto therapy. It seems a lot of research is underway as well

consf 3y ago

[dead]