A new study conducted by the researchers of Standford Medicine has revealed a ketogenic diet can not only help restore metabolic health but it can further improve serious psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
The standard treatment for people living with serious mental conditions like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder includes antipsychotic medications which can have a negative effect on their bodies.
Although these medications help in regulating brain chemistry they also lead to metabolic side effects like insulin resistance and obesity.
Now this pilot study reveals that suggest that a dietary intervention can be a powerful aid in treating mental illness. The findings of the study were published in the Psychiatry Research on March 27.
“It’s very promising and very encouraging that you can take back control of your illness in some way, aside from the usual standard of care,” said Dr. Shebani Sethi, MD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and the first author of the new paper.
In a statement, Standford Medicine revealed that Sethi, who is board-certified in obesity and psychiatry, remembers when she first noticed the connection. When she was a medical student, she witnessed a patient with treatment-resistant schizophrenia whose auditory hallucinations quieted on a ketogenic diet.
While researching Dr. Sethi found that a few decades-old case reports in which the ketogenic diet was used to treat schizophrenia. However, there was a long track record of success in using ketogenic diets to treat epileptic seizures.
“The ketogenic diet has been proven to be effective for treatment-resistant epileptic seizures by reducing the excitability of neurons in the brain,” Sethi said. “We thought it would be worth exploring this treatment in psychiatric conditions.”
Few years later, she coined the term ‘Metabolic Psychiatry’ which is a new field that approaches mental health from an energy conversion perspective. In the four-month pilot trial, Sethi’s team followed 21 adult participants who were diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, taking antipsychotic medications, and had metabolic abnormalities like weight gain, insulin resistance, hypertriglyceridemia, dyslipidemia or impaired glucose tolerance.
During the study, the participants were instructed to follow a ketogenic diet, with approximately 10 percent of the calories from carbohydrates, 30 percent from protein and 60 percent from fat. However, the participants were not told to count calories.
Menawhile, the participants underwent a variety of psychiatric and metabolic assessments throughout the trial. According to the researcher, the benefits were striking.
“The participants reported improvements in their energy, sleep, mood and quality of life. They feel healthier and more hopeful,” Sethi said.
The researchers were impressed that most of the participants stuck with the diet. “We saw more benefit with the adherent group compared with the semi-adherent group, indicating a potential dose-response relationship,” Sethi said.
According to Sethi, there is increasing evidence that psychiatric diseases like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder stem from metabolic deficits in the brain and this affects the excitability of neurons.
The researchers are hopeful that this small trial will pave the way for more detailed studies.