High-fat keto diet helped 69% of bipolar patients in new study

The principle of a ketogenetic diet is to consume a variety of low-carb, high-fat foods, including dairy, vegetables, fish and other seafood, plus certain fats and oils.

Individuals with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia may benefit from the ketogenic diet.

According to People, a four-month study of 23 people – published in Science Direct – found that 69% of those with bipolar disorder showed improvement after going on the low-carb, moderate protein, high-fat eating plan that includes dairy, vegetables, fish and other seafood, plus certain oils.

“The working theory is that we’re providing energy to the brain that circumvents these metabolic deficits,” said the study’s lead author, Shebani Sethi, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine.

Employing the Clinical Global Impressions scale — which the National Institutes of Health describes as a means for “the non-researcher clinician to quantify and track patient progress and treatment response over time” — the study discovered that, for bipolar participants on the keto diet, “severity of mental illness assessments show average improvement of 31%.” 

“Psychiatric outcomes for the full cohort include an average of 17% improvement in life satisfaction,” the study noted, People reported.

The Mayo Clinic describes bipolar disorder as a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings. Most of the participants in the keto study had bipolar disorder, though some had schizophrenia, which the clinic defines as a severe mental illness that results in an abnormal interpretation of reality and “some combination of hallucinations, delusions and extremely disordered thinking and behavior that impairs daily functioning and can be disabling.”

Although there are treatments available for the disorders, researchers chose to analyze the keto diet — which has been used to help patients with diabetes and epilepsy and has grown in popularity for weight loss — because “many individuals can experience treatment resistance, or major metabolic side effects, which can result in non-adherence of prescribed treatments.”

After following the diet for four months, researchers discovered that “79% of participants with baseline symptoms experienced clinically meaningful improvement.”

However, the study authors note that patients should use keto in addition to traditional treatment — not in place of it.

“Our results show that a ketogenic diet intervention is a feasible and acceptable supplemental treatment to neuroleptic medication,” the study noted, calling for “further research into the relationship between mental health and metabolic health,” People reported.

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