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Ketogenic diets have been used to control seizures in people suffering from epilepsy. It has reportedly been used for controlling migraines and possibly other neurological conditions.

Ketones being an alternative fuel for the brain, it can relieve neuronal starvation from cognitive hypoglycemia. Whether there's some other magical property of ketones at play, or it's simply that in some people glucose metabolism in the brain is broken, it's all speculation at this point.

Note that for epilepsy patients, the classic ketogenic diet isn't something that people can adhere to, being something that's normally done under medical supervision.

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Btw I tried the ketogenic diet for several months and I noticed cool effects like my face acne almost disappearing.

However the beneficial effects persisted after switching to a moderate carbs diet made of whole foods. The standard diet is a disaster for health, being very inflammatory and obesogenic, but you might want to also experiment with a whole foods diet, made primarily from fresh plants and animal products cooked at home.

You might discover the same benefits. And if you eat at maintenance, or with a caloric deficit, you'll naturally cycle in and out of ketosis daily anyway.

But if what you do is working for you and you feel great, then good for you, keep doing it.

I am having hard time finding information about "cognitive hypoglycemia". Can you provide some pointers?

Hi, interesting comment, do you know solid websites (or Books or places) about keto diet and diet in general ?

I recommend this one:

https://examine.com/store/keto-guide/

As an atheist, it cracks me up that The Bible might have a clue for this. A documentary movie on ketogenic diet brings up a quote about possession, which says something along the lines "This kind of demons can only be exorcised with a post."

The movie starring Jayne Seymour wasn't strictly a documentary, but a fictionalized story based on real events.

> Ketones being an alternative fuel for the brain

My understanding is that the brain / neurons require glucose to operate, they don't directly metabolise ketones to a great degree. When in ketosis, blood sugar drops very low and the brain's glucose has to be sourced from gluconeogenesis: an inefficient and minimal conversion of ketones to glucose. This low blood sugar has metabolic effects on neurons (as well as many other types of cell).

The USP of a ketogenic diet is that it allows persistent sustainable low blood sugar, which is otherwise only seen in inherently unsustainable fasting.

I'm glad that's worked for you. But I don't think you should go around telling people that a keto diet will cure them of their psychosis; there are too many potentially confounding variables to just recommend a keto diet as a general treatment for psychosis, and it's not like it's necessarily a harmless thing to just shrug and try and see if it cures you, as you noted there can be serious side effects of a keto diet. People should make their medical decisions based on consultation with their doctors or other medical professionals, not anecdotes from strangers on the internet.

You don’t get it. I had severe, debilitating psychosis. And ketosis took that situation and turned it into being a happy and productive person. You don’t understand what it’s like to experience a miracle. It’s not just “working for me,” it’s a miracle. This is like if I cured my terminal cancer and I told someone and they just said “that’s interesting but don’t tell people.” I’m telling you I had psychosis and I cured it. Doesn’t that warrant at least some kind of investigation or inquiry? You don’t mention any kind of inquiry but you go out of your way to tell me that I shouldn’t be saying anything? Keto isn’t dangerous for non diabetics. There’s no reason at all people with psychotic symptoms shouldn’t try it. I highly encourage people to try it. As for the doctors, maybe they would recommend it if they would listen and actually investigate it.

I wonder if ketosis cures your psychosis, or if you started ketosis at a time when your body fixed itself.

I have gone on and off keto many, many times with no pattern in timing or duration. Each time, t he psychotic symptoms emerge and recede with the same quality, in the same amount of time and so on. There is no other pattern in anything that might also cause this. People are not known to go in and out of severe psychotic symptoms so regularly and suddenly in the absence of drug use. It cannot be a coincidence that my symptoms nap to ketosis without exception. it absolutely warrants some kind of inquiry at the very least. I don’t take drugs. I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t have any encounters of any kind with psychoactive substances. I’m smart enough and well educated enough to recognize “confounding factors” and it’s extremely frustrating to be disregarded after all my careful thought and effort.

What's your theory about the mechanism in Ketosis is affecting you?

My first thought was about Ketosis being used to treat epilepsy, but Ketosis can DRASTICALLY change the quality of your sleep.

Maybe you just needed the extra sleep, or deeper sleep that you are getting while on Keto.

I've taken maybe 10 medications for depression. Ketosis was more effective for me than probably 8 of them.

I have no idea. If I had to guess it would be metabolic problems with neurons that can’t use sugar or an inflammatory thing. But I haven’t got any idea what it might be. Maybe we’ll know someday.

I suspect a connection with the intestinal flora. Bacteria in the intestinal flora are able to synthesize all kinds of neurotransmitters from carbohydrates.

I myself become very lethargic under a normal carbohydrate-containing diet. On low carb I have a lot of motivation and a lot of energy.

I'm not saying not to tell people about your experience, or encourage inquiry or research, I'm saying don't overstate the weight of your singular experience and encourage others to believe that keto is likely to be a miracle cure for psychosis.

> Keto isn’t dangerous for non diabetics.

I don't really want to get into the trenches of arguing about Keto in general, but a cursory googling suggests that this is a controversial assertion.

Again, not trying to silence you, just urging restraint from an epistemological perspective regarding the giving and taking of medical advice by strangers on the internet.

Its a controversial assertion for non-scientific reasons.

Diabetes is the second highest profitable disease for pharma companies, and the only way to control it without their expensive and error prone drugs and treatments is to strictly manage your insulin levels through diet.

Anyone who says, on a scientific basis, that keto is dangerous might as well be lumped in with flat earthers, climate change deniers, and anti-vaxxers.

> Its a controversial assertion for non-scientific reasons.

so Keto is controversial because it puts pharmaceutical companies under on diabetes drugs, even though basically any kind of weight-loss diet has a positive effect on diabetic patients?

Nah.

It's controversial because it's a recent fad, and because it's extreme compared to the unrestricted diet of most people. It's been around for years (keto diet) , but it's recently got the spotlight of the public, so for the past few years it's been the miracle diabetic cure -- much like atkin's or whatever other fad diets were around in the past.

>Anyone who says, on a scientific basis, that keto is dangerous might as well be lumped in with flat earthers, climate change deniers, and anti-vaxxers.

ridiculous assumption that the 'scientific basis' is a single conformal idea across the entire industry of researchers. Of course any kind of restrictive diet can be dangerous for some folks, the idea that any diet is absolutely safe is ridiculous on its' face.

Low carb diets have been suspected for years to be no-good for afib patients. The keto diets are now being suspected of the same issue, and there are papers that will soon be published to give us a better idea on the scope (if any) of the issue.

Did you, or anyone really, think that there were any danger-free diets, ever? It's a foolish assumption, given the breadth of diets that exist simply to keep people with unique physiologies living.

Prediction : there will never be a grand unifying diet that works for everyone. We're too diverse.

> I’m telling you I had psychosis and I cured it.

Except that's not what you've described.

You've found a way to treat the symptoms, but if you stop doing that thing the symptoms return. That's not curing it.

It's interesting nonetheless, and could assist researchers in developing a cure.

>You don’t mention any kind of inquiry but you go out of your way to tell me that I shouldn’t be saying anything?

People do that because they hope to god that folks with a psychosis (or to use your other example, cancer) aren't trying to cure themselves by changing to a keto diet, unsupervised, and without the aid of a professional.

Here's the problem : You're reinforcing the uselessness of professional medical care ("they ignored me and did nothing!") while reinforcing the positive idea of being able to 'cure' yourself with diet (a 'cure' that is only sometimes sustainable, and results in a rash, you say.), and spinning the act of rejecting prescribed drugs for your ailment as positive.

No part of you thinks that it is irresponsible to tell potential psychotics to cure themselves with diet and reject their drugs, since the professionals ignored your pleas?

It's irresponsible to offer up unproven 'cures', especially to a group of people, the psychotic, that may have an already tenuous grasp on reality as it is -- if there ever was a group of people that should have someone supervising their self-medical-experimentation, it's the psychotic.

I appreciate your enthusiasm for a treatment that helped you. I implore you to consider that such things are highly specific, and that medical professionals, often times at the expense of seeming aloof, are often 'looking at the forest, not the trees" with regards to your care. Many are unwilling to explore experimental treatments until the (long) list of exhaustive known procedures for your ailment has been checked through.

J has informed us that s/he presented doctors with a valuable clue about a potentially powerful cure, and was entirely ignored. Now you suggest a need to go back to consult with doctors? The ones who already dismissed a working approach? To be dismissed again? That's just cold.

And J was quite upfront about this being only their own experience. The very fist statement says "keto appeared to cure my psychosis", and it continues like that. There was no advocacy for anyone else to start doing the same.

> But I don't think you should go around telling people that a keto diet will cure them of their psychosis

They didn't say this. They described their own experience. Read their message again. You are, in fact, criticising the post for something not written in it.

> People should make their medical decisions based on consultation with their doctors or other medical professionals

This is exactly what the user described as their experience.

If you, god forbid, ever have a life-destroying ailment and discover a shockingly effective treatment for it, please tell many people what happened for you just as the user above is doing.

>If you, god forbid, ever have a life-destroying ailment and discover a shockingly effective treatment for it, please tell many people what happened for you just as the user above is doing.

this idea of espousing effective cures loses a lot of steam when the patient in question was cured by psychic healing, quartz crystals, or energy projection.

That's why there should exist a level of self-moderation with regards to cure cheerleading; did the psychic crystal surgery remove the cancer, or did your body make a natural recovery? Many would be inclined to believe that the crystal made the difference, and that's a dangerous public opinion.

Have you done any allergen testing? Skin rash is a common reaction to dairy allergy.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing! There have been a couple of studies on remission of schizophrenia. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09209...

These are case studies, not studies. But they are valid and interesting. My story could be a case study.

I have seen lots of articles recently linking all sorts of psychological conditions with inflammation, chiefly depression and anxiety. Seems like a short walk from the parent article, discussing inflammation reduction in flu ridden mice on keto, to keto reducing inflammation affecting psychosis.

I wonder if a more moderate level of ketosis could achieve the same benefit without the rash? Perhaps you could experiment with shifting your late-day carbs to morning time along with a smaller reduction in total carbs in order to find the minimum level of ketone bodies required? Maybe perform a binary search on total carb intake?

For how long do you stay on Keto each time, normally?

I wonder if the improvement effect recedes with passage of time or remains stable.

I haven’t stayed on it longer than a month. I often wonder if I stayed on it forever if the effect would wear off. There are case studies where people are put into remission for years.