Ketogenic Diet as a Metabolic Treatment for Mental Illness

Paper reviewed in article: https://journals.lww.com/co-endocrinology/Citation/2020/1000...

Abstract and Summary:

Purpose of review

Ketogenic diets, which have been used to treat drug-refractory paediatric epilepsy for over 100 years, are becoming increasingly popular for the treatment of other neurological conditions, including mental illnesses. We aim to explain how ketogenic diets can improve mental illness biopathology and review the recent clinical literature.

Recent findings

Psychiatric conditions, such as schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder and binge eating disorder, are neurometabolic diseases that share several common mechanistic biopathologies. These include glucose hypometabolism, neurotransmitter imbalances, oxidative stress and inflammation. There is strong evidence that ketogenic diets can address these four fundamental diseases, and now complementary clinical evidence that ketogenic diets can improve the patients’ symptoms.

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, of Seventh Day Adventist, the Battle Creek Sanitarium, and cereal fame. Doctors there of circa 1910s,1920s maybe discovered it affected and was used to treat epilepsy, as I recall.