Treating Mental Illness with Keto – Georgia Ede, MD

Treating Mental Illness with Keto – Georgia Ede, MD

I’ve been a psychiatrist for for more than 20 years for the first seven years I practiced conventionally you know medications and Psychotherapy and then in 2009 I began incorporating nutrition principles into my work and then three years ago I decided to dedicate to really limit my practice to dietary therapies exclusively and I use a variety of strategies in my practice but the Cornerstone of my work is the ketogenic diet so I just wanted to share a few examples with you so this is Deanna when I first met with her I asked her to write down how she was feeling when she was eating sort of a standard High carbohydrate diet and so you know she used phrases like you know irritated and unproductive hopeless no life at all and she met full criteria for food addiction using the modified yield food addiction scale 11 out of 11 symptoms full criteria for generalized anxiety disorder and full criteria for depression falling into the severe depression range on the back depression inventory in fact she was so depressed and overwhelmed that she really couldn’t follow a ketogenic meal plan so I asked her you know keep it simple just for the first week or two to get the ball rolling why don’t you try just eating only meat and nothing else and uh and see if that helps and So within four days her blood Ketone level was 2.1 millimole and within 12 days she no longer met criteria for any of the three diagnoses she had met full criteria for 12 days before and you just don’t see results like this in conventional Psychiatry having practiced conventionally for so long I can tell you this and then she wrote you know after just one week of eating no carbs there’s a dramatic change emotionally physically my mood and outlook on life I become less irritated brain fog lifts my joints don’t ache my mood improves every day I just need to look at that list and remind myself that I don’t want to go back carbs for me destroy my life period for 50 years Bella’s recurrent manic symptoms required lengthy hospitalizations twice a year and as she entered her 70s she began experiencing new symptoms of psychosis which she hadn’t had before so for example she was convinced people in her building were breaking into her apartment and stealing her belongings her daughter had to install cameras in the apartment to try to reassure her and when I first consulted with her she had just been discharged from a three-month hospitalization that included electroconvulsive therapy and I had been you know really experienced minimal improvement from that hospitalization so with her daughter’s help her daughter also follows a ketogenic diet she started a strict ketogenic diet with the support of a keto meal delivery service supplemented with two keto smoothies per day and within two weeks her symptoms began to improve cognitively she began to become clearer and her psychotic symptoms began to be reduced so I wanted to share a statement with you from from her daughter uh who who knew that I was coming to this conference today she said before starting on her metabolic Health Journey my mother was on very high doses of psychiatric medication and was still not well dietary changes have allowed her to decrease her medication but even more importantly they’ve given her a better quality of life she no longer has paranoid thoughts and she’s not been hospitalized or even hypomanic for almost a year and Bella herself wanted me to share this statement with you before keto I could not go down on my medication without Landing in the hospital because of Keto I’ve gone completely off of clozapine it’s a powerful antipsychotic from 550 milligrams down to zero milligrams I’ve now started reducing my Quetiapine another antipsychotic and have already gone from 800 to 400 milligrams without a problem and you know really delighted with the diet she told me it’s like a mini Miracle everything’s coming up roses this is Carl Carl is a Salesman and Avid cyclist with lifelong depression and anxiety years ago he went to a private Psychiatric clinic and had brain Imaging as well as many specialized tests and full evaluation he walked out of the clinic with three diagnoses and three new prescriptions the medications triggered the first manic episode of his life and that eventually led to a marijuana addiction a nearly destroying his marriage and his career he was really desperate and consulted with me because he wanted to try a carnivore diet he believed that that would be the fastest route to recovery when I first met with him he met full criteria for generalized anxiety disorder also had some depression as well he did not meet criteria for Mania or hypomania to his great credit he had years before conquered his marijuana addiction and decided to manage his his mood disorder with rigorous exercise and the rigorous exercise did help it didn’t completely resolve his symptoms but it made a difference until there was an increase in stress at work and that triggered a three-month period of agitation restlessness and insomnia when I met with him he first for the first time he was walking between 8 and 25 miles per day to try to get rid of this energy so he wanted to do a carnivore diet so that’s what I I supported him in the beginning and uh his he was in mild ketosis by urine testing and within two weeks he started to feel better and at six weeks he scored zero on both of these tests and he said you know at that point you know just another awesome week six weeks without any symptoms of anxiety agitation depression overall I’m consistently feeling better than I have for my entire life and this is an interesting case because despite eating three to four pounds of fatty meat per day he wasn’t able to regain the 10 pounds that he’d lost during that three-month period of agitation so we added back in some carbohydrate from Whole Foods primarily root vegetables and yogurt he really missed yogurt and we landed at about 100 grams of carbohydrate per day and with his intense athletic activity that wasn’t an issue and he remains zero on both of these scales even a full year later and then about eight months ago he substantially broadened his diet now he’s able to remain completely well so long as he avoids refined carbohydrates processed foods and lowers his carbohydrate intake on days when he doesn’t exercise so this is one of those cases that sort of challenges us to question you know whether long-term ketosis is necessary for for everyone or whether some people would benefit either just from a temporary intervention or from Simply improving dietary quality but regardless ketogenic diets stabilize energize and protect the brain the entire brain for this reason I think that no matter what the diagnosis is perhaps with the possible exception of anorexia I’m convinced that it really doesn’t matter what the diagnosis is and that these strategies make sense regardless of what the diagnosis is and and here’s a case in point this is Patrick when he first came to see me he would he would say things to me like my brain is turned up way too high or my brain is falling apart and he’d seen lots of Specialists and get been given lots of different diagnoses but I’ll let him tell you the story himself hi my name is Patrick I’ll tell a quick story here about my experience with mental health disorders and using ketogenic diet as an intervention to help treat my symptoms so when I was around 15 years old I was diagnosed with you know anxiety disorder panic disorder depersonalization disorder which was easily probably the worst of the mental health it’s a horrible condition to deal with deal with it day in day out and you know over the course I’m 33 now so over the course last 15 years I’ve tried a lot of different interventions I’ve tried over 10 different medications met with neurologists neurofeedback ayurveda lots of exercise and just never was really able to get over the hump with conquering you know some of my challenges and so um really really desperate even with a little bit of you know moderate success with a mood stabilizer I still like I said I never really got over the hump so [Music] um worked with Dr Georgia Eid and did a lot of homework on you know the right way to implement this type of diet and I can say without a doubt I mean I’ve been doing it for three years it’s a difficult diet to do and I’m still doing it and um you know it stabilizes me tremendously you know grieving the loss of all the different foods that I like and I still do this diet it makes me a lot more stable with my mood it reduces my symptoms I get less agitation and I just feel a lot better when I do this diet so highly recommended for people out there struggling with their mental health especially if they’ve failed you know more mainstream medications I think this really is something that works and needs to be considered for more people so Patrick keeps manages to keep his Ketone levels between 0.5 and 2.0 millimole about 75 percent of the time and then there’s his his mother Fran who was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment 20 years ago in April of 2021 my life was falling apart after sewing for a lifetime I could no longer figure out how to thread my machine with both diagnoses of epilepsy and Mild cognitive impairment 20 years ago I knew that it was a good chance that I was progressing into a dementia I saw my PCP about my condition I scored miserably enough for the PCP to highly suspect that I had Alzheimer’s type dementia and he literally told me to go and enjoy the rest of my life this was devastating my cognition continued to get worse and I didn’t want to live that way well very luckily my son Patrick who had adopted a ketogenic lifestyle sent me the book The Alzheimer’s antidote by Amy Berger and she introduced me to Dr Georgia Eid I am so grateful Pat was familiar with the utility of ketogenic diets for brain health and we knew there was little promise and much else so I started the ketogenic diet and implemented it to a T and over time I improved I saw a neurologist who was thrilled that I was on the diet and tested me while on the diet and I scored 27 out of 28 on his test he said it’s time to take this tentative diagnosis off of your chart I do know I was in serious trouble in April entering ketosis dramatically improved my condition to the point that I regained my ability to sew to think more clearly and to know that I can live like tomorrow is going to be great I would really appreciate that it takes a lot of courage to share these stories and I really appreciate those who are willing to do so some anonymously and some not anonymously and you know she she keeps her ketones between 0.7 and 2.0 millimole virtually all the time um her son Patrick wrote about his mom the ketogenic diet probably saved my mom’s life she called me telling me she wanted to die a year ago that was the hardest conversation I’ve ever had she was absolutely falling apart in total despair it’s miraculous where she’s at a year later there’s no pharmaceutical on the planet that could have done this for my mom so I wanted to introduce you to my friend and colleague Dr albertanan in Toulouse France inspired by his nephew’s experience with the ketogenic diet which helped him improve epilepsy and seizures rather quickly he was inspired to Institute this diet with 32 of his own patients who have serious and persistent mental illness many of whom he’d worked with for years and even decades in some cases and instituted this in a hospital setting and I’m working with Dr Laszlo and Dr Westman to organize and analyze his observations and while I can’t share the data publicly yet he saw unprecedented improvements in his patients metabolic and psychiatric health and you know two-thirds of his patients left the hospital on less medication than they were taking to begin with and you don’t see that in in in psychiatry in in patient admissions almost everybody leaves on a lot more medication than when they went in as many of us know so when it comes to ketogenic diets for mental health let me just let me just skip through there are challenges to ketogenic mental health there are mental health challenges specific to mental health those psychiatric conditions themselves pose additional challenges to learning initiating and maintaining a new way of eating the keto adaptation period can be particularly challenging psychiatrically you can sometimes see temporary worsening or appearance of certain psychiatric symptoms in my experience this usually improves by week three for many people and does not happen to everybody but these people need support education monitoring close monitoring and it’s very hard to come by be because there there are many systemic obstacles to seeking metabolic care for mental health diagnoses many of which are listed here including cost barriers to care there are no billing codes most clinicians in this space do not take insurance including myself although I do a lot of pro bono and reduced fee work for longer term clients include including all of the people whose stories you heard today so I will leave the discussion of how to move the field forward to to the rest of you [Applause]

Interventions like ketogenic metabolic therapy (aka ketogenic diet) are being used to treat serious mental illnesses like major depression, bipolar and schizophrenia. Georgia Ede, MD is a pioneer in Metabolic Psychiatry, and has used a ketogenic diet to help hundreds of patients improve their symptoms of mental illess.

Dr. Georgia Ede is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and worldwide expert in nutritional psychiatry. Dr. Ede has over a decade of real-world experience using nutrition as a treatment for mental illness. In her talk, she describes her real-world experience using ketogenic metabolic interventions to restore brain function in psychiatric disorders.

Bio: https://www.diagnosisdiet.com/about
Twitter: @GeorgiaEdeMD

This video was recorded at the first ever Metabolic Psychiatry roadmap retreat, hosted by Baszucki Group and the Milken Institute for Strategic Philanthropy in May, 2022 in Santa Barbara. The conference brought together physicians, neuroscientists, dieticians, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and philanthropists to build community in the emerging field of Metabolic Psychiatry.

Learn more about metabolic psychiatry and meet the visionary Metabolic Mind Award Winners at https://tinyurl.com/Baszucki-Group

About us:
Metabolic Mind™ is a nonprofit initiative incubated by Baszucki Group. Our mission over time will be to provide resources and build community in metabolic psychiatry.

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST AT https://metabolicmind.org/

Other resources for Metabolic Psychiatry, metabolic neuroscience and ketogenic metabolic therapy for mental disorders:

Diagnosis Diet – https://www.diagnosisdiet.com/

New Study: Serious Mental Illness Improves on Ketogenic Diet –
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/202207/new-study-serious-mental-illness-improves-ketogenic-diet

The Role of Ketogenic Metabolic Therapy on the Brain in Serious Mental Illness: A Review
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9728807/
Chris Palmer MD – https://www.chrispalmermd.com/

Stanford Metabolic Psychiatry- https://metabolicpsychiatry.com/
What Is Metabolic Psychiatry? 5 Questions Answered by Dr. Shebani Sethi
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/11/metabolic-psychiatry.html

Baszucki Group – https://baszuckigroup.com/our-work/metabolism-mental-health/

BipolarCast: Keto + Bipolar youtube channel, Hosted by Matt Baszucki and Iain Campbell, PhD
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDB-iMvEJ-HeHqpamIN5JWw
Tweets by IainCampbellPhD

Our channel is for informational purposes only. We are not providing individual or group medical or healthcare advice nor establishing a provider-patient relationship. Many of the interventions we discuss can have dramatic or potentially dangerous effects if done without proper supervision. Consult your healthcare provider before changing your lifestyle or medications.

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#KetoForMentalHealth
#MetabolicPsychiatry
#BipolarTreatment
#MetabolicNeuroscience
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#NutritionalKetosis
#MentalIllnessTreatment
#MentalHealthIsMetabolicHealth