Study shows how keto diet can be effective for mental health disorders
Mental illnesses like bipolar disease and schizophrenia can be debilitating, but a new study shows how the keto diet can help. The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, low carb diet. The idea is to help with weight loss by starving the body of carbs for fuel. On the flip side, it could increase bad cholesterol, and potentially raise the risk of heart problems. Dr. Shebani Sethi from Stanford Health Care is in the field of metabolic psychiatry, and CBS News Bay Area anchor Ryan Yamamoto asked her about keto, and how effective it could be when it comes to mental health disorders.
"The ketogenic diet is a moderate protein diet, it often gets misconstrued as a high protein diet," said Dr. Sethi. "So it's a moderate protein diet, low carbohydrate, low fat, and it is an intervention that we do use."
"Right now we've tested it in those with serious mental illness like schizophrenia and bipolar, and we think it's helpful because it's helping stabilize neuronal membranes, stabilize mood," said Dr. Sethi.
"And in the study, what we did is look at a 4-month period to see what the outcome would be for psychiatric symptoms and we improvements in sleep, mood, quality of life, even in some cases reduction in hallucinations frequency and voices that we hear for those with schizophrenia and psychosis," said Dr. Sethi. "So it's been a promising, positive outcome in this pilot study, but there's more research to be do, of course."
The study was published in ScienceDirect.