In the first century A.D. the Roman poet Juvenal wrote “A healthy mind in a healthy body,” and his wise maxim has been respected ever since. Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Chris Palmer’s 2022 book Brain Energy: a Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health may not be a true “breakthrough” in the long scheme of a person’s health, but it is revolutionary in today’s “chemical imbalance” over-medicated world of mental treatment.

     “Mental disorders are metabolic disorders of the brain,” Palmer writes. The root cause of mental illness is not genetics or a chemical imbalance. It’s the metabolic energy available to your brain. A keto diet may provide that metabolically healthy energy and be a cure and a preventative for much mental illness.

     A modern application of Juvenal’s ancient wisdom. A common sense approach to mental health.

     Perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that a protein-deficient diet could be a cause of physical and mental stress. The bodies that we’ve been attached to as homo sapiens for 300,000 years – or that are attached to us, if you prefer – have run on protein rich diets from day one. Most hunter-gatherers took half of their calories from bison, rabbits, and other mammals as well as from fish, shellfish, and even insects…all high in protein.

     Dr. Palmer had published two case reports in peer-reviewed journals before Brain Energy came out and upon which it was based about how four schizoaffective or schizophrenic mental patents had recovered through a ketogenic diet. Three of them had been able to go off their psychotropic medications altogether, and the other one had significantly reduced his intake of psychiatric meds.

     Their keto diets had allowed them successful transformative tapering (stopping all psychiatric drug intake) or adjunctive tapering (greatly reducing psychiatric drug intake).

     Other studies since then have also shown significant success from a ketogenic diet in reducing or eliminating not only psychotropic drug dependency, but also the mental or emotional symptoms that prompted the original prescriptions.

     The son of two Silicon Valley philanthropists, David and Jan Baszucki, experienced a complete turn around from a ketogenic diet. He went from a manic episode and then five years of prescriptions — of twenty-nine different psychotropic drugs — to a successful symptom-free and drug-free life. The Baszucki family has now started Metabolic Mind , a non-profit organization that funds keto-diet research and promotes “metabolic” psychiatry.

     In Arlington, Massachussetts, the newly opened Accord clinic is treating patients with a ketogenic diet for their drug tapering program. They have been given a $600,000 grant to tabulate the results of their program for the next eighteen months and thereby provide even more evidence of the potential for a ketogenic diet to aid in drug tapering and also in basic mental health, as well.

     Mens sana in coporore sano.

     Common sense health, not psychopharmacological harm.

     Robert Whitaker published a lengthy article on his Mad in America website last week about Brain Energy with much more about the science and the research behind ketogenic diets and psychiatric drug tapering.