Harvard Doctor Chris Palmer Recommends Diet for Mental Disorders | Chris Palmer

Intro

We prescribe medications that cause premature death. Read the package inserts, it's right there. The ketogenic diet helps people lose weight, get rid of their diabetes, or improve their insulin sensitivity, lower their risk for cardiovascular disease, helps them get off of medications, helps them start functioning in life again. I really don't give a shit if their LDL goes up a little. I just don't. Anybody who is going to get worked up about their LDL going up a little bit in the context of all of that other stuff is an absolute positive idiot, and they are inhumane. They are inhumane that they would let people suffer and writhe in mental pain and be disabled by their illness and not offer them an effective treatment.

That is just inhumane. Dr. Chris Palmer, welcome to my podcast. Thank you, Michaela Peterson, for having me. This is great. I am so excited to be talking to somebody from Harvard who's discussing diet as a treatment for depression. This is crazy.

I've been waiting for this to happen for a while. Well, wait no Wait no longer. I am here. Okay, amazing. your I have followed your story for several years, and your story is a perfect representation of the science that I have been pursuing because I've been trying to explain the science of stories like yours and other people's so that we can get the mental health field to take this seriously. Amazing. Okay, fantastic. Well, for anyone who isn't familiar with you, although I've seen you on a ton of podcasts recently, can you describe a bit about who you are and what you do?

So, I'm Chris Palmer. I have been a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School for over 27 years now.

Dr. Palmers Backgrounod

Uh Uh my my day job is actually um I am the director of the Department of Postgraduate and Continuing Education. Uh so I oversee uh educational programs for McLean Hospital in Harvard um and I've been doing that for over 20 years. I have over 15 years of experience as a neuroscience researcher uh working in the field of addiction and sleep. Uh and I've always had a private practice of uh um psychiatry. So I tend to treat treatment-resistant patients wide variety of disorders um schizophrenia, bipolar, chronic depression, personality disorders, anxiety disorders, substance use disorders. But the unifying theme of the patients that I work with are that they have treatment-resistant disorders, which means they have already been to at least five or six different psychiatrists, therapists, other people. They've usually been on dozens of meds.

They've tried psychotherapy for years or decades. They've sometimes had ECT or TMS already and then they come to me and it's like, "Can you do anything for me?" Uh and the reason I'm on your podcast, the reason I have a book because I've been really interested in the role of diet, in particular low-carbohydrate and ketogenic diets in the treatment of mental disorders, but serious mental disorders is really my focus. I can definitely help people with mild depression, anxiety, or burnout. But I'm treating patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, people who are chronically disabled, having hallucinations, delusions, and uh finding success in restoring their health, getting them off all meds, and many of them living happily ever after. Yay for that. That's great.

Um, okay, I've got a question just about that.

Hallucinations & Medication

For people, it's kind of specific, but for people who you see that are suffering from hallucinations, do you are they ever not medicated and still suffering from hallucinations? Or are they always medicated and suffering from hallucinations? So, you know, right you know, at this point, I have lots of people who are non-medicated who used to suffer from hallucinations. They are off all meds, and they are now symptom-free. Um, as a rule of thumb, over my career, I've seen a wide range. So, I see people when they first get diagnosed, no medications, something happens out in the real world to them, and they develop their first psychotic episode. They, uh, they start having hallucinations, delusions, often in the context of some mood symptoms as well, whether it's a manic episode or a depressed episode.

Um, and then they usually get brought into an emergency room, police get called, something happens, uh, and then they usually end up in the hospital. I've done hospital inpatient work, um, for for years. Uh, and in that context, I would see them either in the emergency room and maybe even be the first person to prescribe medications, or I would be their inpatient psychiatrist and taking care of them, or I would become their outpatient psychiatrist and start treating them, you know, if somebody else treated them in the hospital and then I kind of take over as their outpatient psychiatrist. So, I've seen a whole range. Interesting. That sounds like a stressful job. It can be.

Um I'm actually pretty passionate about this work and helping people and uh trying to get them all the way better. And uh so I it can be stressful. I mean, I've definitely especially when our treatments don't work for people and that occurs a lot more often than most people realize. Certainly not you, but I think you get it. A lot of people don't. yeah. Yeah. of people don't get it. They think that our treatments are supposed to work.

And and then I have patients coming in to me in tears or angry, yelling at me, whatever. Like, why isn't this working? You've get You're You're giving me pill after pill and none of them are working and they're giving me side effects or they're making me gain weight or they're They make me feel like a zombie. This isn't working. Do something. You're supposed to be the expert. Why aren't you doing something?

Uh I have families, parents of these bright children who were like stellar college students. Their lives are decimated and just disintegrating in front of everyone's eyes. And the parents are looking at me like, what are you doing? Why aren't you getting my son or daughter better? Like, what are you doing? And I have to be the one to like look them in the eye and say we don't know or the the This is the best we've got. That's where I was.

I'm in a very different place now and hopefully we'll get get to talk about all that, but that's where I was for over 20 years. So, um hmm, how do I want to start this? Maybe let's start with Could you Could you describe what a ketogenic diet is for anyone who isn't familiar with it?

Ketogenic Diets & Brain Health

So, a ketogenic diet, you know, most people know it as a trendy weight loss diet. And uh my interest in it is really more as an epilepsy treatment. So, it turns out the ketogenic diet um at least one version of it was developed 100 years ago specifically by a physician for one and only one purpose. It was actually developed to stop seizures. Um and it was developed to mimic the fasting state because the doctors at that time knew that fasting, or at least had reason to believe that fasting can stop seizures. The problem with fasting is that if you fast for too long, you starve to death, and that's not a very good treatment. So, um so Dr.

Russell Wilder invented the ketogenic diet with the purpose of trying to trick the body into thinking that it was fasting when it really wasn't, but providing enough nutrition so that the person was not starving, and even so that young children could grow and thrive on a ketogenic diet. But he wanted to see if it could stop seizures. And lo and behold, it worked. And um for a while it was actually the mainstay treatment for epilepsy. In the 1920s and '30s, it was one of the mainstay treatments for epilepsy, and it stopped seizures in about 50% of people with epilepsy. It reduced seizure frequency in another 35%. So, about 85%, pretty good response rate.

Um and then there were about 15% of people for whom it did not seem to work for whatever reason. Um and it it fell out of favor when we got all these medications. And but then it got it came back. Um and it's widely used as an epilepsy treatment. Reason that was so critical to me as a psychiatrist is we use epilepsy treatments in psychiatry all the time. Tons of pills that we prescribe are actually epilepsy treatments. And um a lot of them are names people know, Valium, Klonopin, Xanax, and others.

Benzodiazepines, all of those are seizure treatments. Um and so you know, I the short version is that I ended up and trying to help one of my patients with schizoaffective disorder lose weight.

Seeing Results With Schizoaffective Disorder

And uh I had no thought that it would do anything for his psychiatric symptoms. And he went on a ketogenic diet. Within a couple weeks, started getting an antidepressant effect. Within about 2 months, got a powerful antipsychotic effect. Hallucinations were melting away, delusions were melting away. And that sent me on a that sent my whole career on a new path. It gives me goosebumps.

That's so cool. Okay, that is so cool. It's so exciting hearing about this just out there um and having medical professionals use it as a form of treatment. I think in my case and my dad's case in my case in particular, I think when he went on antidepressants that it actually helped him. Um but I went on antidepressants and it helped me for like a year. And then it just didn't really help. Like it numbed me, but it didn't really help.

And I just got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. And I've been unbelievably frustrated with the medical system because like I I never went into an office and said, "You were supposed to help me. This is your fault. But um but I probably thought that. So, it's really exciting to see something that And it's funny, we've been using the ketogenic diet, you know, like you said, for 100 years. And it kind of fell out of favor because there was a pill. Which is a lot easier than adhering to a diet.

Um have you had a difficult time getting your patients to adhere to a diet, particularly when they're very ill?

Getting Patients To Adhere To The Diet

For some patients, absolutely. And and I definitely have patients who either didn't even want to try it and or they tried it for a few days or something and they just couldn't do it. Um and you know, I didn't have the intensive resources that some of them I think need in order to be able to do the diet. You can't admit them to any program where they will administer the diet right now, for the most part. I didn't even have You know, I now have dietitians that work with me, but Mhm. you know, over over the years, you know, for a long time I didn't even have dietitians or anybody else who would support it. It was just me as a solo practitioner recommending these treatments. However, I have So, yes, it does not Not everybody can do the diet.

But I have patients with chronic schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, people who are actively hallucinating, delusional. One woman was stuck in a chair staring at the wall all day, every day. She was like locked in and could not function. She's on massive doses of psychiatric meds. She was wetting her pants because she was so overdosed on psychiatric meds. And she and her boyfriend at the time kind of came to me again in one of these angry states like you've got to do something. Like she she can't function.

She's overwhelmed with hallucinations and delusions. You have to do something. And she had been my patient for many many years. She had already tried everything under the sun. She'd been on over 30 medications. She'd been in and out of hospitals, in residential treatment programs. She had already had electroconvulsive therapy, I think twice at point.

So had done every standard treatment. And when they kind of came to me in this angry state, I was like, you know what? You guys have to do the ketogenic diet. Um and I was saying this to the boyfriend, too. Like you've got to help her do this diet. I mean, obviously she is severely impaired. She really belonged in a hospital is where she belonged if we could get a hospital to deliver appropriate care, but they would have simply put her on more and more medicines.

Um and essentially made her comatose. Uh and at the end of the day, she was able to do the diet. Took about 3 months for her you know, a couple weeks for her to come out of this kind of almost catatonic state which she was just staring at the wall all day. Took a several months, about 3 months for the hallucinations and delusions to start going away. She's now a completely new person. She went to the Metabolic Health Summit with me on stage and told her story. She is now a graduate student getting the top grades in her class.

She is now engaged. She actually left that boyfriend actually was trouble, so she got rid of him. And she's she's she's got a new life, new fiance. Like things are dramatically better for her. She is not 100% recovered because we're still trying to get her off all the meds she had been on. And we continue to make progress. I know you know it is not an easy process to get off meds.

It can be a disaster and it can be dangerous. People can get suicidal, they can get more psychotic, all sorts of things. But um but we're we're getting there. And she's functioning and she is developing a new life. Wow. That's an incredible story. Congratulations.

Thank you. Well, congratulations go to her cuz she's the one who's doing it. She's the one who's recovering and uh I am just glad that I could help her. Wow. That's great. That's great. Um so you said at least for this patient, I would say let me let me see how to formulate this question.

How Long It Takes To See Mood Improvements With Diet

Um well, how long does it take on average for somebody to start recovering from say psychotic or depressive symptoms on the ketogenic diet? You know for for a lot of people, I start to notice antidepressant effects usually within the first 2 weeks. Um it can be variable and different people have different responses, especially based on the different meds that they might be taking. So I mean some people can be on one or two meds, other people can be on 14 meds. Those meds are affecting them in profoundly different ways. And some of those meds are actually interfering with the effects of the ketogenic diet or, you know, preventing preventing ketosis. So, it it can make it harder to do the diet.

Um usually for the antipsychotic effects, they take longer. Um most of my patients, I begin to see an antipsychotic effect usually around the 6-8 week mark. Um and for some people, it can be 3 to 4 months, like that woman I just described. It It really was 3 months before her hallucinations started going away. Um so, it's variable, but uh but those are kind of the averages that I see. For somebody in that state, that sounds like a very long time cuz every day is a very long time, but uh in the greater scheme of things, that's not very long, especially given you you're supposed to try a medication out for like 6 weeks, right, at minimum. So.

Yeah. Okay. It I mean, the the time course, yeah, the time course that it takes to respond to the ketogenic diet is similar to the time course that it takes to respond to medications. Antipsychotic meds almost never even begin to work. Even if they work for people, they almost never begin to work until about 6 to 8, you know, well, about 4 to 6 weeks in. But that's only beginning. And then like the 3-month or 4-month mark is where you start getting the full benefits is what we usually tell people in psychiatry.

And so, in a way, the ketogenic diet is nothing different. It's um but it's using very different strategy that I believe has enormous long-term upside potential for actually healing the brain and healing the person, even allowing them to get off meds, and then, again, live happily ever after, fully recover. Whereas the medications that we're prescribing, you know, I know you experienced this and I've seen many patients who experience this and the long-term longitudinal studies suggest that this might be happening when people are on meds long-term, they tend to have chronic disorders, meaning that their symptoms never go away. The symptoms will come and go. Sometimes they'll get worse. Sometimes the symptoms will progressively get worse, morph into new symptoms. So, somebody could start with depression, now they've got bipolar, now they've got schizoaffective, now they've got schizophrenia, and oh, by the way, along the way the of that trajectory, they're also developing OCD and panic disorder and substance use disorders and eating disorders and sleep problems and all sorts of other symptoms.

And people can end up with all of these diagnostic labels. They can become disabled by their psychiatric disorders despite getting boatloads of treatment. And I am really passionate about changing that. That our field needs to change. And our field needs to change based on science, not just these anecdotes that I've shared. We We have dozens and dozens of patients now.

Clinical Trials Underway

We have five clinical trials underway already. Yes. And so, this is This is about transforming the mental health field. Five clinical studies underway right now. Yes. Actually, even more than that because there are five clinical trials underway for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. There are additional clinical trials that I am also aware of for alcoholism, for post-traumatic stress disorder, for depression, um and these are the ones that come to me off the top of my head.

Alzheimer's disease certainly uh and and you know, we've got a robust evidence base already in epilepsy. Wow. Yay. Okay, that's great. Well, I I I I feel like once there are number of studies people can start quoting out there, this whole industry is going to change rather rapidly cuz doctors are trying to help people and they don't have the tools right now that would help a lot of people. I think it'll change fast. What do you think?

How fast do you think it'll take the world to take the ketogenic diet seriously as a way of treating depression and mental disorders? So, if you look at the if you look at the usual trajectory of implementation of an evidence-based treatment, on average, when researchers publish a study that strongly suggests or proves that a treatment works, even if that treatment works really well, on average, it is 17 years before that treatment is recommended to people in clinical practice. I have reason to fear that that will not happen with the ketogenic diet. And the reason I have reason to fear that is for a few reasons. One is we have dozens and dozens of clinical randomized controlled trials published in the best medical journals available of the ketogenic diet for weight loss and yet and those clinical trials show the ketogenic diet is almost always equal to if not superior to a low-fat diet or calorie restricted diet or some other diet. And yet the majority of clinical um you know clinicians will not recommend ketogenic diet for weight loss. Likewise, we have dozens and dozens of clinical trials of the ketogenic diet for type 2 diabetes and yet the majority of clinicians will not recommend low carbohydrate or ketogenic diets for their patients with type 2 diabetes.

We have had century of research of ketogenic diet for epilepsy. And the majority of people we have two Cochrane reviews which are the gold standard of evidence in the medical field and the majority of people with treatment-resistant epilepsy are not even told about this treatment option. So I decided long ago about five years ago I you know my scientific path went ketogenic diet for serious mental illness. I began collaborating with researchers around the world. We've had several case reports and case series. We've had small clinical trials published some that I've participated in some other researchers have done completely independent of me all suggesting the same results. We have had numerous scientific articles outlining the neuroscience of the ketogenic diet and why this should be taken seriously for people with mental illness or serious mental disorders.

And uh and those have been published in some of the leading neuroscience and psychiatric journals. Again, by leading psychiatrist and neuroscientists. Um so I went that way, but I went much, much deeper. And because at the end of the day, schizophrenia is not supposed to go into remission. Mhm. According According to the current psychiatric dogma, once you're schizophrenic, you're schizophrenic for life. And once you're bipolar, you're bipolar for life.

And you certainly have to take medications for the rest of your life. And there's there there's no ifs, ands, or buts about that. That is fact, according to the most psychiatrists. And what I was seeing is I was seeing people get fully better off their meds and going on to live happy, healthy lives, sometimes for years or decades. And I was like, "This says that what we are telling people in psychiatry cannot be 100% true, because I'm seeing all of these exceptions to the rule right in front of me. There's no way in hell this can be true." And so I was more intrigued with what can we learn?

What can we learn from these cases that might help us better understand mental illness? That is a And now so now I'm way beyond ketogenic diet as a treatment. I'm 100% in support of it. I'm not never abandoning it. I'm never leaving it behind. But I'm moving on from ketogenic diet as a treatment. Now I'm go I'm pursuing what causes mental illness.

Yeah. Yeah. And how does it How does it make sense that a diet could change it? And how does it make sense that some of the meds that we prescribe cause weight gain? They cause diet They cause diabetes. And yet in clinical trials, they supposedly reduce the symptoms of these illnesses. And how can I as an academic psychiatrist make sense of that?

And that is ultimately the path that I've been on for about five or six years. And that's what led to me writing this book, Brain Energy, that it really outlines the metabolic theory of mental illness. And what I'm arguing is that mental disorders are metabolic disorders. To get back to your question, like when are we really going to see this implemented in real life? I decided five years ago the field of psychiatry is not going to change on its own.

The Field Of Psychiatry Will Fight Back

The field of psychiatry is not going to go down without a fight. Because the field is based on billion-dollar pharmaceuticals. And the field is based on hospitalizations and whole systems of care. And this new way of understanding mental illness will be highly disruptive. And you know, that's a business term, disruption. The personal computers disrupted the typewriter industry. If you were in the typewriter industry, you didn't want to hear about personal computers, and you didn't want to talk about them, and you did everything you could to squash them.

Because they're going to put you out of business. My belief is that the metabolic theory of mental illness will be highly disruptive in the mental health field. And I am hoping to start a grassroots movement. I think the only way we will get change, the only way we will help other people suffering from chronic depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, help them fully recover in the way that both you and your father have is through a grassroots movement. Um but it's got to be a grassroots movement based on science, based on evidence, based on putting it all together so that we can understand very clearly how exactly do these medications work, why would they reduce symptoms in the short run, but also why should we be terrified about what we might be doing to people in the long run with these very medications. Your story is not unusual. I felt better for a year and then everything started falling apart.

And then more symptoms, more side effects, more and more pills. And your story is not unusual. Your story is actually a hell of a lot more common than most people realize. And we need to change that. But we're going to need people. We are going to need people to get upset about this. Why would they get upset?

Because either they're suffering from a mental disorder themselves, they're trapped in this system right now, or they have a loved one, they have a son or daughter or husband or mother or father, they have somebody being tormented by these symptoms, not getting better with current treatments. And we need all of them to rise up and start demanding change. Here, here. I can I completely agree. I completely agree. When I when I first started using So, I didn't know about the ketogenic diet or the paleo diet or anything, but when I first started cutting out foods and I went into remission, I was probably on a ketogenic diet. I was eating a lot of meat and fish and greens.

And that was basically it. And that took about 3 months cuz I was trying to get the arthritis under control and that took about 3 months and one day my depression went from being depressed to not depressed and it happened in a day about 3 months in and I was like, "What even is this reality that I've never experienced before?" It was so different that it was mind-boggling. And I was ecstatic and then I went off of my medication too quickly. I just stopped taking them. I was like, "Pff." I stopped taking the immunosuppressants.

I stopped taking the pills I was taking at night for pain. I stopped taking everything. Stopped taking Adderall for fatigue. And all that was fine and then I stopped taking the SSRI and like my entire life fell apart again. And I was like, "How is this possible?"

Why Does The Diet Work?

So, you you looking into why this works is extremely interesting because I don't think anyone Well, how about instead of that what what have you found out about why the ketogenic diet or being in ketosis helps mental disorders? Well, at the end of the day, the quick version is that I have come to the scientific conclusion not based on speculation, not me making up some cockamamie theory. I looked at all of the existing evidence and that's all I used. I looked at all of the existing evidence, decades and decades of clinical evidence, neuroscience research, genetic research, metabolic research, so research on obesity and diabetes and but neurological research as well, research on epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease. Because initially I was just completely perplexed. Like, why the hell would a epilepsy treatment work for psychiatry? But actually, it's not just the keto diet, it's all these meds.

Like, we've got dozens of anti-epilepsy. So, I knew that I had to go there. I knew I had to go all of it. At the end of the day, when you put all of that research together, there is one and only one conclusion, and that is that mental disorders are metabolic disorders of the brain. In order to understand what that means, you know, a lot of people think of metabolism as burning calories. And it it's related to your diet, and that affects your weight. So, metabolism is all about diet and burning calories and your weight.

In fact, yeah, metabolism is definitely related to those three things, but it is so so much more than that. Metabolism is a fundamental biological process that is actually fundamental to all living organisms. And it's actually part of the definition of what we call living organisms. So, you have to understand this overwhelmingly complex thing that we call metabolism. And at first, it's overwhelming and it's complex. But if you kind of ask some basic questions, like, well, what controls metabolism? Then you actually led these tiny things in all of our cells called mitochondria.

And when I did a deep dive into the science of mitochondria, that's when my mind was blown. Because that's when I could connect all of the dots of the mental health field. Oh, this is exciting. The mitochondria play a role in neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. Mitochondria play a role in hormone production and regulation like cortisol and estrogen and testosterone. Mitochondria turn inflammation both on and off and play a direct role in immune system function. Mitochondria actually are the primary regulators of gene expression in the cell nucleus.

Mhm. And I could keep going on, but when you do this deep dive of science into mitochondria and you understand all of their roles, and then you ask basic common sense questions like, "Well, what would happen if mitochondria weren't functioning properly?" You actually can begin to understand the whole mental health field, all of the science, why people with mental diagnoses also have physical problems like autoimmune disorders, um chronic pain, you know, migraine headaches, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, all sorts of other They're actually 50, at least 50 different physical medical diagnoses that occur much more commonly in people who also have mental disorders. And what I'm saying is that they're not all unique. The common thread among all of them is metabolism and more specifically mitochondria. And once you understand that, you can kind of see the big picture. You can understand what's going on, but much, much more importantly, we can start implementing treatments that will heal people like the ketogenic diet.

That's fascinating. That's so interesting. Okay. Um, have have you had patients that go on a ketogenic diet and still have food sensitivities? So, they still need to identify problematic foods on the diet? And it Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. were you going to say? Well, I was just going to say, does that seem to happen more to people who are sicker or do you not see a correlation? I think I do see a correlation. The people who have extreme food sensitivities, um, and the way I think of food sensitivities kind of like an allergy. Um, so it's you're sensitive to a food that causes kind of in- inflammation somewhere, usually in your gut. And then that can lead to kind of a permeable gut or a leaky gut. Um, but it's basically an inflamed gut.

And the gut is actually really the gut is an endocrine organ. A lot of people don't realize that, but your the the cells that line your gut are actually secreting all sorts of hormones and neuropeptides that play a profound role in metabolism. And when they when those cells become inflamed, that means that your hormone system is off balance now. And and that can cause all sorts of problems. I think everybody's heard about the gut-brain connection, so the gut is communicating with the brain. But it's you know, a lot of people want to focus on just one thing. They want to say, "So So, Dr.

Palmer, what you're really saying is it's all inflammation, right?" And I'm like, "No, that's not what I'm saying." "Dr. Palmer, what you're really saying is it's all it's all the gut. It's all leaky gut." And like, "Nope, that's not what I'm saying either." But yes, inflammation is part of it. Yes, leaky gut is part of it for some people.

But but there can be people who have metabolic problems primarily because of trauma and abuse. We know. So we know. So that's that is the thing that got me the most excited about this theory is that it connects biological with psychological and social stressors. And we know that psychological and social stressors play a role in mental illness. And interestingly, they also play a role in metabolic disorders, too. So people who have really horrible childhoods, lots of abuse, and other adversity in life, they are more likely to have mental disorders.

That's not surprising most people. But it's across the board mental disorders. It's not just PTSD. They're also more likely to have depression and personality disorders and anxiety disorders and alcoholism and heroin addiction and suicidality. But also, guess what? They're also more likely to have bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. All pretty much all of the mental disorders, other than maybe the neurodevelopmental disorders, which those either occur when you're developing or not.

Um but on top of that, they're also more likely to have obesity, diabetes, premature cardiovascular disease, and they're much more likely to die early deaths. Wow. That's that's a bit. I mean, if you think about it, I guess intuitively, then yeah, you can see how that makes sense. Especially if you think of an animal, an abused animal, then that animal is going to grow up and be sickly. You can like you can kind of understand that.

It’s Not A “Chemical Imbalance”

But I was always taught that uh any type of depression, at least that ran in my family, was because of a chemical imbalance. Right, like and it it was just that. And then I've had people come to me and they're like, "Well, you had an autoimmune disorder. Like maybe that contributed to the depression." And I was like, at that point, I was like, "No, it's a chemical imbalance." This is before the whole diet thing happened. But, um, that's nuts.

So, what do you think happens to people, you know, on a more biological level, what happens to people when they suffer from a abuse? How does that contribute to health issues later? So, the the the quick answer is that abuse leads to a a a heightened stress response or self-defense response. Okay. So, your your body ends up kind of allocating a lot of your metabolic resources, like even just glucose and fatty acids and other metabolic resources, to your fight or flight system. And why is it doing that? Because your life is threatened, or at least you think your life is threatened.

So, if you're if you've got somebody beating the shit out of you or raping you or other things, you should feel like your life is threatened because it in fact it is threatened. And so, you are going to go into this hyper fight or flight mode. That is not a disorder. That is your body fighting for its survival. Your body is saying, "Alert. Red alert. Like somebody is trying to kill me and take my life."

And what but what that means is that all of like any kind of rest and repair activity that your body should be going undergoing is put on hold. So, good sleep is now off the table. You should not be sleeping well if somebody is beating you up on a regular basis. Why? Because because they might sneak into your room at night and try to bash your head in. You should not be sound asleep. You should wake up when you even hear that somebody touching the doorknob.

You hear somebody touching the doorknob, you should be awake so you can try to defend yourself or run or at least like put your arms up or whatever to try to save your life. But if you're not sleeping soundly, it means that your body is falling into a state of disrepair. It's using all of its energy and resources for defense, for self-defense. And it's not spending the resources on maintenance and repair and growth and health. And if that occurs over a long period of time, those people will slowly but surely develop metabolic and mental health problems. And it runs the gamut of all sorts of problems. Wow.

Um is it possible that somebody could be in a stressful situation and like have these issues sleeping which leads to metabolic metabolic problems and then the stressful situation goes away, but their body is stressed because of the state that the stress put them in? So then the metabolic disorder doesn't go away even though the stressor. So that's why childhood trauma could be an issue even though you're not experiencing trauma at the moment, you're still suffering from repercussions. Wow, that's crazy. How young How young can that start? How like can that happen before the age of two and then it just screws you up forever? Oh my gosh.

Yeah, so we we know that infants when infants are maltreated or abused or neglected, they have an extraordinarily heightened stress response. Um if you see infants Yeah, if you see infants who are abused or neglected, they I mean, they're screaming constantly. If you look at like the the the most tragic or I shouldn't say the most, but one tragic example of that are Romanian orphans from, you know, the 1980s. Um, a lot of Romanian orphans were put in orphanages. They were never even picked up. Um, somebody would just shove a bottle in their mouth in the crib and like nobody humans didn't even touch them. And you know, when when infants are treated that way, they go through stages of kind of adaptations, if you will.

I mean, first, they're just screaming bloody murder because they're trying to get somebody to pick them up and pay attention to them. Um, because their survival depends on it. Um, after a while, they actually lose the drive to scream and cry and they actually become really quiet. The Romanian orphans, many of them would actually start like banging their heads against the cribs in order to feel something because nobody was touching them. And they they would like bang their heads to the point of bleeding and it's so so these so abuse and trauma affects humans at any point in time. Here's So, that is all horrible doom and gloom pessimistic shit. I get it.

Here's Here's Here's the good news. Here's the good news, folks. In the way that you said, what about years later? Somebody who had a really shitty childhood or experience or just you know, suffered from a rape or a veteran, a war veteran who experienced atrocities in the battlefield and comes back tormented with PTSD symptoms. If those people aren't recovering years later, I mean, step one is get the person out of danger, get the person into a safe environment, give them their basic requirements, food, shelter, you know, a good safe place to sleep, all of those things. But if if if years later they still are not recovering, we can use metabolic treatment strategies to help them recover. That means we can change their diet sometimes to something like ketogenic diet or your lion's diet, something.

We can change their diet, try to help their metabolism heal or repair. What we're really doing is helping their mitochondria heal and repair. Um, but we can also use exercise and stress reduction and other techniques, but it's a lot of common sense lifestyle techniques and some that aren't common sense at all. Again, the science of the ketogenic diet is not common sense to most people. Most people don't get it. A lot of people are skeptical about it. But I've outlined all of this science, try to get people to understand it because I think once people understand it, you will become empowered to do something about it.

Plus there's just nothing there's nothing worse than like watching I think watching one of your family members or close friends suffer, especially from something like hey, their life is good. Maybe their life is great. Their life is great. Why are they I mean, you had one patient, she's catatonic. What's going on? And then there's so much anger too associated with like and frustration especially if the person's relatively normal and then they fall into that. It's like, "Hey, you're a university professor or you're a teacher, you're in a good relationship.

What's wrong with you?" And then to see the amount they're suffering, like nothing like hurts like that. It just hurts so much to see somebody suffering like that. So, if there's an option, I'd say, "Well, it's a matter of making people believe, right?" And if you've been through the medical system for like 15 years and you've tried everything, at some point it's a lot easier not being hopeful anymore. Like just kill off that hope part of me cuz I can't keep having this hope and then soul-crushing, you know, failure of whatever I've tried.

Getting People To Take The Diet Seriously

So, it's just a matter of I guess getting people hopeful again. And again, I I am set on not just blind belief. That's why I went the path I went. Cuz I kind of knew nobody's going to take me seriously. I'm seeing these miracle cures from the ketogenic diet and I know that nobody's going to take them seriously. It doesn't It doesn't matter that I'm a Harvard professor. Nobody gives a shit.

They're just going to think I'm a Harvard professor who went crazy. Yeah. And and and that's and that's it. That's all they're going to think and they're not going to listen, they're not going to take this seriously. And so I recognized I have to go far beyond on the ketogenic diet. I have to explain the science of this. I never in my wildest dream set out kind of create what appears to be a unifying theory for all mental illness that actually integrates the biological, psychological, and social factors into one thing.

That was never my goal. I kind of just stumbled upon it somehow. I don't know how. And it's kind of like mind-blowing, like, "Oh my god, what on earth just happened?" And um but I am hoping that it when once people understand the science of this new theory they're going to see "Whoa, this you like this is connecting an awful lot of dots." And then I mean I even even had people who've like read the book and start to understand the theory, they're like "I started fact-checking you cuz I was like mind-blown myself and I'm like this can't possibly be true. So I'm Googling all of these things and even Googling things that you haven't included and shit, you're right.

Oh my god, like like this is real. Some people need to take this seriously. And but once you understand it then you can have hope. And it's real hope based on real solutions and practical solutions. So I am no way I'm not saying the ketogenic diet is going to cure everyone because I think if you're a chronic alcoholic you got to stop drinking the alcohol. That's that's part of your treatment program. And ketogenic diet or not is not going to save you from chronic alcoholism.

Stopping alcohol is going to be your first step in saving you from chronic alcoholism. But then if you're not fully recovered after you stop drinking then maybe you can use diet or exercise or sleep or stress reduction or light exposure or lots of other things to heal your body and your brain. Very cool. What would your advice be for someone who wants to stop their medications and try diet? Is there an order in which to do that? How do you do that?

Getting Off Meds

So I am going to strongly recommend that you number one, please don't stop your meds on your own cold turkey. That in the way that you just described, it can be a nightmare. I have seen so many patients hospitalized or the police get called or some who end up dead. They they just become overwhelmed with mental symptoms, whether it's depression or hallucinations or suicidality. And it just seems it I'm assuming, you know, we don't know cuz they're dead, but I'm assuming it just seemed like a good decision to go ahead and kill themselves and they did. So, please don't stop your meds cold turkey on your own. Number one.

Not because I don't want people to get off their meds cuz I am desperately trying to get a lot of people off their meds. Um but I want to do it in a safe way that they can tolerate, that is, you know, safe for everybody involved. Um usually when I implement ketogenic diet, if somebody's been stable on their meds for a while, even though they're clearly having symptoms cuz they wouldn't be coming to me if they were if they were totally fine, they would probably wouldn't be coming to me. So, they're usually coming to me cuz their things are not okay and they want to try something different. But if they've been on their meds for a while, I usually don't touch their meds initially. I start the diet. I make sure they can do the diet and I make sure that we start to see some benefits from the diet.

And again, that can be three or four months for some people. I also want to make sure that the person can actually do the diet and stick with it. Um because I'm not going to stop start stopping their meds and have them do a diet for for four days and then like, you know, oh, I can't do it anymore. I like bread too much. Um it's like, well, that's not going to work then. So, you're not really willing to do this treatment cuz the diet is part of the treatment. I really want to stress that.

It It is your your treating your brain by doing the diet. You're You're healing your body and your brain. And so, you've got to be committed to doing it. You And And so, I want to see evidence that you can somehow do it. Um, and or you know, I never give up on people. It's not like I tell people do the diet and then go and come back and see me when you're doing it. It I'm seeing them all along.

Encouraging, offering practical solutions. If they fall off the wagon, it's like, no big deal. Everybody falls off the wagon. Don't don't sweat it. Like, we will get you back on the wagon. But what usually by about 4 to 6 months, if I'm seeing significant improvement in symptoms, it does not at all have to be remission of symptoms. Cuz unfortunately I think as you know, the medications can cause symptoms in some people or even a lot of people.

And so, the full recovery is, let's start the diet and then we're going to start tapering meds. And we're going to do that in a safe, controlled way that you can tolerate and your body and brain are going to tell us how tolerable it is. We're going to do that. But along the way, I'm going to add other things. So, I'm going to look at other substances that they might be using that might be causing problems. And we might be getting rid of those substances. I'm going to look at sleep and make sure you people are getting good, restful sleep.

Might look at light exposure. Like, avoid screens in the middle of the night. Uh, get some bright light in the morning. Maybe we're going to look at exercise, get started on an exercise routine if you're not doing that already. So we're going to look at a comprehensive treatment plan. All of those things are common sense. You all Many of your listeners already know them.

So they already know all that stuff. So it's not rocket science. It's I'm not reinventing anything. These are just good practical common sense human health things that all humans benefit from doing. And slowly but surely we try to get people off their meds. And usually once they're off all their meds and they're doing these things, that's when I see dramatic full lasting recoveries.

The Grieving Period After Healing

And then actually people have to go through a grieving period usually too. If they've been sick for a long time, they get really really sad or really really angry. Mhm. That so much that so much of their life was wasted. Yeah, I see that. told Yeah, and that nobody told them this. Yeah, I like I'm still Well, it's frustrating, right? You don't get that back.

It's crazy. Oh no, I cried again. Damn it. That's like my That's my second ever These These psychiatric These episodes that have anything to do with like mental health, oh my gosh, they get me. But yeah, no, it's it's heartbreaking. And some people are stuck like that their entire lives. That's so messed up.

That's so messed up. It is messed up and we need to change this and we need to help. We need help. We need everybody to help. Yeah. Do you Do you get uh Do you Do you get any negative feedback from professors at Harvard or any of your colleagues? Honestly, I get asked that a lot.

And so far, shockingly, the answer is not yet. I'm waiting for it. I think they're hoping this is all going to go I'm I think they're hoping this is all going to go away. Yeah.

Pushback & Support For The Book

Palmer, Chris Palmer and his little book are just going to disappear into oblivion, and nobody's really going to pay attention, and nobody's going to know any of this, and we'll just go on with the status quo. But again, like so I've I've gotten some of the leading psychiatrists and neuroscientists to publicly endorse this book and this theory. They You go to Amazon, and they're right there. They're in the book. They've read the book, and they've endorsed it. So that is important because it says that I'm not 100% crazy. People want to think I'm crazy.

People think I've gone too far. If people think, you know, you can't disrupt the whole field. Chris Palmer, who the hell do you think you are? And I know there are lots of people who are probably thinking that. Um I know that I'm not completely crazy because I provided enough solid scientific evidence. I think if this really starts to become disruptive, that's when I will get pushback. Um and it will likely come from the forces that have billion-dollar products to lose.

And I can't blame them. If I had a billion-dollar drug, I would be pissed at Chris Palmer. Who the hell does he think he is coming along disrupting my billion-dollar drug? Um, this is my money and I'm a billionaire and I'm happy and don't don't you come along with some new theory and they convince to get off my drug like, you know, F you Chris Palmer. And they will and they will send their experts. It won't be the drug company coming after me. It will be experts in psychiatry and the neuroscience field who will come after me.

Yeah. And they will be hired guns by these companies. And they will be hired with one primary purpose, discredit Chris Palmer and this theory. This is becoming a threat to our business and our shareholders and they will start attacking me and either on a personal level or a professional level or any level. And I'm kind of sort of ready for them. I mean, I in preparing this theory and this book, I was meticulous about lining up my defenses and lining up my arguments. I mean, I realized people are going to attack this.

This is crazy. I need to think through every detail and at least kind of line up some arguments. The really great promising news is that, you know, I work at the McLean Hospital. It's a Harvard hospital. We're actually currently ranked the number one psychiatric hospital by US News & World Report. The president of the president of the hospital, my boss, the chief academic officer, the board the chairwoman of the board of trustees, they all know about me and are all supporting me right now, right now. So, I feel kind of privileged to work at the hospital I work at, where they are they're not publicly backing this, that's not their job, but they also aren't interfering with my ability to talk about it That's huge. or present it.

It they they kind of I think see it as we are an academic center and academic centers allow for scientific discussion and discourse. And we if you've got a theory and you want to present it, that's what that's what we do. That's what academic psychiatrists and, you know, academics do is they present ideas, they present new theories and go do it. Like we're not saying we agree with you, but we're also not saying we disagree with you. You're one of us, so we're going to support your right to do that. Good. And I think that's where I'm at.

So, but again, I decided a long time ago I'm not taking this to the psychiatric professionals, cuz they won't they won't buy it. They'll shoot it down because it's too disruptive. So, I decided to take this to the people and let the people vote and let the people decide. That was wise. And obviously it's working. You've been on a ton of different podcasts. I have.

Um the book. And I I've had people who weren't interested in diet at all say, "Oh, have you heard of Chris Palmer? Like brain energy?" It's like, "Yeah, definitely. Harvard's talking about diet." Yeah, yeah. It's really awesome.

People who like aren't interested, you know, cuz it's kind of easy I think once you're in the paleo community or keto community or that kind of community, then if somebody pops up, you kind of hear about them. But I've definitely heard about you through people who are in like CrossFit and don't necessarily think that what you eat matters. They're like, "Oh, well, Chris Palmer though said maybe it does matter." I was like, "Yeah, pretty cool, huh?" Yeah, and you're like, "Yeah, I've been saying that for years. Where the hell have you been? Now you're going to listen?"

Um well, maybe a little maybe a little bit to certain people, but no, I'm happy about this. This is great. Okay. Well, I've got one I want to stick in here that I was just I was just interested to get your opinion on. Do or do you have an opinion on this new semaglutide drug that celebrities seem to be taking to lose weight? Do you have any feelings about that? I know.

Dr. Palmer’s Thoughts On Semaglutide

Semaglutide is like it is it is in demand and you it's actually there's a shortage of it nationally. It can be hard to get it approved. You know, the the early results right now suggest semaglutide is highly effective for weight loss. It's It's really a diabetes It was developed as a diabetes drug and uh and then they quickly noticed that a lot of people with diabetes were losing significant amounts of weight. So, now it is also a weight loss drug or it's becoming a weight loss drug. Um I do have one patient who's on it and just increased his dose and is actually losing more weight and his blood sugars are coming down even more. Even though he has been on a ketogenic diet for Huh. a long time.

He's been on a ketogenic diet for a long time and it was in and of itself was not enough. But that's where I feel like, you know, there's more to health and metabolic health and mental health than just the diet. You have to have good sleep. We just found out he's got horrible sleep apnea. Um and that was never addressed. Um, and you've got to decrease stress, and you've got to manage other substances and prescription meds, and he's on several, and so it's really a combination of all of those things. Um, you know, if you had You're a perfect example.

If you had stayed on all of your meds and the diet, there's a chance the meds may have prevented you from having a full and complete recovery. And um, and so I think I think it is the combination of different strategies um, that are effective. But I think my You know, so for people who need to lose weight, can semaglutide be helpful? Yes, it can. Do I think it is really the full answer for all of our health problems? Absolutely not. There is a reason we have an obesity epidemic.

It probably relates to the foods we're eating and/or environmental toxins or something about our lifestyle. Everybody's on their phone and sedentary like whatever it is. Everybody's And a lot of people like focus on one and only one of those things and say, "It's all that That's what it is." It's fine. They can have their opinion. I actually think it's probably a lot of those things.

Factors Beyond Diet

So it's a combination of all the chemicals and other stuff in our diet and the way our foods have changed, and they're super high in carbohydrates, and we went through this whole low-fat thing, and we're now going to this whole everybody should eat only plants and avoid meat, and I That's I don't see that as necessarily being a path to health. Um, so we've got lots of problems with diet, but the environmental toxins, if you really do a deep dive into those, those don't look pretty either. Oh, yeah. They're probably not helping us. Um And semaglutide isn't removing any of those factors. Semaglutide is just helping people lose some weight. But if you're still exposing yourself to a toxic diet, if you're not changing what you're eating, you're still exposing yourself to whatever it is, whether you For the people who think it's all carbs, fine.

For the people who think it's plant-based foods, fine. For the people who think it's animal-sourced foods. It doesn't matter. I I don't pick Pick whatever part of the diet you hate, taking a pill doesn't necessarily change your diet. It doesn't necessarily mean you're eating less of those toxic food sources. And and so I'm worried that we might be getting some short-term weight loss, maybe for several years, even, but that over time, we're going to see the exact same thing that we have seen with gastric bypass surgery. Gastric bypass surgery works wonders.

There is no question about it. People lose massive amounts of weight in the first couple of years. But if they don't change anything else, the weight starts coming back. And Al Roker is like a poster person and very public about his experience with that for that. And he then finally found the ketogenic diet to definitively put his weight under control. But so I'm worried that semaglutide is going to be the same deal. That yeah, everybody's all psyched about it right now, just like they were about gastric bypass surgery.

But if we don't address the root problem, the problem's going to come back. I can get behind that. I can get behind that. Um do you do you get concerns from patients or how would you address the concerns about the ketogenic diet impacting cardiac health negatively? So the the longitudinal studies that we've got and we've got plenty. We have dozens and dozens of weight loss trials, trials for people with type 2 diabetes of low-carb and or ketogenic diets. And the overwhelming majority of those studies show that if you do a comprehensive cardiovascular risk assessment, cardiovascular risk goes down with ketogenic diet.

That means HDL levels improve, go a little bit higher, triglycerides usually plummet. That's a good thing. Blood pressure usually comes down very nicely. That's a great thing. Uh people lose a lot of weight. That's a great thing. Levels of inflammation come down.

That's a great thing. The The thing that of course the cardiologists focus on is but LDL goes up sometimes. Well, LDL is one of many biomarkers that plays a role in cardiovascular disease. If you believe that LDL cholesterol is directly linked and as I think you and many of your listeners know, that is controversial and uh and some people don't believe that and some people don't believe the evidence base for that. I don't even need to go there. Even for somebody who is tried and true, no LDL really does play a role in cardiovascular disease. Even if you really firmly are 100% convinced of that, cardiovascular risk still goes down with ketogenic diet.

And I mean the Vertis study Cool. has been going on for over 5 years. Ketogenic diet for people with type 2 diabetes, high risk for heart attacks, overall, their risk has gone down. Nice. I like how this can be in the scientific literature. It's so much easier than being like, "Well, it worked for me." No, no, no, we need arguments. It unfortunately, yeah.

We That's I think that's one of the things I bring to the keto low-carb community is I'm like focused on science and like and I'm I'm almost like a lawyer, too. I'm like, "How am I going to defend this?" Like I I already know what the opposition is going to say and how they're going to attack me. So, what how can I line up some science to defend this position? And I think these are 100% defensible positions. In the mental health field, make no mistake.

Side Affects, Weight Gain & Prescribing Medications That Cause Illness

We prescribe medications that cause people to gain massive amounts of weight. We prescribe medications that cause type 2 diabetes. We prescribe medications that cause heart attacks. It's right on the package insert. I'm not being paranoid or conspiracy theorist by saying this. We prescribe medications that cause premature death. Read the package inserts.

It's right there. The ketogenic diet helps people lose weight, get rid of their diabetes or improve their insulin sensitivity, lower their risk for cardiovascular disease, makes them feel a hell of a lot better, helps them get off of medications, helps them start functioning in life again. I really don't give a shit if their LDL goes up a little. I just don't. And anybody who is going to get worked up about their LDL going up a little bit in the context of all of all other stuff is an absolute positive idiot and they are inhumane. They are inhumane that they would let people suffer and writhe in mental pain and be disabled by their illness and not offer them an effective treatment. That is just inhumane.

You can tell I'm a little worked up. Sorry. I'm worked up. I I completely agree. I'm worked up. I know. Like what about I get that all the time, too.

What about the long-term health impacts? Well, like the short-term health impact was I was going to die. So, if the long hard term health impact is I'm happy for quite a while, I like The long-term health impact is yes, yes, you're alive. You're alive and thriving and not not tormented by symptoms and not disabled by symptoms. And yeah, who cares? Who Do I want research to really answer these questions? Yes, I do want research.

Because because if I could tweak your diet somehow to give you even more of an edge, I would love to know that and I would love to know to just be able to give you the information. Like if you do this version of the lion's diet, you're going to have these kind of outcomes. If you if we can tweak these biomarkers, you might even get better results or live longer or Yeah, I would love that information. But again, we need a grassroots movement to get funding for those studies cuz the powers that be are not going to fund those studies right now. This is very true. Okay, I think I have one question based off what you were just talking about. Um you said we prescribe medications that cause some of these side effects cuz they're listed on the bottle.

Um one of the So, I was put on antidepressants when I was 12, so I didn't understand the difference between the depression and what a side effect was. I just thought everything I experienced was a new health problem. Um which wasn't how it was in reality. A lot of them were side effects, but one of the side effects I think I had was I was never full at all. I was absolutely starving all the time. Uh, in a way that I'd go out for dinner and I'd feel physically full, like unbuttoning my pants full, and I can remember being so hungry that I'd have to be like, "Okay, take the food away, or I'll keep eating it." Like just no control, and I'm a very self-disciplined person.

So, it wasn't because of that. Um, have you Do you think the weight gain associated that can be associated with SSRIs is is because people get hungrier, or do you think it's something else? I think it can it I think that it can be different mechanisms of action. And again, we don't really have good robust science to answer that exact question. The thing that we do have good robust science on is a lot of people on SSRIs gain massive amounts of weight. Mhm. Um, or at least a little bit of weight.

That is not controversial. That is not anecdotal. You know, one of the ways they attack all of this is, "Oh, it's just an anecdote." That's not an anecdote. People a lot of people gain weight. Not everybody does, and some people go on SSRIs and they swear that their life is much better, and that's great. I'm not here to take that away from them.

I'm not here to stand in their way. They can keep taking their SSRI or other psychiatric medications. I'm not here to take any of that away. I'm here to empower people with other options, with other treatment strategies if what you're doing isn't working. I'm here to do that. The SSRI The SSRIs we have strong reason to believe, like 90-95% of the serotonin in the human body is actually found in the digestive tract. So, serotonin is regulating appetite and feeding behaviors and nutrient kind of sensing throughout the body.

And it does this actually in whole range of species, all the way down to like worms and stuff. Worms have serotonin that it's regulating their whole body metabolism. So, we know that serotonin is regulating whole body metabolism in humans and or at least playing a role in it. And when you take a pill that is causing massive shifts in serotonin levels all the way down to the synapse it shouldn't be shocking to anyone that that might dysregulate normal metabolic controls which include hunger, which include feeding behaviors, but also include metabolism broadly. So, some So, I think for some people it can be exactly what you described. I become ravenous. I can't seem to ravenous like crazy.

And I think for some people it is that. There's no doubt in my mind. I have talked to other people who are highly trustworthy dependable, responsible, disciplined people who swear to me, I am not eating more calories. I swear to you, I'm not and yet I'm gaining weight. That's And I believe them. I believe they are not eating more calories. I don't think they're lying to me.

I don't think they're fooling themselves. I don't think it's subconscious. I don't think they're just not tracking their calories. I believe them. I think they're telling me the truth. And in that case, I think the medication is probably plummeting their metabolism, their metabolic rate, so that they are burning fewer calories, so that even if they're still eating the same 1,500 or 2,000 calories a day, that they're burning it less efficiently, and that means more calories to store as fat. That's crazy.

It is crazy. Wow. Like for me, I think I mean, maybe both could have been going on. I know I I started eating less and less. It took a while, too. After I stopped taking medication, I was eating tons of food and losing weight on the like keto paleo diet. And then when I switched over to the carnivore diet, I was eating tons of food and losing weight initially.

Although then, I was overeating and I started gaining weight, which is normal. Like if you're eating 2,400 calories a day and you're me, you should be slowly gaining weight. And that was cuz my appetite still hadn't normalized. I was still hungry. And then at some point, I think it was kind of like 8 months into the diet, like, "Oh, you know, 2/3 of my hunger is gone suddenly. Like, okay, that's handy. That's great."

So, it's weird. It's weird out there. I really really appreciate what you're doing. I think you're onto something. I don't think you're going to be crushed because it works too well. So, there is no crushing it. And one person whose life you change will tell like uh 200 people about it for the next 5 years or the rest of their life because it's it's so crazy to go from the I'm fucked forever and nothing will help me, and I've tried everything to I'm healthy in maybe what, 6 weeks?

Like no, that that's that's a short that's short, but even 3 or 4 months or just the possibility of that happening changes people's lives. So, I don't think there's any crushing it. It works too well. You can't crush that. Yeah. No, I agree. I agree.

Spreading The Message

Now I want to spread it. I want this offered to people when they get involuntarily hospitalized. Yeah, instead of ice cream. Here's some ice cream. That's going to help you feel better. I'm involuntarily hospitalized. Ice cream doesn't help.

It just makes like everything worse. It's crazy what they feed people in there. It It is It is dumbfoundingly sad. It's just sad looking at what they get. I mean, it's almost all carbohydrates and um, you know, pancakes for breakfast or just a box of cereal with some milk and uh yeah, mac and cheese and other things and ice cream and cookies and brownies. And yeah, I want these treatments in place of medications at some point. You know, and not for the dangerous situations.

For people who are about to assault someone or kill themselves. Yes, I think that some of our standard treatments are still going to be required because they are a danger to themselves or others and we have to keep them safe. But you know, right now none of this is being offered anybody. It's not being offered on an inpatient unit. It's not being offered on an outpatient basis. It's not being offered to anyone and when they hear you or me talk about it, they're laughed at for, you know, what crazy person are you listening to? And that is what I'm hoping That's what I'm hoping the book can change.

Is it just provide tons of scientific evidence. It's a science book and I kind of want to apologize for that and not apologize for it because it's kind of like, if you hate science, I'm really sorry. You're going to feel like, why the hell is he talking about all this nothing science? Um but I did it because I want people to take these treatments seriously, and I want to give people hope and empower them. Wow. Thank you. Um if people don't follow you online, where can they go now?

And definitely check out the book. Brain Energy. It's probably available everywhere. And uh if you have a relative or something that's skeptical of diet, it might be a way for it might it might be able to help you back up the diet argument. I've been going on about diet for years. Here's a Harvard doctor who can explain why it works. Check it out.

Anyway, where are you on social media? The easiest place for people to find me is either one of two websites. So, either brainenergy.com um which has information about the book and a lot of podcasts and articles and uh got a newsletter. And we really are hoping to start a grassroots movement. So, if you want to be involved in this and create change, please go there and at least sign up, let us know about you, and let us know you want to be involved. For people who are interested in more of some of the detailed research that I've done on the ketogenic diet, um in both lay press and or academic articles or more about clinical practice and stuff, they can find me at Chris Palmer MD.com. Great.

Thank you very much for coming on. Thank you, Michaela, for having me.