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Ketogenic diet may play a role in treating schizophrenia: research (2019)

psychologytoday.com

25 points by oblib 2 years ago · 13 comments

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matthest 2 years ago

They were using keto for epilepsy as far back as the 1920s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet

Then drugs came out and everyone ran for the quick fix.

  • lambdaba 2 years ago

    This is true for other very effective cures: vitamin D has a similar story.

    There is no money in cures that target the root cause which is often basic nutrition and using the biology as it was designed, instead drugs can be invented, patented, and when everybody takes them there isn't a control group left to notice that in aggregate they make things worse. And the doctors are indoctrinated to know nothing about nutrition, to be fearful or dismissive of supplementation (see: vitamin D) and believe there is a pharma drug for every condition.

    The good news is it's rather easily fixable, but it is something that will never come from top down, it is and is going to be a bottom-up process.

onemoresoop 2 years ago

There's a YouTube channel named 'Living well with schizophrenia' in which the protagonist is talking about her own story and suffering with this mental disorder. Recently she announced she'd started her ketogenic diet and so far so good, she's symptom free and slowly tapering off her medication.

  • lambdaba 2 years ago

    I came to comment exactly this, here is the video where she announces it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU1ORt6ZnVE

    It's interesting to go through her earlier videos where she documents her daily life.

    • onemoresoop 2 years ago

      It's interesting to watch plenty of homegrown YouTube channels where people document their mental health, it's absolutely fascinating to watch this phenomena take place.

      • lambdaba 2 years ago

        For sure. It's like seeing the fog clear. I'm very optimistic about this development. Chronic health issues are numerous and immensely costly to individuals and society, and the establishment has obviously no clue how to fix it as was obvious in recent events.

  • oblibOP 2 years ago

    I love hearing that! I'll go check out that video. Thank you for sharing that.

deanc 2 years ago

Ketosis is an interesting topic. There's also emerging research suggesting that it can play a role in the development of cysts for those who have APKD (Polycystic kidney disease). [1]

[1] https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37...

neogodless 2 years ago

Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20421989 Chronic Schizophrenia Put into Remission with Ketogenic Diet (psychologytoday.com)

July 12, 2019 (14 comments)

  • oblibOP 2 years ago

    There are some newer studies since then that are backing up this one. I ran across this one about a couple months ago and bookmarked it and then searched for others as well. One goes back 10 years ago so I was pretty much shocked because I've been looking into this (Schizophrenia) for quite a long time and somehow never came across this.

lambdaba 2 years ago

Keto is also being studied for bipolar. Many anecdotes available on YouTube and elsewhere. It appears mental illnesses have in origin metabolic / mitochondrial dysfunction, through a combination of environmental and genetic factors.

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