Could Low-Carb Diets Help Treat Mental Illness? - Season Two

Harvard trained psychiatrist Dr Georgia Ede is pioneering the use of low carb -  otherwise known as ketogenic - diets to help treat a range of mental illness from major depression to schizophrenia. An approach she believes could revolutionise psychiatric care in the future.

She spent a decade treating patients with the standard approaches of medication and psychotherapy but became increasingly frustrated that she was not seeing the results she had hoped. So began to explore nutritional options and has now treated hundreds of patients using this approach.

A recently published paper on which Georgia was an author, reported that 28 patients who had either major depression, schizophrenia or biopolar disorder were put on this diet. These patients had tried multiple medications previously with very little improvement. But following this diet, 43% went into total remission and 64% were discharged on less medication.  This was a small study without a control group, but having said that it's almost unheard of to see results like these in a psychiatric trial, so if these results are replicated, this approach could have a major impact for patients in the future.

 

In the podcast, Georgia recommends a number of websites to go to for further information, here they are:

https://www.diagnosisdiet.com/

https://baszuckigroup.com/

https://med.stanford.edu/psychiatry/patient_care/metabolic.html

https://www.dietdoctor.com/home

 

Georgia also talks about insulin resistance and suggests the various tests to take to see if you are insulin resistant or not:

https://www.diagnosisdiet.com/files/content/pdfs/Insulin-Resistance-Tests-rev01-20.pdf

 

Dr Georgia Ede, trained at Harvard Medical School, before first working for the Harvard University Health Services and then moving to Smith College. In 2018, she set up her own psychiatric nutritional practice, helping patients reduce or eliminate the use of medications by changing what they eat.

 

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The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director.  You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com

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