In a new study, a high-fat keto diet helped 69% of patients with bipolar disorder

The principle of the ketogenic diet is to eat a variety of low-carb, high-fat foods, including dairy products, vegetables, fish and other seafood, in addition to some fats and oils.

People affected by bipolar disorder and schizophrenia may profit from a ketogenic diet.

According to Peoplea four-month study of 23 people – published in Science Direct – found that 69% of people with bipolar disorder saw improvement after switching to a low-carb, moderate-protein, high-fat diet that included dairy, vegetables, fish and other seafood, and a few oils.

“The working theory is that we provide the brain with energy to avoid these metabolic deficits,” said the study’s lead writer, Shebani Sethi, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine.

Using the Clinical Global Impressions scale – which the National Institutes of Health describes as a way for “a non-investigator physician to quantify and track a patient’s progress and response to treatment over time” – the study found that for participants with bipolar disorder on the keto diet: “Mental illness severity scores show an average improvement of 31%.”

“Psychiatric outcomes across the entire cohort included an average 17% improvement in life satisfaction,” the study said, in response to People magazine.

The Mayo Clinic describes bipolar disorder as a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings. Most participants within the keto study had bipolar disorder, although some had schizophrenia, which the clinic defines as a serious mental illness that causes a misinterpretation of reality and “some combination of hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disorganized thinking and behavior that impairs daily functioning and may cause disability.”

Although there are treatments available for these disorders, researchers chose to study the keto diet – used to treat diabetes and epilepsy and increasingly popular for weight loss – because “many individuals may develop resistance to treatment or serious metabolic effects which will end in non-adherence to prescribed therapies.”

After 4 months of following the diet, researchers found that “79% of participants with baseline symptoms experienced clinically significant improvement.”

However, the study authors note that patients should use ketone as an addition to traditional treatment, not as an alternative of it.

“Our results show that ketogenic diet intervention is a feasible and acceptable treatment option in addition to neuroleptic medications,” the study said, calling for “further research on the relationship between mental health and metabolic health,” People magazine reports.

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