The common thread in mental disorders is metabolic dysfunction at the cellular level, specifically within mitochondria. This reframes mental illness not as a purely psychological issue or simple chemical imbalance, but as a physical, metabolic problem in the brain that diet can influence.
The ketogenic diet originated from the centuries-old observation that fasting has powerful neurological effects, including stopping seizures. A physician designed the diet to replicate this metabolic state, allowing patients to gain the brain benefits long-term without the danger of starvation.
The ketogenic diet was developed over a century ago by a physician specifically to stop seizures. This medical origin, focused on brain function, explains its potential psychiatric benefits, reframing it from a modern weight-loss fad to a powerful therapeutic tool for neurological conditions.
A significant number of medications prescribed for mental illness are also used to treat epilepsy. This overlap suggests that mental disorders and seizure conditions share underlying biological mechanisms, opening the door for non-pharmacological epilepsy treatments like the ketogenic diet to be applied to psychiatry.
In epilepsy treatment, patients often use the ketogenic diet for only 2-5 years. The fact that seizures frequently do not return after stopping the diet suggests it can induce lasting metabolic repairs and heal brain dysfunction, rather than just managing symptoms temporarily.
Only 7% of US citizens are metabolically healthy, meaning 93% have at least one biomarker of metabolic syndrome (e.g., pre-diabetes, high blood pressure, abdominal obesity). This widespread metabolic ill-health provides a strong biological basis for the escalating mental health crisis.