Swapping Meds for Food

Can a Keto Diet Help Reverse the Mental Health Crisis?

By Jennifer Galardi, Contributing Writer, The Kennedy Beacon

During high school, Matt Baszucki suffered from insomnia and panic attacks. By 19, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and despite taking numerous medications, progressed into mania.

Like Laura Delano, Matt was eventually diagnosed as “treatment resistant.” His mother, Jan Ellison-Baszucki, met a podcaster who discussed the positive effects of a ketogenic diet for mental health conditions. In January 2021, Matt began following a keto protocol under the supervision of Harvard-trained psychiatrist, Dr. Chris Palmer. By spring, Matt needed only a quarter of the dose of medication he’d taken the year before. According to Ellison-Baszucki, within four months, his mood was stable, and his intellectual vitality had returned.

Matt’s story echoes many others who are finding relief from mental health issues through diet rather than a strict reliance on pharmacological interventions.

This sea change is sparking a promising, and exciting, new field of research: metabolic psychiatry – the study of the connection between metabolic and mental health disorders. Simply put, changes in diet and nutrition can and are having a significant impact on mental health. In particular, there is increasing evidence to support Matt’s transformation.

Measurements of Mental Health

The gold standard of diagnostic tools for measuring mental health disorders is The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM. The most recent edition, the DSM - 5, published in 2013, lists over 50 diagnosable conditions. The latest update, known as DSM-5-TR, issued in 2022, addresses “a comprehensive review of the impact of racism and discrimination on the diagnosis and manifestations of mental disorders” in addition to adding “prolonged grief disorder” to its list of official conditions.

According to recent studies, Americans, particularly youth, are not okay. A 2024 report from the non-profit Mental Health America found 23% of American adults, or 60 million, experienced a mental illness in that year. Even before Covid lockdowns, mental health disorders were steadily trending upward over the past few decades. So much so that it is often described as a crisis.

Many experts attribute this spike to sociological factors like a rise in the use of social media, a lack of community and social cohesion, and a decline in the nuclear family. More severe forms of mental illness such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are traditionally attributed to genetics or a chemical imbalance in the brain. The metabolic theory of mental health adds another layer to the discussion.

Individuals living with type 1 or type 2 diabetes are at an increased risk for depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. Those with insulin resistance, approximately one out of three Americans, have double the chance of developing depression. This suggests that metabolic dysfunction may be the common denominator in both physical and mental illness.

Research Supports the Metabolic Theory of Mental Health

Iaian Campbell, a researcher on one of the first pilot studies exploring this connection, knows first hand how beneficial a ketogenic diet can be to alleviating mental health issues. He initially began eating keto to lose weight but found his bipolar symptoms greatly improved. This led him to discover a ketogenic diet has been used since the 1920s to reduce seizures from epilepsy. “Many of the medications used to treat bipolar disorder were originally epilepsy medications,” Campbell told The Kennedy Beacon.

As Campbell reached out to the bipolar community, he learned that many others shared his experience. He helped commission one of the first pilot studies in 2022 to further research the connection between food and mental health. That study was funded by Ellison-Baszucki, Matt’s mother, and her husband’s organization that supports mission-driven investments to improve human health, The Baszucki Group. The two also started a non-profit, Metabolic Mind, to share the life-changing potential of ketogenic and metabolic therapies with individuals, families and clinicians.

Since that study, the field of metabolic psychiatry has gained momentum with more and more clinicians using diet to address mental health disorders. Shebani Sethi, MD, a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, founded a first of its kind clinical program to address the intricate gut brain connection. While she believes the ketogenic diet shows great promise, her clinic studies solutions that are metabolically focused and tailors individual programs to suit each patient, depending on their disease state, to ensure the safest and most effective results.

Sethi calls the chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders “old.” “Metabolism plays a role [in brain health]. Both insulin handling and glucose handling in the brain is not optimal. We see that even before a diagnosis is made,” Sethi told The Kennedy Beacon. “It’s really important that those things are also addressed and targeted,” she continued. “It’s not just a neurotransmitter problem.”

Sethi also said that many typical medications, such as SSRI’s, can have metabolic side effects. “It’s a double-edged sword,” she said. “You’re producing side effects which actually make medications not work as well.” Her clinic is well equipped to handle such side effects through nutrition that can help patients potentially taper off their medications.

One study from Sethi demonstrated schizophrenia patients showed an average of 32 % improvement and 69% of participants with bipolar disorder showed statistically significant improvement with a ketogenic diet. In addition, all biomarkers improved for patients who adhered to the plan.

“Ultra processed food is not good for the brain,” says Sethi. This is why she is optimistic about the MAHA movement and its focus on the food supply and changing how we eat.

“These nutritional interventions [I] prescribe to my patients – it makes huge differences in their well being, their way of thinking, their mental clarity, their energy, their ability to grasp things,” she says, “The amount of carbohydrates we have in our diet [is] too high.”

Policy Shifts May Support Lower Carbohydrate Diets

USDA’s new dietary guidelines, due out later this year, are expected to recommend a lower carbohydrate diet. While it’s unlikely a full keto diet will define the new model, there is talk of recommending specialized diets for certain conditions. This would be a useful tool for Americans struggling with their mental health. Ideally, Ellison-Baszucki would like nutritional interventions to be the first line of defense for the prevention and treatment of mental illness and for those treatments to be fully reimbursable by private and public payers.

While some are quick to criticize Keto as an unsustainable fad, for someone suffering from mental illness, it can be a life saver. Ellison-Baszucki told The Kennedy Beacon if her son had to choose between sanity or a high carbohydrate diet, he'd choose sanity. “For people who have battled serious mental illnesses like bipolar disorder, depression, or schizophrenia, the stakes are high, and that can make adherence a relatively straight-forward choice,” she said.

Ultimately, dietary alternatives for mental health treatment offer hope and very little risk for people who have suffered for many years, maybe all of their lives. For anyone that has been labeled “treatment resistant,” Ellison-Baszucki advises to resist such a label. “Keep searching for an approach that can work,” she says. “Healing from even the most serious mental illnesses is possible.”