We’ve looked at how your ketogenic diet transforms depression. But what about bipolar disorder, one of the most severe psychiatric conditions? Surely, an illness so complex can’t be treated with something so mild and routine as a change in diet? Sound absurd? Well, it’s not only NOT absurd, it’s a neuroscience-backed intervention that’s changing lives for the better.
Your Ketogenic Diet Transforms
As you learn about metabolic interventions, you can understand why treating your metabolism can bring your disorder into balanced order.
For 100 years, the ketogenic diet has been a prominent and effective treatment for epilepsy. By reducing carbohydrates and providing high fat, it pushes your mitochondria to trade ketones for carbohydrates. This allows you to make energy efficiently in each cell in your body, including your brain. And ketones are the most therapeutic fuel for brain cells to use.
Literature Review at Stanford University
Shebani Sethi, M.D., worked with Brenda J. Yu, M.D., and Ruya S. Oz, M.D., to conduct a literature review on “current metabolic mechanisms of bipolar illness.” They specifically focused on how your ketogenic diet transforms you and repairs your metabolism and, in turn, symptoms.
In bipolar disorder, similar to epilepsy, you see a dysfunction in the production of energy. We directly replace carbohydrate fuel with ketones in the mitochondria of the cell. This improved metabolism seems to imitate the effects of medications used to stabilize mood. Amazing, isn’t it?
So many people with bipolar disorder turn out to be “treatment resistant” — meaning medications are not as effective for them as they should be. For them—and for others who just don’t want to go down the road of more medication—a better and more effective treatment is critically needed.
So, hope is spreading rapidly as the therapeutic effects of a ketogenic diet are being studied and used in the treatment of this disorder.
Ketogenic Diet Transforms
It’s remarkable, too, that improving energy production in brain cells is not the only way a ketogenic diet helps. It also strengthens the immune system and reduces inflammation, protects brain cells from oxidative stress, and reduces dysfunction in the pathways that cause changes in brain function.
By bringing order to these systems, symptoms can then follow course and restore balance and order to your cognition, mood, and wellbeing.
Oxidative Stress Damages Brain Cells
Let’s take oxidative stress, for example. When it persists over time, it can cause irreversible damage to brain cells. Several studies have demonstrated that oxidative stress is one underlying cause of bipolar disorder. Chronic cellular damage like this seems to cause gaps in transmission of signals in brain cells which can result in bipolar symptoms.
Ketones seem to play a role to protect these neurons, providing a buffer for the brain cells and relieving bipolar symptoms.
Keto Diet Helps Neurotransmitters
Another of many malfunctions in metabolism blamed for mood disorders and bipolar disorder is the levels of neurotransmitters that regulate mood, emotion, and cognition. How your ketogenic diet transforms your bipolar symptoms includes what it does to your neurotransmitters.
Dopamine is a good example. Since dopamine plays a role in arousal, reward, and motivation, you can see how it has an influence on your mood.
Failure in the function of dopamine transporters and receptors in the brain is another likely cause of bipolar disorder. When there is too much dopamine being activated, constantly stimulating brain cells, manic symptoms can happen. This can also lead to oxidative stress…and you see the vicious cycle that results.
And it’s not just dopamine. Serotonin is another neurotransmitter that helps regulate metabolism, emotion, and cognition. Your mood is directly affected by a neurotransmitter that regulates your metabolism! It’s not hard to connect the dots, is it? Straighten out your metabolism and improve your mood!
Then there’s 5-HT… believed to contribute to the depressive episodes of bipolar disorder … and it’s found in low levels in people with this disorder.
And that leads us to norepinephrine, that helps regulate cognition, motivation, and intellect. Low norepinephrine can cause depression symptoms, and can contribute to the low moods of bipolar disorder.
So how about what these neurotransmitters do?..or don’t do?
For brain cells to function properly, there has to be balance between “inhibitory” and “excitatory” neurotransmitters.
GABA and glutamate create balance in the glutamatergic system, and changes in either one can cause depression symptoms and anxiety. Too much stimulation of these receptors can lead to death of the brain cells.
Beneficial Condition: Ketosis
Ketosis, the condition a ketogenic diet leads to, can alter neurotransmitter levels. In one study, lab animals fed a ketogenic diet for 3 weeks showed no change in their levels of norepinephrine, dopamine, or 5-HT, however, there was an increase in the activity of dopamine, and of dopamine and serotonin in another study.
So ketosis helps regulate neurotransmitter function in improving the symptoms of bipolar disorder.
Extensive mechanisms impacted by ketogenic diet in bipolar disorder
There are too many to to describe here, but we just want to offer a few examples of brain cell metabolism impacted by the ketosis established with a low carbohydrate, high fat diet.
By improving mood, behavior, and cognition, this intervention for bipolar disorder can promote things like restful sleep, clearer thinking, stable mood and emotions and a rewarding life.
Drs. Sethi, Yu, and Oz presented a thorough review of studies conducted about how your ketogenic diet transforms bipolar disorder symptoms, but more studies are needed.
Meanwhile, they’ve demonstrated a reason to hope for those who suffer from bipolar symptoms, especially if medications have not helped or if side effects of medication have required an alternative treatment.
Do You Have Bipolar Disorder?
Have medications or other treatments been ineffective?
If you have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, or another a serious psychiatric disorder, and you’re interested in exploring how a ketogenic diet can be used as treatment, call us.
Let’s meet and talk about options that may be available for you.
We’re here to offer treatments that just may bring the relief you need, and open a door to a rewarding life for you.
To the restoration of your best self,
