Part 1: Episode 63 – Keto Naturopath by Karl Goldcamp interviews Chris Palmer

Show notes – Addiction and ketogenic diet

This podcast discusses behavioral disorders and a ketogenic therapeutic intervention.

 Diet and addiction

• 3:20  Nora Volkow, MD. Director National Institute on Drug Abuse. Research implies some foods activate the same reward pathways as addictive substances.
• 6:02  Alcohol and insulin resistance.
• 7:02  Study of ketogenic diet and alcoholism.
• 13:25 Alcohol converts to acetone and fuels the brain. (The big three ketone bodies are beta-hydroxybutyrate, acetoacetate, and acetone.)

Chris and his father’s success stories

• 16:55  How Chris Palmer discovered low-carb dieting and his own metabolic dysfunction.
• 23:45  Chris’s father’s story of diabetes and recovery.
• 39:11  Chris’s personal diet and exercise plan.

Part 2: Episode 64 – Keto Naturopath by Karl Goldcamp interviews Chris Palmer

Exercise

• 8:05  Karl – Hard to encourage exercise to the non-athletic.
• 8:42  Chris – Growing up with poor diet and no exercise

On a ketogenic diet people feel more energetic and want to start exercising

• 10:33  Mental and emotional changes with ketogenic diet

Metabolic – mental connection

• 13:36  Mental disorders
• 14:35  Stigma of mental illness
• 15:49  Mental disorders as metabolic disorders
• 16:36  Diabetes and insulin resistance in mental disorders
• 16:55   At onset of mental illness patient’s weight is normal. But their insulin resistance is already measurable.
• 19:39  bidirectional relationship between mental and metabolic disorders

Ketogenic diet as a therapeutic intervention

• 23:14  Ketogenic diet can stop seizures
• 24:37  Epilepsy treatments are commonly used in psychiatry
• 25:22  Metabolic defects in mental disorders
• 28:15  More research needed
• 30:00  Off-label treatments
• 32:24  My hope is to better understand this metabolic-mental overlap
• 33:29 Metabolic interventions don’t work for everyone. I wish they did. I’m using them to help those with serious, treatment-resistant illnesses.
• 33:46  New schizophrenia research by Chris Palmer, MD
• 35:46  Dream of a residential treatment program
• 39:02  Hopeful that this is a game-changing way of thinking about and addressing these disorders

Part 3: Episode 65 – Keto Naturopath by Karl Goldcamp

Like-minded researchers and clinicians around the world

• 16:41  Others currently investigating the ketogenic diet for mental illness.
• 18:45  Many clinicians unwilling to use the ketogenic diet with the most serious. disorders. For example, bipolar, schizophrenia and chronic-disabling depression. Using the medical-ketogenic diet as a treatment requires a multi-faceted approach.
• 20:40  I desperately want to improve the lives of psychiatric patients
• 21:40  I want to motivate other mental health clinicians to learn about the ketogenic diet.
• 22:40  It is going to take a movement to spur change.

Mechanisms of Action

• 25:16  Medical practitioners require a mechanism of action
• 25:57  History of ketogenic diet
• 25:57  Better understood than any other dietary intervention
• 27:49  Neurologist have been studying this since the 1970s
• 28:23  Probably 20 different mechanisms of action have already been elucidated. They suggest why the ketogenic diet can stop seizures .
• 29:19  Increasing GABA, a primary inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain.
• 31:24  This diet also increases activity of Adenosine.
• 33:10  The ketogenic diet helps repair mitochondria.
• 34:19  The ketogenic diet stimulates some pathways that result in anti-aging.

Fasting and the origin of the ketogenic diet

• 37:39  Fasting and the ketogenic diet both significantly change metabolism.
• 38:15  Fasting has a long history
• 40:16  The epilepsy world put it to some rigorous tests and they found it actually works for a real brain disorder, and you know they have been using it for a hundred years.
• 41:08  Does not stop seizures 100%
• 42:08  Some are skeptical of it because it doesn’t work immediately.

Lab testing

• 44:19  Lab monitoring
• 46:39  Cortisol.