Is a ketogenic diet an effective, affordable, and sustainable solution for long-term metabolic health?
Transcript:
Introduction to Dr. Tro’s new paper on GLP1’s vs ketogenic diet.
Real world data from a weight loss and metabolic health medical practice, demonstrates that a ketogenic diet helps people lose on average 43 pounds in a year. That’s as good as or even better than the GLP-1 agonist medications. But even better, this real world study demonstrates a ketogenic diet is effective, sustainable, and saved $1700 per patient. One of the things we hear from, whether it’s doctors, dieticians, and others is that a keto diet isn’t really sustainable and is too expensive to help someone stay on it. Well, this data clearly shows that isn’t the case. So let’s see what we can all learn from this study, to understand how we can better use ketogenic interventions for metabolic and psychiatric care. Welcome to Metabolic Mind, a non-profit initiative of Baszucki Group, transforming the study and treatment of mental disorders by exploring the connection between metabolism and brain health. Thank you for joining us on this journey. But, before we get started, please remember our channel is for informational purposes only. We’re not providing individual or group medical or healthcare advice, or establishing a provider-patient relationship. Many of the interventions we discuss can be potentially dangerous if done without proper clinical supervision. So always consult with your healthcare team before changing your medications or lifestyle.
Is the ketogenic diet sustainable and worth implementing?
So let’s rewind for a second. Why am I highlighting this study? Well, we’ve seen an explosion of clinical and research evidence, demonstrating how ketogenic therapy can treat or even put into remission serious cases of depression or bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other brain-based disorders as well as metabolic disorders. But we often hear from individuals and clinicians alike that “Yeah, sure it may work, but it’s too hard to sustain or it’s too expensive or my medical practice can’t support someone through this transition.” Well, this publication demonstrates that none of those claims need to be true. This paper was published in Frontiers in Nutrition and was the result of the one-year experience of 50 patients, taking part in a metabolic health and weight loss clinic. And as I mentioned, the results were stunning! 82% of the individuals maintain the ketogenic diet at one year. 82%! That’s some of the best dietary retention that I’ve seen published. Now it’s true, this was not a randomized controlled trial and that’s what makes it real world data. And that’s what shows that in the real world with support, ketosis is definitely a sustainable intervention. I mean, that’s a crucial conclusion that we all need to internalize.
How much weight did ketogenic dieters lose? How does this compare to GLP1 medications?
And this wasn’t just a little weight loss. The patients lost on average 43 pounds that was sustained at one year. And that’s over 15% of their body weight and went along with impressive metabolic health benefits. This is on par with or even better than the data supporting GLP1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy And that’s a crucial point, because those drugs on average cost about $13,000 per year.
Why is it important for businesses to consider ketogenic therapy for their workers?
And this is where it’s really important to know where these patients came from. They were all from a self-insured contracting company. So self-insured meaning the company was on the hook for the employee healthcare costs. So the company had two very strong motivations. They obviously want healthy, productive workers, but they also want to minimize healthcare spending costs. And that’s exactly what they got with this program. They got healthier workers at less cost. Not only did their employees lose weight and improve their metabolic health and feel better, they also came off a number of their medications saving $1,700 per patient. And they didn’t even have to start GLP1 medications which can cost $13,000 per year. So you can see, how this was a clear win-win for both the patients and the employers. And that brings me to this complaint that I mentioned that we often hear from providers, right? That providing this level of care and sustaining a keto diet is too expensive. Well, I guess that really depends on your perspective, because when a company saves $1,700 per patient per year, that frees up a lot of money to help with sustaining someone in ketosis. And to be fair, this clinic offered far more than just a keto diet, right? They didn’t say eat keto and we’ll see you later. They had an app-based coaching. Everyone was given a Bluetooth scale and a blood pressure monitor, a CGM and a ketone meter. So again, some may say, “Well, that’s too expensive. I can’t do that.” But no, not when you save the employer money, you prevent the need for expensive medications and you improve the health of their workers. So from this perspective, it’s really an absolute bargain. It’s not expensive at all.
Why is this study from Dr. Tro important? What can it help change?
So when we evaluate, if ketogenic therapy is sustainable and cost-effective, both from the individual and healthcare provider perspective, this publication really helps us see this in a new light and helps us better understand that with proper support, yes, ketogenic therapy is effective, cost-effective and absolutely sustainable. So I can only hope this publication will get out there, right? And help change the narrative and help us all get past our preconceived biases about ketosis and help us realize that we can and should do much better than simply telling our patients to eat better and leave it at that. So once we do that, it opens up a whole world of potential for improving metabolic and mental health. Thank you for watching. I hope you found this helpful. If you did, please like and subscribe so you won’t miss any of our future content. And please leave a comment as we would love to hear from you about your experience. And we wanna give a big thank you to Dr. Tro and Dr. Nick Norwitz and Dr. Adrian Soto-Mota and Dr. Laura Buchanan and all those who are involved in this publication.
Thanks again. I’m Dr. Bret Scher, and we will see you here next time at Metabolic Mind, a nonprofit initiative of Baszucki Group. I want to take a brief moment to let our practitioners know about a couple of fantastic free CME courses developed in partnership with Baszucki Group by Dr. Georgia Ede and Dr. Chris Palmer. Both of these free CME sessions provide excellent insight on incorporating metabolic therapies for mental illness into your practice. They are approved for AMA category 1 credits, CNE nursing credit hours, and continuing education credits for psychologists, and they’re completely free of charge on myCME.com. There’s a link in the description. I highly recommend you check them both out.
