Ketogenic Therapy in Psychiatry: What the Experts Agree On

Bret: 
Welcome to the Metabolic Mind Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Bret Scher. Metabolic Mind is a nonprofit initiative of Baszucki Group where we’re providing information about the intersection of metabolic health and mental health and metabolic therapies, such as nutritional ketosis as therapies for mental illness.

Thank you for joining us. Although our podcast is for informational purposes only and we aren’t giving medical advice, we hope you will learn from our content and it will help facilitate discussions with your healthcare providers to see if you could benefit from exploring the connection between metabolic and mental health.

Well, Georgia, I’m so excited to talk about this new paper, and it’s using a Delphi process that’s just been published. So, tell us what this is, who it’s for, and where people can find it. 

Georgia: 
This is a really exciting development for clinicians interested in the safe integration of ketogenic metabolic therapy into mental health care, that’s been generated by eight experienced, ketogenic practitioners and researchers, including psychiatrists, therapists, researchers and dieticians.

And so, what we’ve done is we’ve generated, based on our collective clinical and scientific experience, generated very specific, efficient, accessible, open access, clinical consensus, including identifying people who are good candidates for kenogenic metabolic therapy. Defining what we mean by ketogenic metabolic therapy and, the practice and monitoring standards for using ketogenic metabolic therapy. 

Bret: 
So, who will benefit from this? Who is this really directed towards? 

Georgia:
It’s really directed towards any clinician that works with people with mental health conditions.

So, that includes not just mental health practitioners, both prescribing practitioners and non-prescribing practitioners, but also family, family practice and general practitioners, just about every clinician who works in the medical space works with people who have mental health conditions. And I really do think anybody who’s curious about this or wants to incorporate these principles into their clinical care, regardless of their discipline, regardless of their background or the nature of their practice.

This offers really just solid, clear consensus that will allow them to safely incorporate ketogenic diets into their practice. 

Bret: 
Yeah, and it seems like ketogenic therapy, metabolic therapy for mental illness is the perfect place for something like this because research is happening. There are published studies, public published pilot trials and ongoing research. But still with this groundswell of interest among patients and family members wanting to learn more and get treated for this, we need the clinicians to know about it in order to be able to interact better with those patients.

And this kind of does give them that blueprint, that general guidance of what this is and how they can go about doing it as the research is catching up as well. So, I think it is really the sort of perfect example of how this can census statement can work and who it can benefit.

So ,where can people find it? Where is it published? 

Georgia: 
So we published in Frontiers in Nutrition. 

Bret: 
Very good. All right. Georgia, thank you. I really appreciate you joining me to talk about this new paper. And thank you for all your work and getting it written and getting it published. 

Georgia: 
Thank you very much.

I hope it helps clinicians out there who are interested in using ketogenic metabolic therapy in their work.

Bret: 
Thanks for listening to the Metabolic Mind Podcast. If you found this episode helpful, please leave a rating and comment as we’d love to hear from you. And please click the subscribe button so you won’t miss any of our future episodes. And you can see full video episodes on our YouTube page at Metabolic Mind.

Lastly, if you know someone who may benefit from this information, please share it as our goal is to spread this information to help as many people as possible. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll see you here next time at The Metabolic Mind Podcast.