Tagged: medical ketogenic diet

The version of the diet that appears to work for serious psychiatric disorders is the strict medical ketogenic diet  (3:1 or 4:1 ratio). The same dietary therapy is used to treat pediatric epilepsy.

This therapeutic dietary intervention should be medically prescribed and monitored. This ketogenic diet version is very difficult to do and has serious risks, as well as potential benefits.  Levels of ketones, glucose, and body weight all impact the effectiveness of the diet. Additionally, medications often need to be adjusted. New side effects can emerge when people are in ketosis.  Some medications can interfere with the effectiveness of the ketogenic diet by increasing blood glucose levels and preventing ketosis. Such medicines may need to be safely reduced or stopped.

Adjusting psychiatric medications can sometimes be very dangerous, and should only be done with medication supervision and monitoring. Finally, when starting the ketogenic diet, people can experience an increase in their psychiatric symptoms, hypoglycemia, low blood pressure, weakness, dizziness, and other worrisome symptoms, which all need to be monitored and safely managed by a skilled medical team. 

This isn’t an “our lawyers made us say it” warning. We mean it.