Can You Reverse Schizophrenia? Harvard Professor Says You Can!

welcome to the plant free MD podcast with Dr Anthony chafee where we discuss diet and nutrition and how this affects health and chronic disease and show you how you can use this to optimize your health and happiness both mentally and physically hello everyone this is uh Dr Anthony chafee here again with another episode of the plant free MD and today I have a very special guest and someone I'm very excited to talk to Dr Chris Palmer who is an assistant professor of Psych of Psychiatry at Harvard University and the author of the book Brain energy that just came out and my patreon members are now reading it this month for our book club so thank you very much Dr Palmer thank you for having me on Dr tafia thanks for picking brain energy as one of your books no absolutely well I was excited for it when it came out because um I've I've I've been aware peripherally of your work and so I was very very interested in your book when it came out um you know I've sort of long thought that um diet plays a much larger role in in um disease and especially chronic disease and that uh you know I have a sort of a a theory that you don't have to agree with just because you're here but that um uh that most of the chronic diseases that we treat nowadays are not diseases per se but quite a lot of them are toxicities and malnutrition the toxic buildup of species inappropriate diet and lack of species specific nutrition in the further we go away from our biologically evolved diet the the more sort of problems we're going to have just like other animals uh we'll have in the zoo or in nature they say here's the sign don't feed the animals they get very sick when we get sick too we're not recognizing this as a as an exposure relationship as opposed to a disease relationship so I was very excited when when your work came out and um seemed to to go in line with that yeah I so I completely agree I I think I probably you know in the book I expand Beyond just diet and I think more broadly about environment so an environment includes you know other lifestyle factors like being on your cell phone all day or a computer as opposed to moving around um uh you know any stress that that might cause uh you know I'm particularly interested in all the environmental toxins that are both in our food supply but also just you know in our water supply and everywhere else and who knows you know I think we have some preliminary evidence they are not doing good things for human health uh you know so how like how to weigh them all is unclear but uh the really exciting thing for me is that I can you know everybody kind of already knows well that plays a role in obesity that stuff plays a role in diabetes and and heart disease everybody kind of knows that I think the exciting thing for me is that I get to bring mental illness into the picture too and say hey hey the brain is part of the body too yeah well it did and that's that's a very good point people don't actually think about the the brain and the mind as being an actual physical organ that can be damaged and disrupted by chemical means yeah I people just think that it's all they're just thoughts in your head and everybody's got control over their thoughts in their head and if they don't have control over the thoughts of their head they just need to try harder and get control over those thoughts so if you're having anxiety just stop it just stop stop having anxiety if you're being depressed look on the bright side come on come on look on the bright side count your blessings practice gratitude that'll fix you take some deep breaths all of those things are ways to clear those bad thoughts from your head and that should solve your problem and unfortunately it doesn't work that way and it's not so simple at least not for a lot of people if if taking deep breaths and practicing gratitude works for you I'm all for it that's great that you found your answer but unfortunately for the majority people those things don't work no there was a there was a great uh piece by by Mad TV actually they had Bob Newhart on as a guest and he played this um psychologist or therapist and the person came in and they said like okay well it's gonna be very quick I never take more than five minutes It'll be very quick and the lady told him his her problems he said okay I'm just going to tell you three words and I want you to internalize them and take them home with you and he just yelled at her stop it and just what's that just and every time she said something well I have this problem he just scream at her stop it just stop it you know it was it was very funny uh how they did that it would be nice if that were as easy as that to just be like well just okay you're doing this that's a problem okay stop it and just stop it but obviously it's not that that simple only it was yeah hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor the carnivore bar I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat but for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnival bar is a great option so I like this product not because it's just pure meat but also because I want the carnivore Market to thrive as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products that will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10 off which also applies to subscriptions giving you 25 off total all right yeah so um so I'd love to talk about about the book uh brain energy I thought it was it was fascinating I haven't finished it yet myself I'm in the middle of reading it I absolutely love it and I love how you get really deep into detail about the the the well the structure and function of the mitochondria and how much of a role this play days in mental health and but before we get into that I'd love to hear you tell us you know how you you came to this uh idea in the first place that guy played such a significant role in mental health you know it's all a story of serendipity For Me For Better or Worse um I I didn't set out to do what I ended up doing um and you know the story The quick I'll do the quick version happy to get into details if you want to on any of these particular aspects but the quick and dirty version is you know I actually struggled with mental illness when I was a kid I went through some really horrible [ __ ] in my family and um spent a period of time homeless uh really struggled in high school with severe depression suicidality all sorts of adverse social things um pulled myself together but by the time I was in my 20s had metabolic syndrome was doing a low-fat diet was exercising regularly was not officially overweight it had never had a weight problem if anything I was underweight I was thin um and uh you know year after year the doctor is trying to push drugs on me and I finally try the Atkins diet time and um and lo and behold it got rid of my metabolic syndrome that was my goal I just wanted to get rid of my metabolic syndrome but I noticed dramatic Improvement in my mental health I noticed significant Improvement in mood energy concentration sleep I started recommending it to friends and family they start having equal kind of improvements in mood energy I start using it in treatment resistant depression patients so I've got tons of them in my clinic they've tried dozens of antidepressants and mood stabilizers and antipsychotics and everything else some of them have been in therapy for years or decades some of them have tried ECT and I'm changing their diet and for at least some of them it's working like in a powerful dramatic way it's like it's it's a it has the potency of a medication but this is one that actually is working as opposed to just trying Med after Med that does not work and so I'm like flabbergasted that wow this is like one of my patients even got hypomanic and I was like what the hell is going on this is impossible like a diet is causing hypomania this is like crazy I laid low because I was like this is you know nobody's gonna believe this I'm gonna lose my license if I start talking to himself I'm I'm just I'm just gonna do my thing try to help the people in front of me keep my day job just go along and then in 2016 I help one of my patients with schizoaffective disorder which is crossed between schizophrenia and bipolar help him lose weight using a ketogenic diet no I had no conception that it was going to help his symptoms um and lo and behold within two months it didn't happen overnight but within two months he's dramatically less depressed but much more importantly hallucinations are going away delusions are going away he is starts regaining the ability to function in the world to go out in public to to do school work to he could he actually could perform improv in front of a live audience he was able to do all sorts of things that would have been impossible for him and that was the point that I decided I can't stay quiet about this anymore this is impossible this this is literally impossible this this like this is too important to this is too important of a finding because people with schizophrenia and even bipolar disorder their lives are decimated a lot of times and and our treatments suck and everybody knows it everybody with those disorders knows it and every clinician knows it like we all know these are that is the most heartbreaking thing to say to a patient if you're in the mental health field you have schizophrenia that is the most heartbreaking thing it is like saying you have terminal cancer I'm really sorry but you have terminal cancer you're [ __ ] and there's nothing we can do for you um and so I'm like wait this diet is changing is schizophrenia and making it go away so I'm collaborating with researchers and everything now I'm I I'm like people from all over the world researchers clinicians patients are reaching out to me I'm treating dozens of people now seeing sometimes miraculous remissions of illness some people getting off all their meds so now I'm really in Hot Pursuit Of ketogenic diet is a treatment for mental illness I went down the path of the epilepsy version of the ketogenic diet really focused on this isn't a diet this is a medical therapeutic intervention for epilepsy and that's we used epilepsy treatments all the time so that's what I'm doing here but I didn't stop there because I'm I'm thinking wait like I could just stop it ketogenic diet as a therapeutic intervention for mental illness and there's lots of research now happening we've got five controlled trials underway other researchers are pursuing this that is happening people are really excited and passionate about seeing that work progress but I didn't stop there I'm like wait I'm putting schizophrenia into remission off meds that's not supposed to happen schizophrenia is supposed to be a genetic lifelong disorder that's what we tell people now genetic lifelong disorder you're [ __ ] stage four cancer [ __ ] and this that's not what's happening here hey I'm putting these disorders into remission so I need to understand what the hell is happening like what is going on here and how can I understand it and how can it help us in the mental health field how can it help us better understand these disorders so so I go on this deep scientific dive try to figure out how can I even make sense of this and out the other end comes basically brain energy which is beyond all expectations beyond my wildest dreams I'm like wait the more I dove into the science the more I realized wait we can connect a lot of Dots here this isn't just about diet it's not just about schizophrenia this is about all mental illness and this is about connecting the biological psychological and social causes of mental illness putting it all together certainly helping us understand and support why a dietary intervention can be a powerful powerful intervention for the brain but also helps us understand drugs and alcohol helps us understand stress and Trauma and Andrew's childhood events helps us put all of the picture together and uh so obviously I'm super excited about it all yeah well definitely and you know the more I sort of look at things you know the more diseases and problems come down to the meta to the mitochondria and the problems thereof you know I mean and this was something that was was being studied quite see you know in depth with the Otto Warburg you know his Nobel Prize when you're in medicine and he came up with the the theory on the origin of cancer in his paper in 1951 talking about how this is this is the mitochondrial metabolic disease this is this is a matter of uh disruption of oxidative phosphorylation and all the problems derived thereof and picked up later by other other researchers but it's been sort of overshadowed you know with all everyone's just saying everything's genetic it's genetics genetic it's genetic and as with uh you know schizophrenia and other mental disorders it's just no this is genetics this is just the the hand that you're dealt and that's it and there's nothing we can do about it and of course if that's if you're if that's the Assumption of the mechanism of the etiology then you're going to have a very different treatment modality than if you're going down the mitochondrial pathway um and so you know some of these treatments like you say they're not very effective like what what is the the the the effectiveness of the current treatments that we have for major depression anxiety schizoaffective or schizophrenia in general news that a lot of people really aren't aware of is that our current treatments are not very effective so for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia most people know those our treatments suck um most people know that um because again schizophrenia is like a stage four cancer diagnosis like at best we're going to be able to deliver palliative care keep people out of jails try to keep people alive try to prevent them from assaulting other people but that's that's the best that we can hope for they basically become sedated zombies living at home alone uh or with their parents or in a group home or in a nursing home or in a state hospital and they stay to themselves they stay quiet because we sedate them we we give them massive doses of sedating medications and if you look at the long-term outcomes of people with schizophrenia so one study followed over 6 000 patients for I think four years all treated at academic medical centers only four percent of the patients recovered from their illness well only four percent 96 percent of people getting treatment these are the patients getting treatments it's not the homeless people who are refusing treatment these are the patients actually cooperating with treatment 96 are not getting all the way better and staying better with so that's not that surprising though but most people are like well yeah schizophrenia that you know that's a horrible diagnosis and our treatments suck and everybody knows it with major depression major depression is now the leading cause of disability on planet Earth wow it is not because those people aren't getting treatment it's because our treatments fail to work for far too many of those people so one study followed people getting treatment for major depression for 12 years hundreds of people all getting treatment and they could get any treatment they wanted it was they were all academic medical centers they could get Psychotherapy or ECT or TMS or change antidepressants or add some mood stabilizers add some antipsychotics do whatever the clinician thinks is the best thing to do 90 of them did not get better and stay better nine zero percent even though we have dozens of antidepressants and mood stabilizers and ECT and ketamine and now psychedelics and everything else 90 aren't getting better so we need new ways to think about and treat mental illness yeah absolutely and so in your um in your in your study of this you know how effective is you know what I assume that the major intervention is ketogenic diet is that is that the main um treatment modality that you're using at the moment or is there more to it there's more to it so so the so I outline a lot of quite a lot of things that can impair metabolism in the book and so the way that I kind of go about treating patients now is I look at what are all the things that this person is exposed to or doing that are impairing their metabolism bad diet is clearly one of the things in a lot of people but it could also be stress it could be Heavy alcohol use or smoking cigarettes heavy marijuana use but it could also be unfortunately prescription medications unfortunately we prescribe a lot of medications that impair mitochondrial function and impair metabolism and we know that and the easy way to know that is that any medication that makes you gain weight makes you diabetic that causes heart attacks or Strokes the the concrete way is if you if you take a medicine and it slows you down and you feel slowed down by it that is impairing your metabolism plain and simple and unfortunately those are some standard treatments in Psychiatry we prescribe those pills all the time to people so in my treatment strategy the first thing is to identify all the things that are impairing metabolism and try to come up with a plan to slowly but surely reduce or eliminate them and that can take some time getting people to stop using alcohol or smoke cigarettes or get off prescription meds can take time it needs to be done safely but then I'm looking at strategies how can we improve this person's metabolism how can we help them heal and that almost always involves a change in diet um so a ketogenic diet or carnivore diet or lots of other dietary strategies can play a powerful role in improving metabolism stopping there I'm also getting these people exercising and moving I'm making sure they're getting good sleep uh other things I'm making sure they actually start having something to do like having a purpose in their life like you can't just sit around your apartment all day or your your father's home all day anymore we've got to get you moving and participating in society again because it's stressful to sit around and feel like you're useless that alone it's stressful if if you force a human being and say you're useless to society nobody wants you nobody needs you you're just disabled that alone causes mental symptoms that alone causes depression and most people and it can it can add on itself so I'm I'm looking at kind of all of this comprehensive treatment plan there is no doubt I don't want to underplay the role of diet because that has been the linchpin I have come across so many patients who come to me and say I've already done all these other things Dr Palmer I've done all of them I'm doing them I'm meditating and working and reducing my stress and sleeping good and I got off all bad substances and I still have bipolar disorder or I still have depression or I still and then I change their diet and poof everything becomes a miracle cure and it's just like wow and uh yeah it's amazing yeah and so that sort of gets us to you know your theory on what's the underlying you know problem that's going on with these with these uh mental disorders if you there's a unifying theory behind that is that right yes so I'm arguing in the book that at the end of the day all mental disorders are metabolic disorders so in the same way that people can have a metabolic disorder of obesity or diabetes or cardiovascular disease and those disorders affect different organs they affect your fat cells or your heart or your pancreas or your insulins you know and glucose systems um the brain can be affected by metabolic problems too and when the brain is affected by metabolic problems it starts to malfunction and that means that you can get all sorts of symptoms of mental illness but at the end of the day when you when you ask like some basic Common Sense questions well what does that mean what does it mean to have a metabolic problem like exactly how are obesity and diabetes and heart attacks connected like what actually connects them what is it I know a popular thing right now is to say it's insulin and insulin resistance I actually think that is not sufficient in and of itself it is a key player and it is a key biomarker actually I really do believe that so I I don't think it's wrong but I don't think it in and of itself is sufficient to explain all metabolic problems and instead I think you have to go to mitochondria and once you understand mitochondria and what causes them to become dysfunctional the more I learned about this over the last like seven years the more excited I became and I actually won a few points I was like how to ask friends am I going crazy because because I think I'm really connecting like all the dots of mental ill this is this can't be really happened this I must be dreaming or maybe I'm maybe I'm really going crazy and like I'm gonna be admitted to a hospital or something like I don't know but so to share with people the um you know to take a step back from that and let you let you know I don't think I'm crazy I question but I don't think I am I've come to the conclusion I don't think I'm crazy and several leading psychiatrists and neuroscientists have endorsed this book so they don't think I'm crazy either so it's it's not complete quackery and craziness that I think that the thing to point out is that I'm not making this Theory up out of thin air I'm simply taking all of the existing research in the mental health field and trying to put it together in one coherent way it's like it's like all of all the different research studies in my mind are like pieces of a puzzle and that puzzle needs to be put together form one clear picture and that is what I'm doing with this theory is you know this research goes back centuries the connections between diabetes and mental illness goes back to the 1800s researchers were writing about that since the 1940s researchers have identified metabolic problems like glucose insulin lactate and other metabolic kind of biomarkers we've known that there are metabolic problems in the brains and bodies of people with mental illness since the 1940s all the brain scans that we're doing guess what they're all measuring they're all measuring metabolism brain metabolism so in some ways this is kind of nothing new it's just taking all of the existing research but putting it together in a clear coherent way the groundbreaking thing I think is really on all of the different roles that mitochondria play and this is this has not been known forever I think one of the reasons this is so exciting is because this is Cutting Edge research and it's primarily taking place in other fields it's not taking place it some of it is taking place in the mental health field and there are absolutely mental health professionals who are going to feel like Chris Palmer how dare you steal my ideas these are my ideas these are the things I've been working on and how dare you try to take credit or you know what make no mistake I am using all of their work all of their research I am standing up on their shoulders if they had not done that research I wouldn't be here I wouldn't have a book I wouldn't have a theory so I am not trying to steal their Thunder I am not trying to steal credit it is important to give credit where credit is due but this is about taking it all and putting it all together and I have never seen anybody else put it together in the way that I've put it together um if they have I welcome the opportunity to see it but I've never seen it um but I think the reason the thing that's so exciting is that once you understand mitochondria you can start to understand neurotransmitter kind of abnormalities or imbalances you can understand hormonal imbalances you can understand the role of inflammation you can even the gene expression mitochondria like the key Regulators of epigenetics and so everybody's like you know schizophrenia is a genetic disease well no it's an epigenetic disease it involves abnormalities in the expression of genes and mitochondria are the way to understand that and then once you understand this big picture it opens up entirely new treatments like dietary change yeah and um you know which is which is really exciting as well it's harder to package that and so you know maybe that's why industrial sort of research hasn't gone down that track because you know you're looking for some sort of you know pharmaceutical and that that perfectly reasonable it makes sense that they would um but it would be even nicer for people if they didn't have to go down that route and could do something where their bodies would just work better on their own which is um sort of a novel thought and just allowing your body just to get on with things so what what is it about mitochondria that leads to mental disorders so so I kind of this was one of the key parts of developing this Theory and um because I you know the more I read about mitochondria I hadn't seen anyone really trying to break it into concrete kind of clear Pathways of like what happens when mitochondria aren't functioning in a cell like what are the consequences of that I saw tons literally thousands of research articles almost all of them would focus on one aspect or another or maybe a few and they would quickly get lost in the weeds of complexity like all of these biochemical Pathways like this enzyme produces this molecule which then goes to this part of the cell and triggers this receptor and and they tell that part of the story but that's a tiny part of the story and so when I was developing this Theory I tried to do all read all of these articles but always stepping back and trying to see the bigger picture like how can we make sense of this and how can I help other people understand this and so at the end of the day I've identified five clear consequences of mitochondrial dysfunction two of them and I go into detail in the book but two of them are particularly important to answer your question how does mitochondrial dysfunction result in mental illness um yeah well I'll actually mention three so one of them is that mitochondria play a critical role in neurodevelopment and that means some people with neurodevelopmental disorders like autism [Music] may have had metabolic or mitochondrial problems as they were developing and that resulted in a neurodevelopmental disorder like autism or like a learning disorder or epilepsy or something else and um a lot of people think you know that's one of the criticisms I've gotten is well if this is all metabolic what does autism have to do with diet there's not there's no connection there these are kids these these kids were drinking breast milk how are you blaming diet on autism but let me share one quick statistic to help clear that up I didn't do this in the book so I'll share it with you now mothers who are diabetic and obese have three to four times the rate of having an autistic child men who are obese have double the chances of having an autistic child in case you didn't know it we have epidemics of obesity and diabetes in our population and that includes people who are having kids so when people are like where the hell is all this autism coming from because autism rates have tripled in the last 20 years and everybody's scratching their heads where is all this autism coming from that can't possibly be true and people must be making this [ __ ] up they're just over diagnosing autism what I'm here to say is no they're not over diagnosing autism they are accurately diagnosing autism where is it coming from it's coming from the Obesity and metabolic these epidemics that are occurring in our population and in those people's parents and um so so neurodevelopment is one of the things the bigger consequences of mitochondrial dysfunction are that in a nutshell cells can become under active or overactive and that's a paradox it really is a paradox that cells can become underactive or overactive but it that was actually the critical piece of developing this Theory and helping us understand so much about like why do some of our metabolically toxic treatments reduce symptoms that Paradox actually helps us understand that um but when I say under active so brain cells can be underactive or overactive um or they can be normal so if they're normal that means you're healthy you you're you're doing your thing you are a normal human being everybody looking at you thinks you're a normal person you're just doing your stuff doesn't mean you don't get depressed or anxious everybody gets depressed and anxious if bad stuff happens to you or if somebody threatens you that all happens that's normal but an underactive brain system might result in you know parts of your brain that should be helping you concentrate or pay attention maybe under active and if those brain areas are underactive it might result in symptoms that we call attention deficit hyperactivity disorder um or if memory cells cells that are supposed to be helping you store memories if those are under active it means that you're going to be forgetful or maybe have memory impairment overactive cells a clear example is that we all have anxiety Pathways in our brain if those cells are metabolically compromised and Hyper excitable or overactive it means that you could have anxiety or a panic attack out of the blue for no reason and um and that would get diagnosed as anxiety or an anxiety disorder I'll stop there but obviously I could go I could go on and on and on about all of this so I'm sorry if I'm long-winded no not at all no it's all very interesting um you know it's interesting you mentioned autism and diet as well because that's something that when I started looking into uh you know carnivore Dino or biologically appropriate diet if this was carnivore and and what that meant and I sort of asked I started asking questions and I started asking questions of the literature and I said okay if this is true if my theory is true we should see X in in the literature and so I started looking and one of my thoughts was you know is autism uh related to diet because like you say it's tripled in the last you know a few decades that has has matched the the increase in other metabolic diseases and you know heart disease diabetes even cancer um autoimmune disorders all these things they all sort of started going up around the same time so I started asking myself okay is autism diet related as well and I started looking in the literature and I thought okay well you know is it could be with sugar it could be with metabolic issues could it be with you know avoiding meat you know going away from this and so I actually found a number of studies there was one that looked at the diet of of women preconception and they found 14 foods that all uh showed a significant reduction in their you know correlated with with less um children having autism all of them were meat-based um then women that had higher saturated fat intake and LDL cholesterol during pregnancy at lower rates of children with autism women who breastfed versus bottle fed um lower rates of children with autism they didn't distinguish between pumping and formula but quite a lot of people who do uh bottle feed would use formula which is a lot of you know cornstarch and sugar as opposed to the normal ingredients in breast milk and then the other one I thought was was very interesting all these are obviously correlative but there was one that actually showed a stronger link and even a causative link from Texas A M that found that there was an increased rate of autism in people who were vegetarian and vegan and they found that this was due to a lack of carnitine that some children were deficient in making carnitine obviously this is something we consider a non-essential amino acid but not everybody but it's not unessential to everyone and so this doesn't exist in Plants carnitine and so we have to get it from meat if we need it and so these kids if they're not making enough carnitine and they're not getting it in the meat then they can they can get a neural misdevelopment and so I thought that was very interesting so I I thought that was very interesting seeing that that you found that relationship between uh neurodevelopmental issues such as autism and uh and diet as well absolutely and well and the support in support of everything you just said so carnitine is actually critical to mitochondrial function um and uh and so if you actually look at well what exactly is carnitine doing it's all about mitochondria it's all about getting nutrients and fats into mitochondria so that they can process fat as a fuel source um but it's also about their normal function um and and to take it back just so people know because you mentioned a lot of correlational studies they're dating back to the 1980s researchers have identified mitochondrial deficits in people with Autism Spectrum disorders so in the 1980s the mitochondrial theory of autism was actually first proposed and numerous researchers have continued to build on that and continue like the evidence just keeps accumulating and all the different factors it's not that there is one and only one cause of autism or one and only one cause of mitochondrial dysfunction there are numerous causes and again they include biological psychological and social absolutely though diet is a key player in metabolism and mitochondrial function there is no way around it diet is critical um and when you look at all the different risk factors for autism spectrum disorder they all Converge on mitochondria so it it makes perfect sense I think in support of what you're saying like even going Beyond autism I mean there was a study I think it was done in India where a lot of people are vegan or vegetarian and researchers actually supplemented children's diet with some meat it wasn't even a lot just a little bit of meat um early in life and it was a randomized controlled trial half the kids hundreds of kids half of them did not get the extra meat half of them got the extra meat the ones who got the meat had higher IQs statistically significant higher IQs and the re those researchers actually said it is unconscionable that we are not giving me to give to all kids and it is unconscionable that we are talking about plant-based diets when when this like impacts brain development and cognition and intelligence yeah I think I saw a similar study maybe maybe it was that one but they uh they gave these kids one egg just one egg a day seemed to make a statistically significant difference in their in their IQ which is amazing you know I mean just that that little it is much eggs or eggs are like I think so you know there was a social media meme going around eggs are like a multivitamin they've got lots of nutrients in them yeah and uh and you should just take them like that and be like I'll just take my vitamins exactly so uh that sort of begs a question so is are these treatment modalities of addressing the mitochondrial metabolic function of the cell is that beneficial in autism as well so if you have studies it's a really important question and we do have a few studies very small pilot Trials of the ketogenic diet for autism and for the most part there are some benefits to kids with autism so sometimes there's Improvement in cognition much more importantly there's Improvement in mood but Improvement in the social skills is usually not there there are some there are one or two case reports that have been published in the medical literature and I know you know there's a Netflix I think documentary um out there where people are claiming that they can cure autism I and if that is happening I don't mean to take away from that I don't mean but the way I see it is autism is a neurodevelopmental issue and so like people need to acquire social skills at the right time of neurodevelopment at the right age and if they miss that opportunity like we go through what are called developmental windows and these windows open but then they close and if you don't acquire certain skills or brain circuits or brain Connections in the right way at the right developmental time you can lose that opportunity it's as simple as a cleft lip cleft lip is a developmental problem the cells didn't develop that can become permanent it's not that we can't do surgery and try to fix it but but we can't like change a diet and expect that cleft lip to fill in yeah um we can't give that person even a pill and expect that cleft lip to fill in that cleft lip is a developmental issue and and the development didn't happen in the correct way at the correct time and that can result in a permanent kind of change in that person and I strongly suspect that autism is going to involve at least some features along those lines that if if if humans don't acquire social skills by the age of 10 it's going to be increasingly difficult if not impossible to teach them the exact same social skills that other people have doesn't mean we can't mitigate or improve change um and again people with Autism have uh or autistic people because I really want to be respectful these are human beings they didn't do anything wrong there's nothing some of them are the most brilliant scientists and business people in our on our planet right now so so autistic people sometimes rule the world so I I don't wanna I don't want to diminish them or their Worth or anything but autistic people have higher rates of all the mental disorders and many neurological disorders they have much higher rates of seizures but also depression and schizophrenia and bipolar and OCD and other symptoms and those I think can be corrected with changes in diet or other metabolic strategies okay and that I mean that makes perfect sense you know this is a developmental issue and once the brain is developed those pathways are developed it's I mean brain is plastic certainly but it's not that plastic it's not going to just completely uh will be able to to develop uh pass a certain point once it's already sort of set but I suppose um I suppose it could be looked at if you sort of catch it early enough and then start addressing these metabolic issues might have better outcomes hopefully there is no doubt in my mind this this is an opportunity for major prevention efforts and it's across the board so if you have a young child who is not developing normally in any way cognition social skills or otherwise you and that can often be identified at a young age and sometimes parents notice it sometimes parents will say my kid was perfectly normal got a severe infection had to be hospitalized for that infection and was never the same after that tells us that there has been a metabolic assault in the form of an infection and we know and I walked through some of that science even you know of how an infection can impact mitochondrial function and then result in a neurodevelopmental disorder but as soon as we identify that problem we can Implement strategies right then and there to mitigate and or correct any developmental issues and I do believe that we can potentially prevent disorders to give you another clear example and maybe move on from autism you know there was one study that followed 5 000 kids the kids with the highest levels of insulin resistance beginning at age nine had a five-fold increased rate of being at risk for developing schizophrenia or bipolar disorder by the time they turn 24. wow fivefold that's 500 increase so when you usually look at diet studies they're like oh this results in a 10 increased risk for this we're not even 500 increased risk that is not trivial that should not be ignored insulin is a biomarker we can measure today glucose levels are biomarkers we can measure today and if you have a nine-year-old kid with already already showing signs of insulin resistance you can use diet and exercise and other lifestyle strategies to correct that insulin resistance and potentially prevent cases of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder so I really think this is a new day in the mental health field absolutely and so and so what is it about a ketogenic diet that affects the mitochondria so much it's you know the that was the thing that led me on this you know that was the thing that led me on this path and we have tons of evidence that the ketogenic diet affects neurotransmitters it decreases insulin improves insulin signaling or insulin resistance changes gene expression does all these different things at the end of the day I had to narrow in on mitochondria and there are two critical things that the ketogenic diet does that are really highly unique it results in something called mitophagy which is essentially a process that the body uses to get rid of old or defective mitochondria and replace them with new ones and then it also stimulates a process called mitochondrial biogenesis which basically means the production of new mitochondria and so when people have done a ketogenic diet for months or years their cells will actually have more mitochondria and those mitochondria will be healthier and that allows those cells to function better and I actually think that is the magic ingredient of the ketogenic diet for people at least with mental disorders yeah wow and then so this is why a lot of people would uh to tout the benefits of fasting and things like that because of autophagy and and mitophagy as well do you get these benefits it sounds like you get these benefits regardless if you're just in that metabolic state that we see in fasting is that is that right or is there is there a specific benefit to actually abstaining from uh eating that so fasting definitely stimulates the process the challenges that in people with mental disorders it appears that their mitochondria are severely impaired um and that impairment may actually include some of the essential facts like like omega-3 fatty acids which are fat are an integral part of the mitochondrial membrane and so fasting for a day or even a week fasting isn't replacing any of the omega-3 fatty acids you're actually not eating at all so fasting has some benefits but if people have defects in mitochondria because of they're not getting essential nutrients you mentioned carnitine that's another critical one if you don't have enough carnitine fasting isn't going to solve that problem yeah um so so I think that fasting can play a role and certainly intermittent fasting coupled with a ketogenic diet or carnivore diet or some other diet can be really beneficial for some people but you also do need to look at dietary strategies to make sure people are getting their essential nutrients to replenish and restore health and mitochondrial health and metabolic health yeah it makes sense you know I when I look at biochemistry obviously you know we learn and we teach that we have a Fed state in a fasting State and that you have this fasting mimicking diets and keto and carnivore mimic fasting but I think that that we have sort of have that backwards I think that that that so-called fasting state is actually our primary metabolic State that's where it's revolved heavy machinery comes to Bear we work a lot better metabolically that way and it's just that when you stop eating carbohydrates then you get into this metabolic stadium is I if I eat 4 000 calories of rib eye I'm not fasting and yet I'm in this so-called fasting metabolism and that seems to be the same metabolism that most animals in in the wild are in and uh so I think that we've sort of misnamed that I think that by the time we're able to look at things metabolic or our metabolism at a molecular level everyone was just eating carbohydrates so they just assumed that was the the default state but I think that uh certainly your work complements that entirely that that just being in this metabolic State confers significant benefits to our metabolism and just overall health and particularly in in our mitochondria yeah absolutely yeah so I'm um I'm I'm conscious of your time I know you have a meeting coming up I'd love to ask you about a thousand more questions but I I don't want to I don't want to uh keep you from your meeting so we'll just uh just stop with this what does what does Dr Palmer eat what is your your diet these days lots of meat and eggs and um uh so I'm not carnivore I am an omnivore but tend to I've been low carb I've certainly done carnivore diet um you know even 20 years ago before the term carnivore was even coined uh it was basically the zero carb diet is the way we would look at it it's just like do the Atkins diet but don't eat anything other than meat or animal sourced foods like nothing but meat and eggs and uh butter and uh um just eat that so uh so I have certainly done that along the way and absolutely noticed benefits there is no question about it um and uh so yeah there you know I'm really interested in some of these bigger picture questions too I would love to see some longitudinal studies caring you know carnivore diet versus omnivore ketogenic diet versus a vegan diet versus you know a Mediterranean diet and let's really see some long-term Health outcomes in people so that we can create a more robust medical database and give people more accurate information I think that would be great and I would love to be involved in something like that and uh I think I think hopefully it will be you know I mean there was a study that just came out of Harvard it was it was one of these nutritional survey sort of things but it's a start you know it's at least it's catching people's interests it did have quite remarkable uh self-reported outcomes but I think that that's uh at least enough to get people sort of interested in and on the scent so hopefully that Sparks bigger studies from here absolutely yeah definitely well Dr Palmer thank you so much for your time I really do appreciate it how do people get a hold of you how do they find your book and support your work the easiest place is brain energy.com so all one wordbrainenergy.com if you go there you can learn more about the work you can you can actually join the newsletter we are hoping to start a Grassroots Movement we want to change the mental health field we want to do so much lots of free information available um you can network with people you can follow me on social media all there perfect well I'll put all those those links up in the show notes as well and uh and I encourage everyone to follow your work and get the book as well it's absolutely excellent I'm only um halfway through it but it's already uh very very eye-opening I'm looking forward to the rest Dr Palmer thank you so much it's been a pleasure thank you Dr chafee thank you [Music]