Dhru Purohit Show - Sugar Is Breaking Our Brains and Poisoning Our Mitochondria with Dr. Chris Palmer (Rebroadcast)

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth, Lifeforce, and Armra Colostrum. Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, we are resharing one of our top episodes to date with Harvard psychologist Dr. Chris Palmer. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Palmer dive into a new way of understanding and treating mental illness. Dr. Palmer shares the research that uses a ketogenic diet to restore mitochondrial function in the brain.  He also discusses the shortfalls of the chemical imbalance theory and the conventional medicine approach to treating mental illness and so much more. Dr. Palmer weaves in inspiring stories of himself and his patients who have been able to overcome mental illness and regain their independence by addressing functional imbalances at the source.  Dr. Palmer is a psychiatrist and researcher working at the interface of metabolism and mental health. He is the Director of the Department of Postgraduate and Continuing Education at McLean Hospital and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.  For over 25 years, he has held leadership roles in psychiatric education, conducted research, and worked with people who have treatment-resistant mental illnesses. He has been pioneering the use of the medical ketogenic diet in the treatment of psychiatric disorders through conducting research, treating patients, writing, and speaking around the world on this topic. More broadly, he is interested in the roles of metabolism and metabolic interventions on brain health. In this episode, we dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): -The number-one driver of mental health disorders today (1:49 / 1:49) -The role metabolism plays when it comes to mental health disorders ( 2:45 / 2:45) -The patient who changed the way Dr. Palmer treats mental illness (7:25 / 4:30) -The long-term outcomes of using medical interventions for depression (18:12 / 15:23) -Dr. Palmer’s personal history with mental illness and what he noticed after making changes to his diet (22:44 / 20:00) -The role mitochondria play in mental disorders (52:46 / 49:45 ) -The causes of mitochondrial dysfunction (58:44 / 55:42) -Pharmaceutical drugs and mitochondrial dysfunction (1:14:05 / 1:09:51) -Understanding the current treatment model of mental health disorders (1:20:56 / 1:17:23) -How to address metabolic health to improve mental disorders (1:29:25 / 1:25:26) For more on Dr. Chris Palmer, visit his website, chrispalmermd.com. Get his book, Brain Energy, here.  Cozy Earth are the most comfortable, temperature-regulating, and non-toxic sheets on the market. Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use code DHRU. Lifeforce is a revolutionary new health platform that’s changing the game when it comes to personalized performance and longevity-based action plans. Right now, get 15% off your first purchase at Mylifeforce.com with code DHRU. ARMRA Colostrum is a proprietary concentrate of bovine colostrum that harnesses over 400 living bioactive nutrients. Receive 15% off your first order. Go to tryarmra.com/DHRU or enter DHRU to get 15% off your first order. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mental disorders are actually metabolic disorders of the brain, and it is not a coincidence that as the rates of obesity and diabetes are skyrocketing, so too are the rates of mental disorders, all the way from anxiety to depression, to bipolar disorder, and even autism. Welcome to the Drew Proet podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Dr. Chris Palmer. Dr. Palmer is a psychiatrist and researcher working at the interface of metabolism and mental health. At his clinic, he is showcasing and has collected hundreds of case studies of individuals who have reversed PTSD, depression, bipolar disorder, and even things like hardcore schizophrenia using his methodology. Dr. Palmer is the director of the Department of Postgraduate and Continuing Education at McLean Hospital.

and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. For 25 years, he has held leadership roles in psychiatric education, conducted research, and worked with people who have treatment-resistant mental illness. He's been the biggest pioneer of using a medical ketogenic diet in the treatment of psychiatric disorders, conducting research in this area, treating patients, writing and speaking around the world on this topic. More broadly, he's interested in the roles of metabolism and metabolic and interventions on brain health. If you're curious on how to get to the root of our mental health

crisis using the powerful tools of diet and lifestyle, today's episode is absolutely for you. Stay tuned. Dr. Chris Palmer, welcome to the podcast. It's a pleasure to have you here. I'm going to jump right in and ask you a big picture question, which I'd love your take on. In your opinion, what is the number one driver of mental disorders today that is directly related to how we're living in our modern age? I think the biggest problem is that mental disorders are actually metabolic disorders of the brain. And as most people know, mental disorders are an escalating crisis throughout the world. They are now the leading cause of disability.

And it is not a coincidence. that as the rates of obesity and diabetes are skyrocketing, so too are the rates of mental disorders all the way from anxiety to depression to bipolar disorder and even autism. So the same things, if I'm understanding correctly, that are making us fatter and sicker as a society are also driving mental disorders? Absolutely. So talk about metabolism. What is its role when it comes to mental disorders?

Give us a little bit of a background. You know, a lot of people have a simplistic view of metabolism, and I don't. So a lot of people think about metabolism as burning calories, and it relates to how much people weigh. So if you have a high metabolism, you're going to be skinny, no matter how much you eat. And if you have a low metabolism, you're probably going to be fat, no matter how little you eat. and there's no doubt that metabolism relates to burning calories and to how much we weigh, but metabolism is much, much more than that. In many ways, metabolism is fundamental to the definition of living organisms.

So in a way, it's the process that all living organisms use to take food and convert it into energy or building blocks that we use to maintain or grow cells, and it's also the management of waste products. And so in this sense, you know, it's actually obvious that mental disorders are related to metabolism because metabolism has a direct influence on the function and even the structure of all living cells. And that includes brain cells and neurons. And so if there are metabolic problems, there will be problems in the way the brain functions. So I think a good way to understand this is to talk a little bit about a patient that found his way to you and came to you initially for weight loss and his weight loss journey and talk to us about who this patient was and what you put him through and the unintended positive consequences that happened from working with this patient. This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth.

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This is a real patient. I'm going to call him Tom. But Tom had actually been a patient of mine for over eight years at this point. He had schizoaffective disorder. He was 33 years old. and schizoaffective disorder is a cross between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He had daily hallucinations and delusions, and he was really tormented by his illness. He was essentially a hermit.

He was terrified to go out in public because he was convinced everybody was out to get him that people could read his thoughts, people were trying to hurt him. There were these technologies that could broadcast his thoughts to everybody in the world. And this man had tried 17 different medications, but none of them stopped his symptoms. They did cause him to gain a lot of weight. And so weighing 340 pounds, he asked for my help to lose weight. He had already tried several other weight loss methods without success, and so we decided to try the ketogenic diet.

Within two weeks, not only did he start losing weight, but I began to notice a remarkable antidepressant effect in him. He started making better eye contact, was talking more, was just a lot more positive. But he was still psychotic. He was still having hallucinations and delusions. The most shocking thing to me was that at about six to eight weeks into it, he spontaneously reported that his longstanding, chronic, decade-long hallucinations were going away and that his paranoid delusions were also going away.

He began to realize they weren't true and probably not. never had been. This man went on to lose 160 pounds now and has kept it off to this day, but he was able to do things he hadn't been able to do since the time of his diagnosis. He was able to complete a certificate program, go out in public without being terrified and paranoid. He was able to perform improv in front of a live audience. Now today, he actually teaches karate classes. he was able to do things that he had never been able to do, regardless of all of the treatments that he had tried in psychiatry. And that completely upended everything that I knew as a psychiatrist.

Now, if your professors in medical school and the individuals that you did shadowing under would look at that situation and try to explain it from a traditional medicine lens, in treating psychiatric disorders, especially severe ones like schizophrenia, what would they have said about the situation that you were witnessing firsthand? What would they thought was happening? At first glance, without a scientific understanding or a scientific explanation of what happened, which I now have, if I just told them I put a patient on a diet and he got dramatically better, they would say, Chris Palmer, you're crazy. You are crazy. Have you gotten yourself checked? because that's impossible.

If they determined that I wasn't crazy, they probably would have said it's a placebo effect. You know, it must be a placebo effect. You know, weight loss is really hard. It takes a lot of effort. People start to feel a little better. So maybe he's just reporting that his symptoms are better when, in fact, they aren't.

they might have speculated that maybe he never had schizophrenia to begin with. Some might have speculated maybe he had like vitamin B12 deficiency. He was a zebra in the schizophrenia world. He was a zebra. He had a rare nutritional deficiency, like vitamin B12 deficiency. And your change in diet corrected that vitamin deficiency that had been unrecognized and undiagnosed. And maybe that's why he got better. They would have come up with all sorts of speculations, but they would have thought either that I was crazy or that it was a very rare event.

Well, you actually had a little moment where not where you thought you were crazy, but you were like, am I seeing things? And you had to confer with his family member. Like, are you also seeing this too? Are you seeing that this patient is getting better? Tell us a little bit about that. And what did they notice? I did. I actually did question my own sanity.

And I, you know, the good news is that his father had been extraordinarily involved in his care. So his father knew this person very well. And the good news is that he was also seeing a psychologist at the same time as he was seeing me. So I had another Harvard professional on board. And I did have to ask both of them, are you seeing what I'm seeing? Because I'm really having trouble believing what I'm seeing. This doesn't happen, and it certainly doesn't happen with a diet. But his schizophrenia is melting away.

And this doesn't even happen with the best of treatments that we have to offer, let alone a diet. And I'm really having trouble understanding what I'm seeing. And they were equally kind of astonished and dumbfounded, but confirmed. No, you're not crazy. We're seeing it too. And like, what is this? What is happening? Wow.

And that sent me on a journey to understand what happened. Well, before we continue on that journey and talk a little about your history within health and low carb diets and ketogenic, I want to zoom back out, paint a picture for us about just how bad the problem has gotten with mental health disorders. And in some ways, it feels like everybody's talking about it. But in other ways, it feels like most people still don't understand just how terrible and how growing this epidemic is. Can you talk a little bit about the lay of the landscape and maybe some of even if you know any of the numbers or the statistics around the growing rates about some of these disorders and conditions? Absolutely. The rates of mental illness for the last 30, 40 years have been skyrocketing in some cases. And there's a lot of controversy around that.

Some people think, well, that's impossible because these disorders are genetic. And so that can't possibly be true. It lies in the face of our current paradigm. And so some people dismiss those statistics. They say, well, maybe the reason we're diagnosing more mental disorders is because we're recognizing the disorders more frequently. There's less stigma. There's less shame. We're screening more people.

We're recognizing the disorders. But in fact, the researchers doing this work, including people who do household surveys of just a random sample of the United States population, are finding the rates of these disorders increasing at alarming rates. And it's across the board. All mental disorders are increasing. Depression, anxiety, burnout, but also diagnoses like bipolar disorder and autism. And these were all increasing prior to the pandemic. There is no doubt the pandemic added insult to injury. And at one point during the pandemic, you know, prior to the pandemic, the rates in the United States were about one in five adults currently have a mental illness. Any given year, about one in five adults, 20% of the U.S. population will have a mental illness.

Lifetime prevalence rates are much higher, about 50%. One in two Americans will meet criteria for a mental disorder at some point in their lives or another. Which can range from everything from just depression all the way to, in the instance you were mentioned earlier with the patient like full-blown schizophrenia and everything in between. Absolutely. Depression, substance use disorder, what have you. During the pandemic, at one of the peaks of the pandemic, the CDC, the,

was doing a national representative household survey. And the peak was about 40% of all Americans were reporting symptoms of depression, anxiety, substance use, or PTSD, and substance use disorders, not just using alcohol, but actually it being problematic in their lives. And when they asked the participants, have you seriously considered killing your yourself in the last 30 days. 11% of all the people surveyed said yes. And 25% of those people aged 18 to 25 said yes. One in four, 18 to 25 year olds said they had seriously considered killing themselves.

The rates have come down a little bit since then. but they have not returned to their, quote-unquote, baseline rates. So, you know, mental disorders are now the leading cause of disability in the United States and throughout the world. And the number one diagnosis that leads that list is actually plain old depression. depression. Depression prevents more people from going to work or attending school than any other medical diagnosis. It includes heart failure, cancer, back pain, like all of the usual suspects of disabling disorders. Mental disorders are the leading cause. You know, on that topic, I've heard you say in a previous interview, that on the topic of depression, if you would talk to

most people that are out there, they would say, yeah, well, we have meds for that. And we're doing a pretty good job. We're identifying it. We're reducing the stigma of people having conversations. And there's medicine. There's medicine for that. Tell us why that is kind of like only partially the story. It's great that we are reducing the stigma. But let's talk about the medical intervention side of that. Yeah. And I'm going to throw in psychotherapy as well, because everybody assumes that, we have good treatments for depression. We have medications, tons of antidepressants. Everybody knows somebody on an antidepressant. Prior to the pandemic, I think the statistics were anywhere from 11 to 14 percent of the U.S. population was prescribed in antidepressant. I haven't seen updated statistics

since the pandemic, but I know that the rates have skyrocketed throughout the pandemic. And so lots of people are taking antidepressants, and lots of people are taking antidepressants, and lots of people, are going to therapists. And medications and therapy do work for some people. I don't want to detract from that, and I don't want to take away from that. But if you look at the long-term outcomes of people who get treatment, people who go to a primary care doctor or a psychotherapist or a psychiatrist for a prescription, now there are a lot of people who don't get treatment at all and their depression can kind of go away on its own. But of the people who get treatment,

only about 30% will actually get a remission of their illness with any treatment that they're getting, whether it's a pill or psychotherapy or a combination of the two, only about 30% will get a remission. And that means that they no longer meet criteria for major depression. It doesn't mean they don't have symptoms still. They could still have symptoms, but they're at least, quote-unquote, subclinical,

meaning they don't meet full criteria for illness. That means 70% of the people are still, by definition, clinically depressed, even with treatment. It gets worse than that, though, because if you follow those people for 12 years and you see how they fare over the long run, only 10% get a full and lasting remission of their depression. That means 90% of people are not getting better, at least not all the way better, with our current treatments.

And that helps us better understand why depression is the leading cause of disability. It's not because people aren't getting treatment. It's because our treatments fail to work for far too many people. Connect the dots for our audience, especially those that are not health care practitioners and haven't gone to medical school, what were you told about depression and why it happens and leading up to why these treatments were the primary intervention? You know, the primary paradigm right now

is usually referred to as the biopsychosocial model, which says that there are a lot of different things that can contribute to the cause of depression. But in reality, nobody knows for sure what's happening. happening. The brain's complicated. Nobody can figure it out. We really don't know. But some of these biosaicosocial risk factors include things like neurotransmitter imbalances, hormones, hormonal imbalances might contribute. Genetics and epigenetics seem to play a role. But psychological and social factors do too. Trauma, stress, abuse in childhood. Lonely,

we know that all of these things play a role. And so most people assume that we have these treatments that target different causes. So, you know, if you're lonely and have a trauma history, maybe psychotherapy is the better option for you. If you're somebody who has a chemical imbalance and a genetic history of depression, maybe you need a pill to rebalance your chemicals. And that's where we're at as a field. And as much as it all makes sense,

and as much as this is familiar to a lot of people, I just want to highlight again what I said before. It isn't working. It is not working for most people. Now contrast that approach in education, that's the common understanding that still most people have when it comes to depression, with what your experiences,

had set up for you, what you started noticing from working with many patients directly and putting them on a different intervention? You know, that story really actually begins with my own personal story, which I'm happy to share. Yeah, let's talk about that. So I will, we don't have to get into too much detail. Happy to if you really want to. But I have my own history with mental illness from a very early age. So, you know, I had all sorts of mental diagnoses throughout the years.

Started with OCD as a child through a variety of kind of horrible kind of family circumstances. My mother developed a very serious mental disorder and that put tremendous stress on me and the entire family. And so that kind of put me in the category of lots of adverse childhood events. And then after that, I actually really struggled a lot with mental illness. Somehow or another, a lot of that got better for me. It wasn't 100% better, but it was better enough. And I was in medical school.

I did really well in medical school. I actually got an award for being one of the top students. The people looking from the outside would have said, you're fine. Chris Palmer is fine. And I got into a Harvard psychiatry residency, and again, people would have said, you're fine. But I was actually still getting psychiatric treatment at that point for lingering symptoms. And by the time I was in my 20s, which was around that time,

I was diagnosed with metabolic syndrome already. So I had high blood pressure, bad lipids, high cholesterol, high triglycerides. I had pre-diabetes. And I'd been on a really low-fat diet and I exercised regularly and those weren't working for me. And at some point I decided to try a low-carbohydrate diet because nothing else was working for me and my doctor kept. trying to push me on pills. And I was thinking, if I go on pills now in my 20s, I'm going to be

having a heart attack by the time I'm 40, and that's not okay. This is not at all an acceptable solution. And if I could jump in, sorry for the interruption, what even placed the seed in your head that the low carbohydrate diet was something to explore? Do you remember reading anything? Do you remember coming across something, talking to somebody? It was all quackery at that point. actually it was. So at that point, it was primarily known as the Atkins diet. Yeah. And this was, this was largely seen to be quackery in the medical field. And I bought that hookline and Sengar. I was like, oh, that's a dangerous diet. You know, all my mentors and teachers are telling me to say that and believe that. And so I believed it. But I had heard through the rumor mill,

all these friends and family and other people were coming to me saying, I put my prediabetes into remission, or my blood pressure plummeted when I went on that Atkins diet. So many things got better when I did that Atkins diet. And here I am faced with the decision to go on pills or try some Hail Mary pass of a low-carb diet. And I decided, you know what, I'm going to try this Hail Mary path. I actually didn't think it would work. I really, when I set out to do it, I did not think it would work. And when you were saying work, again, just to clarify, were you actually thinking at a time that it could help you with your mental health? Or was it more sort of, you know, was it you were looking at biological markers like lipids and blood pressure and metabolic health or were driven by nothing wrong with this, but like vanity, like wanting to lose weight? What was the primary driver of thinking it would help?

The primary driver was my blood pressure, my bad lipids, and my pre-diabetes. Got it. That I knew as a physician those are really a bad sign, especially when I'm only in my 20s, and I really don't want to be having heart attacks when I'm in my 40s. And I've got to do something about this. And I knew that taking pills was not a path to success. Taking pills was essentially a fait accompli. It was if I go down that path, if I can't do this with diet and exercise, I'm screwed is what I thought.

And so I decided to try the Atkins diet, a low-carb diet. And I did kind of a lower, I still avoided saturated fat at that point. I was trying to, but I was eating eggs every morning, which was completely against the standard dietary advice at that point. And lo and behold, within three months, my bedabolic syndrome was gone. Completely gone, all of it. And because we've done a lot of episodes on this topic and we've gotten kind of deep into the biomarkers with different people, what were the things that you were looking at? So metabolic syndrome can be like high fasting insulin.

It can be out of balance sort of cholesterol markers and LDL. You know, sometimes even people throw in things like lipoprotein B. you know, that's more of a newer thing that wasn't kind of looked at back then. So what within that got better that you saw? And of course, as you mentioned, blood pressure. The things that got better were my pre-diabetes went away. So my blood sugars were normal.

I wasn't, nobody that I know was measuring insulin levels back then. So is that A1C? A1C. Okay, A1C. A1C was dramatically better. And also was that like your fasting glucose? Were you looking at that as well at the time? I was looking at fasting glucose when I went to the doctor.

for labs. I didn't have a glucometer or anything. But those got better. My triglycerides had been through the roof. They were over 300, and they plummeted down to about 70. Wow. My HDL was very low. I think it was in the 20s, and it went up to 60.

And that's good cholesterol for people who don't know. My LDL cholesterol actually went down. My LDL cholesterol improved dramatically. And my blood pressure plummeted in a good way, not that I was dizzy or lightheaded or anything, but my blood pressure had been high. It was like 160 over, I think 160 over 100 was what was averaging. And it went down to 110 over 70. and, you know, the fast forward on that is that pretty much I've followed a low-carb-ish diet

or maybe sometimes more of a paleo kind of a diet since then, and I'm in my 50s now. I still, I no longer, I don't have metabolic syndrome. My blood pressure is actually 1, 10 over 60 usually. My pulses in the 50s. I'm a metabolically healthy person. You totally changed your life around. You totally transformed your life. Completely transformed it.

It was sustainable for me, and it resulted in lasting metabolic improvement. But to get back to the story of mental health, the thing that I noticed most, like, those are all biomarkers. They're silent biomarkers. You don't go around thinking about your blood pressure. You don't go around thinking, like, what's my, like, how do I feel? feel with my cholesterol being high or low. The thing that I noticed that was very tangible and actually no doubt in my mind led to this being a sustainable diet for me was the dramatic changes in my

mental health. That I noticed dramatic improvement in my mood, energy, concentration, sleep. I started sleeping so much better. I would wake up feeling refreshed. Was that the first thing you noticed, like, can you remember back to that time? And if you think, like, the first time that you thought, like, whoa, I'm really feeling something. Was it the sleep? I think the sleep probably was it. Because up to that point, I had always been somebody who pushed the snooze button as many times as possible. Like, I had it timed to the minute that my alarm is going to go off at 6 a.m. I can push the snooze button four times and not be late for work or not be late for school or whatever I was doing. And I had it down to a rhythm. And at some point soon after starting

the diet within a couple of months, I was sometimes even waking up before my alarm went off and feeling good, feeling like I'm, I think I can get up now. And that was unheard of for me. Unheard of for me. And so based on that, I actually, you know, a lot of people, friends, family who wanted to lose weight were asking me, you know, what are you doing, Chris? You look good. You, you're, you know, you sound good. You seem healthier.

You seem happier. What's going on? I'm like, try this Atkins diet. It's really, it's, I was, I became an Atkins salesman. I was selling this. But it also sounds like kind of you put your own. little healthy twist on it. Because Atkins can be, you know, a lot of different things. Some people think it's just a bunch of butter and other things, but it sounds like you were also having a lot

of vegetables at the time. I was. You were also in your own way, you know, you're being mindful about a few things. So could you just give us a small, because people are so curious. Give us a like a compare and contrast of kind of what you were eating before that was driving this metabolic syndrome that you were experiencing. Like, how would you start your morning off, you know? Would you, how much, maybe sugar were you having in a day or carbohydrates. So give us a little bit of a compare and contrast. Yeah, no, now I'm almost embarrassed to say this. But at the time, at the time, sugar was not supposed to be bad for you. It was fat. Fat was bad for you. And as long as you don't eat fat, you should be healthy. So morning was always cereal. I had a bowl of cereal with low-fat

milk. Did you have a favorite? Did you have a favorite cereal that you were having at the time? Um, yeah, I was eating healthier. So I would eat cashy. There was this cashy kind of grain cereal. Seven grain cereal or something. Yeah, because that's supposed to be really healthy for you. So I would eat that a lot. I certainly liked my favorite tried and trues, you know, from childhood, fruit loops and Cheerios and, you know, cocoa puffs and all of that stuff. But. And was the milk? like usually skin milk? It was skin milk. Okay. It was skin milk. I would have coffee.

For lunch, I would have a turkey sandwich. I, you know, for dinner, I had a lot of pasta, bread. I was on a budget, so I needed to save money. So I didn't have a lot of money for a lot of meat. fish or fresh vegetables or other things. I remember entomans. So entomans had this whole line of baked goods. And they were healthy because they were zero fat, baked goods. So they were supposed to be healthy. So you could have donuts. You could have Danish, all sorts of things. So that's what I was eating. And according to the dietary guidelines of the United States of America, I was eating

a healthy diet. And according to my physician, year after year, I was eating a healthy diet. That is the only question he asked me, how much fat are you consuming? And I could honestly tell him less than 10 grams a day. And he said, well, then you should be fine. And your weight was probably like pretty stable, right? Like at the time, you weren't overweight. And so you're not coming up as a red flag. Sure, your metabolic health markers are off, but there was no awareness about any of those and what they were connected to in terms of your body and how you felt? Not at all. Not at all. And the point at which he started pushing medicines on me, he kind of leaned in and said, well, you know, does diabetes run in your family? I said, well, yeah, it does. Both of my parents

have type 2 diabetes. Um, any of them overweight. Yeah, both my parents are overweight. I said, oh, I'm really sorry. It's genetic. It's a genetic problem. And diet and lifestyle aren't going to work for you. You need medication. And I resisted that. And again, at the time that I resisted it, I really felt like I was going against everything I was taught.

And I felt like I was defying authority by doing that. The tragic thing now in my mind is that tens of millions of people are told exactly that same thing to this day. And they are told that they need pills. And they are told that lifestyle and diet and exercise just aren't going to cut it for them. They're soft interventions. They're soft interventions and clearly not working. And because you've got a genetic problem. diabetes runs in your family, or more to my kind of profession, mental illness runs in your family,

and you have a genetic disorder, and you're going to need pills for the rest of your life, and you're just going to have to accept that you have a chronic disorder, and just accept what that means for you in your life. And I now know, based on a tremendous amount of science, none of that is true. Going back to that moment, which was such a pivotal moment and really set up your career and has led you to not only writing this book, but like helping thousands of people, what was the first moment? I asked you, like, what was the first thing that you saw that shifted in your body? You mentioned sleep. But what was the first moment that you noticed that actually your mental health was improving during this?

It's hard. I honestly can't remember the specific moment, to be honest. the one part that I will share with you that completely just dumbfounded me regarding my own personal experience is that I had always noticed that there were these happy peppy people in the world and they have this motto, work hard and play hard. And I never understood that. I always, like, I knew what it was to work hard. I had gotten really good grades in medical school.

Medical school's hard work on its own. So I knew all about discipline. I knew all about hard work. I fully understood that. But I was exhausted after working so hard. I didn't have energy to go play hard. And I couldn't understand why on earth would anyone want to play hard. aren't you tired? Aren't you tired from working hard? You can't be working all that hard if you're

playing. Like it's got to be one or the other. Like nobody's got this unlimited energy to do all of it. And I had this model in my mind that there are kind of halves and have-nots in the world. There are people who are born privileged maybe because of genes or upbringing or social class, something. And they just have privileged lives, and they're the ones who get to be happy and peppy, and they're the ones who get to work hard and play hard. And I always knew that I was not one of those people, that I'm not them, whether it's genetics, whether it's my shitty childhood, whether it's whatever, I don't know, but I'm not one of those people. And after I changed my diet, I became a happy peppy, work hard, play hard person.

And I was dumbfounded. Did you notice it first, or did other people notice and say, you know what, you seem like in a really good mood today? Lots of people noticed it. So lots of people, and they just assumed maybe I'm happy because I'm on a diet and I did lose a few pounds. So people are complimenting you. I wasn't technically overweight, but I had a little bit of a gut and that gut was going

away. I think they noticed that I was more confident. But again, you're more confident because you're on a diet or you've changed your diet. You must somehow, yeah, think you look better or something, even if we're not noticing much of a difference in you, you must somehow think you look better. And that's great. That's great that you feel more confident. But it actually had nothing to do with my looks, had nothing to do with athletic ability. It had nothing to do with any of that. It was really just an internal state. It was internally how I felt my brain function, my ability to focus and concentrate, just my natural ability. I wasn't doing anything to get better sleep. I was just falling asleep more easily and sleeping more soundly through the night and waking

up feeling refreshed. It wasn't doing anything to earn that or get that. It was just a benefit, benefit that I noticed. But I think that's the striking thing that I remember is I went from a have-not to somebody who was in that privileged category. It's a powerful thing to go through because, you know, there's an old sort of saying, whoever it's attributed to, sometimes people say Tony Robbins, but nothing tastes as good as being healthy feels. And by the way, healthy food, like, can taste fantastic. And I think we've gotten much better at that. So just to close the loop on that, before we go into the next segment

that I want to talk about here, you shared a little bit about your diet before, you know, starting off the morning with cereal, having like a turkey sandwich, you know, having, you know, these intimate snack foods that are there, as long as the calories are in balance and the fat is low, you're getting pads on your back from your doctor, probably feeling a lot of dips in energy throughout the day, focus, changes in mood, which we're going to be talking about a little bit today, then contrast that once you started going on this more evolved version of an Atkins diet, like how are you starting your day? What did it look like? What were you eating a little bit just to paint a picture for our audience? So, you know, it, again, it started in the morning,

waking up, just feeling better, feeling more vibrant. For breakfast, I would usually have eggs. And usually it was just eggs. I would have three or four scrambled eggs or something. sometimes hard-boiled eggs. For lunch, I started switching over to some kind of protein sources. Early on, I was doing lower fat, non-red meat protein sources. So I was having turkey, chicken, salmon, other types of fish, non-bredded, and not even a whole lot of oil or anything. And then some kind of vegetables.

I was eating salads, lower carb vegetables with dinner, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, other types of vegetables. I would actually, back then, I would have sugar-free jello as kind of a dessert. I still had a little bit of a sweet tooth. But that was pretty much the diet that got me on a completely different path. What then later on did you understand, especially about carbohydrates as being a significant source in people's diets? What did you start to understand with the science kind of connecting with your own personal experiences and that story of the patient, Tim, as you were calling them? what did you understand that carbohydrates now were doing and their direct result on metabolic health?

It's a great question with a really complicated answer. Perhaps the simplest version is that, you know, a lot of people think about carbohydrates and insulin, insulin in particular. Most people think of insulin as it relates to diabetes, you know, type 1 or type 2 diabetes. So type 1 diabetes, your pancreas doesn't make insulin or not enough of it, usually because of an autoimmune process. And type 2 diabetes is insulin resistance, that you're not making enough insulin or the insulin just isn't working for some reason. But in fact, insulin is much more than diabetes. That is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what insulin does. We now know that insulin receptors are located throughout the human brain.

and that they play a profound role in brain function. And in some cases, they might be serving a similar purpose that they do in the rest of the human body. So usually people think of insulin as a kind of a lock and key. Insulin is needed to let glucose inside a cell so that the cell can use that glucose as an energy source. but in the brain it's actually more complex than that. So with neurons, most neurons, even if they have insulin receptors, the insulin is not serving that same purpose. Glucose is still able to get into that cell.

But the insulin is almost serving as a neurotransmitter in some ways. It is specifically, it is directly influencing the metabolism of that cell, and that means the function of the mitochondria within those cells. We know that with a lot of disease states, all the way from anxiety and depression to bipolar and schizophrenia to Alzheimer's disease, that people have trouble using glucose as an energy source in their brains. And this appears to at least include a problem with insulin signaling. Now, whether we call that insulin resistance or not, I think some scientists will kind of quibble over. What is that? What should we call that? But I think what's clear, what the science is clear on,

is that parts of the brain are not getting enough energy from glucose. And those same, parts of the brain appear to have abnormalities in insulin signaling. And what you eat actually plays a profound role in all of that. What you eat plays a profound role in insulin, certainly secreted from your pancreas, but also probably from insulin signaling and glucose signaling that comes from the brain, the hypothalamus in particular. And so in a way, there's almost this energy gap. And because of that energy gap, what we see as symptoms of mental disorders get displayed. Like, how does that turn, can you connect the dots for us?

So this energy gap is happening. And how does that translate into somebody in a case of depression feeling like, I don't have a drive? I don't feel motivated. I can only feel like it can focus on what's wrong in the world. How does that manifest exactly inside of the body as symptoms? Again, complex answer. The quick version is that this energy gap is what I'm going to call a metabolic problem. So if a cell has a metabolic problem, it means that there's a problem in producing an adequate amount of energy.

And one of the biggest paradoxes about a metabolically compromised cell is that, you know, actually kind of five different things can happen, but two in terms of its function can happen. And those two things are that the cell can actually become underactive, which is what most people would think of. If a cell doesn't have enough energy, like if a car doesn't have enough energy, it's not going to move as fast. So if its job is to like detoxify or get rid of stuff in the body or whatever it might be, whatever it's trying to do, it's not just not doing it as well as it should. Absolutely. And so when it comes to the brain, if it's a serotonin neuron, say, but it's an energy deprived serotonin neuron, it means that it's going to secrete less serotonin than it should be secreting. If it's a dopamine neuron, it means that it's going to be secreting less dopamine than it should be. And now we're starting to get to these. quote-unquote chemical imbalances or neurotransmitter abnormalities. But the paradox is that a metabolically compromised cell can actually become overactive as well. And at first glance, this seems really confusing, and it was really confusing to me

as I was developing this theory. It's supported by a tremendous amount of neuroscience literature, let me just say that. and it goes back, we've got decades of neuroscience literature to support this. The easiest way to think about it is to think about it like a car. A car needs gasoline and energy to go, but a car also needs brakes to stop and to stay in control. And if we think about the brakes as needing energy, cells need to go. And they use energy to go, but they also need energy to stop and to shut themselves off or go to a resting state. And so when a cell is energy deprived, sometimes it has enough energy to start going, but then it doesn't stop precisely when it should.

and that can lead to overactive cells and brain circuits, which can lead to symptoms of mental illness. So an easy example of that is, you know, we all have anxiety pathways in our brain. We have cells and pathways in our brain that produce the symptom of anxiety. And that's a normal thing. We all get anxious under the right circumstances. It's part of our survival mechanism as human beings. Absolutely. If there's not enough food, we should be a little anxious to get this going.

But if those cells and pathways are metabolically compromised, what that means is that those cells may become hyperactive, or they may fail to turn off when they should be turning off. And that means somebody can have anxiety symptoms, sometimes out of the blue for no reason. in other cases it can mean somebody has excessive, exaggerated, prolonged anxiety. And in either case, we would call that an anxiety disorder. And my assertion is that anxiety disorders, but in fact all mental disorders,

are metabolic disorders in that way. So you can't talk about what's going on in the body. without talking about the role that mitochondria play. And that's a big part of what you're trying to highlight with your book, Brain Energy, and in your work in general, even having talked about it well before the book on presentations online and everything like that, which are fantastic, by the way,

a link to some of them in the show notes. So talk to us about mitochondria in the context of everything that you've set up here in the conversation. So the reality is that, you know, most people know mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. that they create ATP, which is the energy currency of cells. And they are the powerhouses of the cell, and there's no question about that.

They do that. You know, one researcher used this analogy, which I love. He said, if you think about the cell like a computer, a lot of people think mitochondria are like the power cord to that computer. And they are. But in fact, mitochondria are actually the mother-boy. of that computer. So they are both the power cord and the motherboard.

A lot of this research is new and cutting edge, and I think that's one of the reasons nobody's put it all together, is that a lot of this research has only taken place in the last 10 or 20 years, and it's primarily taking place in the metabolic field, the fields of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes. It's also taking place in the aging. field. So researchers looking at the aging process are increasingly honing in on mitochondria as primary culprits. For better or worse, the mental health field is a little bit behind the curve on this.

And it's not that some researchers are, because some researchers have been leading the forefront in this field and have been out there screaming and shouting, it's mitochondria. Why isn't anybody paying attention to me? So I'm... going to be out there at the forefront, just shouting and screaming, it's mitochondria. And I'm hoping maybe I can persuade more people than they were able to. But when you do a deep dive into the science of mitochondria, that was where my mind was blown as an academic psychiatrist. Because all of a sudden, as I began to learn more and more about what mitochondria do and all of the roles that they play in cells, I began to connect the dots of mental illness.

It turns out that mitochondria play a direct and clear role in the production and regulation of neurotransmitters, including serotonin, dopamine, noraphenephrin, asthline, gabba, glutamate. They play a direct role in the production and regulation of key hormones like cortisol, estrogen, testosterone, progesterone. They play a direct role in the regulation of gene expression. A lot of people have heard of epigenetics. Well, if there is one and only one factor that controls more of epigenetics than anything else in biology, it's mitochondria. If you want to understand epigenetics, you must understand mitochondria and the role that they are playing in the expression of genes. All the way from neurodevelopment to everyday gene expression to turn, you know, different genes on.

and off. Mitochondria play a direct role in turning inflammation on and off. If mitochondria are dysfunctional, it means that your inflammatory response might be underactive or overactive. And we all know that can cause problems in all sorts of people. Mitochondria appear to be affected by the gut microbiome. So the gut microbes actually send signals that appear to influence the function of mitochondria. And although this may seem surprising, mitochondria were actually bacteria at one point.

And bacteria actually communicate with each other. And sometimes that communication is symbiotic and beneficial to both of them. And sometimes that communication is actually hostile communication. Bacteria are trying to out-compete each other. and they're sending signals to try to outdo each other. Like, I want the food, and I want to, like, reproduce a colony of bacteria. You, not you. And so they're sending out harmful substances to inhibit metabolism of other microorganisms within your own body.

And surprisingly, that goes to our mitochondria, which are in most human cells. And so once I began to realize this, it began to connect the dots of mental illness. But I should add a couple of other things. It's not just biology. It's psychology and social factors too. And we know those play a role in mental illness. And it turns out that psychological and social factors,

such as loneliness or trauma or social. or stress in the stress response directly impact the function of mitochondria, and mitochondria actually play a direct role in this human stress response, including psychological stress. And so again, once people understand the science of this, it starts to connect the dots of mental illness and all of the factors that we've known for decades. play a role in mental disorders. You said a key phrase there, mitochondrial dysfunction.

And the science that you outline and you talk about inside of the book is so clear. And sometimes people have a hard time. And this could even be academics that are in this field of studying mental disorders. Because this is a game-changing paradigm. You're coming in with like a whole new take, which is tough for people to sort of swallow because they were taught completely otherwise. But in the area of mitochondrial dysfunction, even if somebody says, okay, I see the science, it's there, there's often a misunderstanding of the modern day factors that contribute to that, the direct

connection. So lay out that direct connection. And what are some of those things that directly contribute in our modern day lifestyle to that significant dysfunction of mitochondria that has all those cascading effects that you mentioned? This episode is sponsored by Armora Colostrum. You guys know I'm always on the lookout for ways to strengthen my immunity and gut health and improve my fitness and metabolism. While recently, I discovered an incredible product that I'm absolutely in love with,

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Try, T-R-Y-R-R-R-A-R-A-D-R-A-com to get 15% off your first order today. One of the beautiful things about this theory is that the answers that I'm going to give you all line up with well-known established risk factors for mental disorders. So they, you know, diet plays a profound role in the function of mitochondria. we all know diet plays a profound role in metabolic health. So diet plays a role in obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease. It plays a role in metabolic syndrome, which I had. What might be more surprising to people is diet also plays a profound role in mental health too and the brain function. But exercise plays a direct and clear role. As I said, trauma, stress, neglect also impact the function. of mitochondria, sleep plays a powerful role. Light exposure in circadian rhythms play a role. That means avoiding light at night when you should be sleeping, getting some exposure to bright light, in particular in the morning or during the day. But substances that we know are highly associated

with mental disorders, in particular alcohol, marijuana and tobacco, smoking. cigarettes, all of those play a harmful role in the function of mitochondria. And we know that those are all connected with both mental health and metabolic health. I forget if I mentioned sleep, but sleep is a huge one. Poor sleep adversely affects mitochondrial function. And so once, again, And I think once people understand the science, it starts to connect all of the dots and all of the risk factors that we've known for decades are there. Are there any pivotal studies or work that you've been involved in or any of their colleagues or the larger network that you might just want to highlight a little bit when it comes to you mentioning about the science? like pivotal things that sort of really helped understand this framework that you're helping us build out.

Yeah, there are several that I could mention. I'll mention a couple. So one is, you know, this may feel like left field to people, and that's why I'm going to start with it. I love it. There's an epidemic of autism spectrum disorders in our society right now, rates have tripled in the last 20 years. And everybody's scratching their head to try to understand why.

What's going on? Autism is supposed to be a genetic disorder. It's a neurodevelopmental disorder. People probably come out of the womb as autistic people. They're born that way. They're programmed that way. And if it's not out of the womb, it's very early in life. life. To shed a little light on that statistic and why might the rates be skyrocketing,

we know that women who are obese are anywhere from 30 to 100 percent, depending on the study you look at, more likely to have an autistic child. Women who are diabetic are about have double the risk of having an autistic child. Women who have both obesity and diabetes have a three to fourfold increased risk of having an autistic child. Men who are obese have double the risk of having an autistic child. Everybody's scratching their heads trying to figure out where's all this autism coming from? Well, look around people. There are skyrocketing rates of obesity and diabetes in men and women who are having babies.

And it's actually not shocking at all where this autism is coming from. You have to understand the science of mitochondria to understand how obesity or how diabetes leads to a neurodevelopmental disorder. But I outlined some of that science in the brain energy theory. And, you know, another kind of shocking, I think, example is alcoholism. Most people think of alcoholism. That doesn't have anything to do with obesity or eating. That's a problem of willpower. Alcoholism has existed for millennia.

People have talked about alcoholics forever and ever. What are you talking about, Chris Palmer? That has nothing to do with metabolism. Well, it turns out that we have an abundance of data, and actually this data comes from one of the leading neuroscientists in the world. Her name is Dr. Nora Volka. She is the director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse. She has been doing research for decades, documenting that people with alcoholism have metabolic problems in their brains.

And that the pathways that are related to reward, the pathways that are related to alcohol consumption seem to be metabolically compromised. it turns out that alcohol actually gets converted into something called acetate, and that acetate goes up to your brain and fuels your brain cells. And when alcoholics aren't drinking, those brain cells are actually energy-deprived. But when they drink alcohol, the acetate fully fuels those brain cells and brings them back online. And that's why alcoholics are probably driven to drink. They want to feel better. They want their brain to be firing on all cylinders.

It is uncomfortable. It produces anxiety. It produces some bad state for them to be sober, essentially. And so she and her colleagues actually set out to see, can we help these brain cells in some way other than alcohol and acetate? and they realized there's a similar connection between acetate and acetone, which is a ketone body. So they turned to the ketogenic diet as well. And they admitted a group of alcoholics to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, is funded by our taxpayer dollars, and they detoxed them.

And they put half the patients on a standard American diet, and the other half of the patients got a ketogenic diet. and the ones who got the ketogenic diet needed fewer benzodiazepines as part of their detox protocol. Despite getting less medicine, they had fewer withdrawal symptom. They had fewer cravings for alcohol.

And sure enough, they did brain scans on these people and found that the people getting the ketogenic diet had improved brain metabolism and they had decreased brain inflammation. And so that on the surface is shocking because most people would think alcoholism has nothing to do with diet. Why are you talking about diet? And yet leading neuroscientists and researchers are using a dietary strategy to help improve brain metabolism to help alcoholics stop drinking. Fascinating.

It really is mind-blowing. And to connect both of those two things together, both of those, first of all, are just shocking. The data that you're presenting about autism and its connection to obesity, and then, of course, you're just talking about alcoholism. But looking at it, the connection between those two things is we're talking about how lifestyle primarily diet is poisoning our body, which is actually poisoning our mitococcurts. Chondria, which is causing dysfunction, and what you do to the body you do to the brain. Absolutely. I think that's one major. If somebody said, you know, what is the biggest takeaway that will come out of this era

of the people that are driving this narrative, which I would put you out, one of the individuals at the forefront of that, it's the brain and body are not separate. What we're doing to the body is having significant impact on our brain. and how do we know? Just look out in the world and see how bad things are. And now we finally have the science to back up that narrative. Absolutely. You know, one analogy that I'll use is, you know, because some people are going to think,

well, so mental disorders are related to brain metabolism. Who cares? Like, that's so big picture. What does it really mean? In many ways, this is similar to the field of cardiology. around the time of the 1950s. So prior to the 1950s, people had heart attacks. Researchers and doctors knew they had heart attacks.

Heart attacks are real. They kill people. They're a real thing. And when coroners look at the hearts of people with heart attacks, they see, they can feel diseased vessels. Vessels are hard. They're filled with plaque. That's a real, tangible thing you can see.

see it. You can feel it. And prior to the 1950s, researchers didn't really know what caused heart attacks. They just thought it was old age, that the heart was just getting old and worn out, and nobody knew what was causing it, and nobody knew what to do about it. And more importantly, we certainly didn't know how to prevent it. It was just, it was bad luck. That was it, bad luck. Your heart's failing. Some people had heart attacks in their 40s. Well, it sucks to be them. we don't know why, we don't know how, we don't understand it. And in the 1950s, the diet heart hypothesis was formed, which said, wait, what you eat actually affects your heart in the way that it functions.

And initially that was met with great skepticism. The medical community was incredulous. They actually thought, like, no way. That's impossible. That's impossible that what you eat could cause death from a heart attack. So fast forward, we now know diet plays a profound role in heart function and heart health. But it's not just diet, it's smoking, it's stress levels. We now know depression is a risk factor for heart disease.

We even know that loneliness is a risk factor for a heart attack. So when we think about heart disease as a metabolic disease, the big overarching theme is that it is largely environmental based on lifestyle, based on our circumstances. And there are things that we can do to identify and mitigate those lifestyle factors. And people can live long, healthy lives with healthy hearts if they adhere to these risk factors. What I'm saying is the equivalent for mental health. The brain is no different than the heart. And that it is schizophrenia is not largely a genetic disorder. Bipolar disorder is not largely a genetic. Yes, genes contribute. And yes, these disorders run in families, but so does heart disease and diabetes and obesity.

And we don't sit around blaming genes for those disorders. And we shouldn't be blaming genes for mental disorders either. That what I'm saying is that brain health and mental health are largely influenced by environment. And this is empowering. This is empowering because we can actually do something about it. You know, when we understand the foundation of the framework and the theory that you're putting together that's supported with your latest presentation of the science and plenty of case studies of people that you've worked with, we also start to look at our current interventions with a new lens.

And one of the things that you've talked about is that many of the pharmaceutical interventions that we have, we have to be wary of them when it comes to mental disorders and see are they actually playing a role in potentially damaging mitochondria. Can you talk about that a little bit? There's no shy of controversy that's there in the book, but it has to be talked about, and this is one of those categories. There is no doubt in my mind. This probably will be the lightning rod of the book because I am taking on.

the dogma of how to treat mental disorders currently. Everybody who has known anyone who takes a psychiatric medication knows that many of them cause metabolic harm. They cause weight gain. They can cause diabetes. They can cause cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome. They can cause premature mortality, at least in the elderly. All of that is written on the package insert and is backed by the United States FDA.

That is not quackery. That is not heresy for me to say. Before I go further, I just want to say that what I'm going to say is going to probably prompt a lot of people to want to get off their meds. If you are somebody taking psychiatric meds, I want to please implore you to do that safely with your mental health professional or your medical professional. because stopping psychiatric meds cold turkey is a disaster. You can get acutely suicidal, psychotic, manic, agitated, combative. So please don't do that. Please do not stop your meds, cold turkey.

Please don't try to come off them in two weeks. Please do it safely. With that out of the way, I will say that we have decades of science documenting that some psychiatric medications directly impair mitochondrial function. And this was actually one of the biggest stumbling blocks for me when I was first developing this theory, because I knew that. I'm thinking, wait, if I'm saying that mental disorders are metabolic disorders of the brain. We have all these medications that I know with certainty impair metabolism and impair

mitochondrial function. Why the hell would they work? Why would the studies show a positive benefit? That doesn't make sense. This theory can't be right. I must be wrong. And yet, I continue to explore the science and I kept coming back to no, they're metabolic. Like all the science is pointing to metabolism and mitochondria. So how can I possibly understand this? And the epiphany was with this paradox of what happens to metabolically compromised cells. Metabolically compromised cells can be underactive or overactive. And it's those overactive symptoms. So overactive symptoms include psychotic symptoms, anxiety symptoms, even some of the symptoms of depression. OCD symptoms. Those are all symptoms of overactive brain networks because they are metabolically

compromised cells. And there are two ways to address those problems. One way, which is what I'm primarily advocating for nowadays, is to heal those cells, to restore mitochondrial function, to restore metabolism, to allow those cells to heal. It will allow those cells to heal. It will those cells to function normally. But that comes with a risk. If they're metabolically compromised right away, it means that if we give those cells more energy initially, they might actually become hyper-excitable again, and then we're not going to really help with those symptoms, at least early on. Eventually we're going to, but not right away. But option two to address symptoms of hyper-excidability is to actually shut down metabolism to a cell.

If we impair mitochondrial function, we will impair the metabolism of that cell. And it won't have enough energy to be quite so hyper-excitable anymore. We are basically slowly but surely suppressing the function of that cell. And possibly, ultimately, resulting in that cell either just being dormant, stagnant, but possibly dying over time. over years, possibly dying. And that, I believe, is how a lot of our psychiatric medications work, is they suppress metabolism.

They suppress mitochondrial function, and they prevent cells from being hyper-excitable, which can reduce symptoms in the short run. The obvious concern is that, you're making those cells more metabolically compromised over time. And that means the symptoms may very well come right back and become chronic in nature or may get worse. And in fact, when you look at the long-term data

on all of the studies that we have of real life outcomes of people with depression, with anxiety disorders, with OCD, with substance use disorders, with bipolar disorder, with schizophrenia. They are all chronic disorders, and many of them become chronic progressive disorders. And the heartbreaking thing to me as a mental health professional

is that I may have been prescribing pills for the last 27 years that were making some people worse over time. Well, I've heard you share before that to add some dose of compassion for anybody that's in the mental health field. And I kind of grew up in that world with my dad being the CFO of a group of psychiatric hospitals and seeing all these hardworking professionals and physicians trying to do their best, is that they didn't know about this latest science that's there. And often when somebody is so in a potentially psychotic state or suicidal or other things, families, physicians,

you're looking for anything that you can to calm the situation down. But the hope of it and the humbleness of you coming in and sharing your story and how you used to do things before is a roadmap that maybe it doesn't have to be this way anymore

and that there's a different way that we can go about things that can actually help us get to this route of what is now, if we look at in the context of when we're recording this podcast right before the midterm elections here in the United States,

Pretty much in every major city in the United States, there is a heavy conversation about crime rates, mental health disorder, homelessness, people experience houselessness, and a huge part of that is all connected to mental health disorders. And it's a major aspect of it. And so far the narrative primarily has been, how do we increase treatment options? How do we get treatment to folks that are there? and maybe, except for a few people like yourself, are not really asking, is the treatment working in the first place? Even if we spend all the money in the world, are we going to fundamentally get people better?

And that, I think you're spot on. And that is an issue that I think I am particularly well qualified to speak to. because I am, I have the privilege of being a Harvard psychiatrist. I work at what is now ranked the number one psychiatric hospital in the United States, at least by US News and World Report. We have some of the premier treatment programs in the world, and we are not putting a lot of people's disorders into full and complete remission. We are not restoring their complete health.

and that is with comprehensive, aggressive treatment, including medications and psychotherapy and rehabilitation, and transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroconvulsive therapy and ketamine injections and everything else that we have to offer. We are failing to restore the lives of far too many people. Now, I don't mean to say we are completely incompetent, incompetent and don't do anything because that's not fair to myself or to my hospital or to my profession. We do help some people with our current treatments and I want to be clear about that,

but we're not putting schizophrenia into remission. We're not putting bipolar disorder into remission. We're really struggling to put depression into remission. Even with this comprehensive, elaborate, high-end private-paid care. The elected officials are looking in the wrong places for answers. As you said, it's not, or as I will say, it's not a problem of access to care. Even when people have access to care, it fails to work for far too many people. We need new strategies. Now, in case people are worried like Chris Palmer, you're going to bankrupt the health care system. In fact, the beautiful thing about this is, no, I'm not going to bankrupt the health. I'm going to help the health care system. We're going to actually improve spending. We're going to

reduce spending. And why? Because if you use a metabolic approach to treating mental illness, not only are you going to dramatically increase the chances that we're going to put illnesses into full and complete remission and restore people's mental health. At the same time, guess what? We're also going to be restoring their physical health. So they're going to be less likely to be overweight or obese. They're going to be less likely to have type 2 diabetes. Those come with all sorts of health care costs on their own. And then we're going to be taking people who are currently disabled. And we're going to be returning them to the workforce. So not only are they not going to be drawing taxpayer dollars from a disability check every month. We're going to be

creating taxpaying citizens. They're going to contribute to the tax dollars. And although I know that's a polarizing thing, and a lot of people think that's like a Democrat or a Republican thing to say, I say that as a mental health professional. And I cannot tell you how many patients I have had in my office in tears, desperately wanting to work, desperately wanting to earn their own keep, desperately wanting to have self-respect, and their symptoms prevent them from doing it. So please don't hear what I just said as a left or right-ish thing to say. It is a human thing to say.

It is about restoring dignity and respect to human beings. and allowing them to be productive citizens in society. And guess what? The icing on the cake is it'll save us a lot of money. It's a beautiful vision. And I feel like now is the perfect time in this day and age of free flowing information. And also more examples of people that come from academic institutions like yourself saying, hey, guys, this science is not getting the attention that it is.

deserves. And sure, the journals are important, and it's important to go through the peer review process. And it's also important to go on podcast. It's important to go on long format mediums where you can tell the full story because you never know who's listening. You never know who's going to be able to listen to your message, pick up your book, implement the changes in their own life, but also even the people that are the top, you know, let's say the traditional, what we would call, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but elite of institutions or organizations and government or other things, heads of CEOs, of companies, they have family members that are suffering. They have employees that are suffering. I had somebody very close to me in my own world

that worked for me for quite some time who was an incredible individual who was the kindest guy in the world, like the most caring guy, the sweetest guy. Anybody who worked with him knew him, would just know him as a sweet individual. And during the height of the pandemic and us not being in office headquarters and working together, this gentleman had a full-blown schizophrenia episode. And again, multifactorial. You mentioned a few different things that probably could have contributed. I'm sure there were some metabolic aspects that were there primarily, but also potentially what looks like maybe some weed-induced schizophrenia. The THC content in weed today is, you know, 50 to 200 times more than it was 10 years ago. And especially for young men who don't often

know what their tolerance level is or have a higher tolerance, it seems to be that there was something that happened in that moment. And we had to get the police involved and other, and this is somebody who was the sweetest individual, the most caring individual that was there. And it's just another reminder that everybody's suffering. Even if you're not suffering with a mental health disorder, you know somebody who is, and it's only continuing to get worse.

And we need a new roadmap. We need a new framework. So I just wanted to share that little anecdote here. So speaking about that framework, a big part of this framework here is taking the principles of a ketogenic diet and incorporating into, at least the dietary aspect. Again, you've mentioned before multiple times that this isn't about just diet, but metabolism is very hard to get that under control just by solving loneliness, for instance.

And sure, taking out alcohol, taking out substances is an important part of this, but fundamentally, if you are metabolically unhealthy because of your diet, is very hard to see people get better without that being addressed. So I've watched a bunch of your presentations in preparation of this podcast. And in one of your presentations that you had on the ketogenic diet, you shared something that even for somebody like myself who's pretty deep in the world as a layperson of interviewing experts like yourself, it came as a shocker to me. And I'll quote from you from your presentation. You said, we actually know more about the effects of the ketogenic diet on the brain more than any other dietary intervention, more than the Mediterranean diet.

more than all these other things that we've known before, help us unpack that quote and go into this framework that you've developed of how to address metabolic health to improve mental disorders. So, yeah, I absolutely stand by that assertion that we know more about the ketogenic diet and its effects on the brain than any other dietary intervention. And I think there are two primary reasons for that. One is that, for the most part, nobody thinks diet plays a role in brain function, so not that many people have been studying it. So researchers aren't, neuroscientists aren't studying. Like, what effect does a Mediterranean diet have on the brain? What effect does, exactly what effect does ultra-process food have on brain function in brain cells, brain inflammation,

neurotransmitters, hormones, other things? People have a really been doing that research, and there hasn't been a strong appetite to fund that kind of research, because, again, nobody thinks diet has anything to do with brain for some strange reason. So why the ketogenic diet? The ketogenic diet is an evidence-based treatment for epilepsy. It was developed 100 years ago by a physician for one and only one purpose. It was developed to stop seizures, and lo and behold, it worked. It wasn't developed as a bad diet. It wasn't developed as a nutrient-dense diet. It wasn't developed as a weight-loss diet. It wasn't even developed. You know, researchers actually, I should say, have been using low-carbohydrate.

They didn't necessarily call it ketogenic, but they were probably ketogenic as well. Research has been using low-carbohydrate diets for the treatment of type 2 diabetes for a long time. But again, they're looking at insulin and diabetes, not brain function. So it turns out that Neuroscientists, neurologists, even biotech companies have been studying the ketogenic diet and its effects on the brain for decades. We literally have decades of research on this, all the way from animal models to human studies, doing brain scans, looking at neurotransmitter, you know, activity in response to a ketogenic diet. And we know that it does tons of things. So it changes neurotransmitter balance, GABA, glutamate, adenosine, changes ion channel regulation, especially calcium regulation, which is really important in turning cells on and off. It decreases brain inflammation.

It changes gene expression. It does all sorts of things in the human brain. And it's not that, you know, a lot of people in the keto community want to say the keto diet is God's preferred diet. Every human being should be on the ketogenic diet. It is the diet that humans have eaten for, you know, millions of years and every human should be eating a ketogenic diet. I don't mean to argue with them. You can argue with them, by the way. I think that that could be healthy.

They're entitled to their opinion. I do not share that strong opinion. I instead see the ketogenic diet as a very powerful metabolic treatment. The ketogenic diet, again, was developed to mimic the fasting state. Humans are not made to fast indefinitely. That means starvation, and that's usually a recipe for death. So the fasting state is extremely. extraordinarily powerful and beneficial.

And it is a metabolic intervention. But it has to be done in controlled ways for discrete periods of time. Because if you fast too long, you starve to death. Now, I just want to point out, this has not been lost on humanity. Fasting has been used as a medical intervention, as a religious practice, as all sorts of things, healing for millennia. Sometimes when something's used for millennia in almost every culture on the planet, there's a reason for it. More often than not is because it's actually really doing something.

Whether you believe the explanation being given or not, it's probably really doing something. And that's why humans keep doing it over and over and over again. Yeah, you say all the way back to like Hippocrates. And it could even be one of the reasons because it works so well. And I'd love you to just maybe share a couple anecdotes of anything you know. maybe that's a little bit about how it kind of gotten intertwined in religious sort of traditions, because there was this demonstrated benefit that people had been seeing for pretty much since forever. Absolutely. I actually think its incorporation in religion probably was through its

healing benefit. And, you know, in large part, you know, thousands of years ago, most people had a supernatural view of the world. And they, um, they, firmly believed in God, and if something bad was happening to a human being, it's because God was making that decision. And so either the person had sinned and was being punished, or maybe they were possessed by a demon, and, you know, the demon was doing this thing to them. But in either case, the recipe is to pray to God and to ask for forgiveness and to ask for healing. And, you know, praying and asking for healing in and of itself didn't always work.

And somewhere along the lines, humans figured out if we fast people, then it works. And I think they came to the conclusion that it pleases God to fast, to make a sacrifice. And then he heals. So if you fast, you're making a sacrifice to God, and then God will show mercy and heal you. Now, that explanation didn't fly in the Western world and it doesn't fly with modern medicine. But in fact, I think that is how it evolved. And that is why it has persisted in so many cultures or millennia is because, in fact, it really did work. And because it really worked, people came to the conclusion that this is just something that God likes.

because they had it in their, it was a fixed fact in their mind. God is the only thing that will heal or not heal. But I think now we can use modern science all the way down to mitochondria to understand why fasting and fasting mimicking diet, like the ketogenic diet and others, may in fact play a powerful role in healing. And in some ways, it's really, it's kind of silly and ridiculous what I'm saying. And in other ways, I guess it may be reassuring.

But what I'm really saying is that I'm a Harvard psychiatrist, neuroscientist, for 27 years. I'm well-versed in the latest neuroscience, metabolic science, research on brain health and mental. And what I'm saying is all of that science leads us to interventions that Hippocrates knew about 2,000 years ago. And so maybe he wasn't, maybe he didn't have the right explanation. Maybe he didn't show his work in the right way. But what he was doing was actually probably really working. And we need to go back to some of that.

What's old as new. Absolutely. Well, connecting it back to this setup that you were doing for us, you were talking about the ketogenic diet, really mimicking fasting. And so when you begin, and this could be a great time for another case study or people that you've worked with, you know, on the spectrum of mental health disorders, is it literally when you're done the intake and you understand and you're kind of, you know, you're a psychiatrist. So you're looking at all aspects that's there. You're looking at their medications. You're looking at all the different components. When it comes to the dietary intervention, is it that basically it's like, okay, hey, you're on a modern diet, you're on a standard American diet.

It's putting you on a blood sugar roller coaster that's throwing off your metabolic health. You're educating them and understanding. Here's this sort of dietary intervention that I want you to do. Here's this ketogenic diet that I want you to follow. Is it that simple? That's the way that you present the dietary intervention for folks. And do you have any case studies or examples that you want to share with us? Yeah.

Yeah. So I think once I've eliminated other harmful factors to metabolism, you know, you mentioned your friend, colleague who was using maybe marijuana and that may have played a role. So with that person, I would want to eliminate the marijuana use first and foremost. Marijuana, alcohol, you're dialing in their sleep? Yes. I'm looking at sleep. I'm looking at stress, abuse. If somebody's in an abusive relationship or household or being bullied and teased relentlessly at school, I'm going to want to address those obvious common sense things first. But barring that, when they come to me, if I make the decision that ketogenic diet is appropriate, then yes. And probably the most powerful story that I can tell with the ketogenic diet is. So that one patient that I mentioned is not alone.

We now have, I am aware of hundreds of patients who have put their schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and chronic depression into full and complete remission off of psychiatric medications. That is not an anecdote. We have plenty of case studies. Numerous researchers from around the world are doing research. We actually have five randomized controlled trials underway now of the ketogenic diet for serious mental illness. So I want people to know this is not that kind of that much in its infancy.

It is very early days, no question. We need the randomized controlled trials, no question. But we are actually further along than a lot of people recognize. But perhaps the most powerful story is a woman who, her real name is Doris. And she's given me permission to use her real name. So I'll use her real name. So she was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was 17 years old. She had daily hallucinations and delusions.

Over the ensuing decades, she tried new. numerous antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and other medications. She was in and out of hospitals. Nothing worked. She had a guardian. She had people come into her home to help her with grocery shopping, paying her bills. And she was miserable. Between the ages of 68 and 70, she tried to kill herself at least six times and was hospitalized

for those suicide attempts. At the age of 70, she was referred to a weight loss clinic at Duke. University where they were using the ketogenic diet, and she decided to give it a shot. Within two weeks, not only did she start losing weight, but she noticed dramatic reductions in her auditory hallucinations and delusions. Within months, all of her symptoms of schizophrenia were in full and complete remission. Within six months, she was off all psychiatric medications. Doris went on to live for another 15 years. Wow. She remained off-psychiatric medications. She remained symptom-free from the symptoms of schizophrenia that had plagued her for

53 years. She actually learned how to take care of herself again, so she got rid of the guardian and the pacting. No more suicide attempts, no more psychiatric hospitalizations. Doris had a completely different life because of a change in her diet. And that does not happen even with the best treatments that we have to offer in psychiatry today. It does not happen with shock treatment. It does not happen with any medication. We do not put schizophrenia into full and complete remission for 15 years off medication with any treatments that we offer. Sadly, Dora's passed away this past January of COVID pneumonia. I'm sorry to hear. And in her permission of allowing her to use her real name, my deepest hope,

and that feels like exactly what you're doing with your book. And with sharing this message is she's really a narrative. She's a story of what's possible. And when people see that it's possible with her, they start to wonder, wow, could this be possible for me, for my family member, for my employee, for my loved one, who's also suffering as well. Absolutely.

If you had asked me 10 years ago, this woman 70 years old has had schizophrenia for 53 years, is there any chance that you'll be able to put it into a mission? I would have said absolutely, positively not. And anybody who says that they can is clearly a charlatan or a quack or crazy. And I would have thought that, you know, there's this hypothesis of the kindling effect, the longer somebody is mentally ill, the more damage they do to their brain, and it becomes a chronic debilitating disorder. Daurus is a clear

testament of hope to tens of millions of human beings, probably hundreds of millions of human beings, because we have to include chronic depression and lifelong disability from depression in this. We have to include bipolar disorder. We have to include crippling OCD, There are hundreds of millions of people on the planet who are desperate for better answers than what they're getting. And what I'm saying is that the brain energy theory of mental illness is a new day for you, and you can get better. You can get better. It may not be as easy as just change your diet, and that's it. we may need to identify all the other things that are going wrong and identify.

Some people might need hormonal supplementation. Some people might have vitamin or nutrient deficiencies that need to be identified. And this is where functional medicine is critically important. Functional medicine, you guys have been doing this forever. And modern medicine hasn't necessarily given you the respect or credit that you deserve for looking for root causes. But it all kind of, and in my mind, I see this all converging. I see this as a convergence of what functional medicine has been doing for decades and of what traditional mainstream neuroscience and

psychiatry has been doing for decades. The fields converge. And we also happen to converge with what Hippocrates was doing 2,000 years ago. It's all becoming good medicine. You know, one day we won't need to call it functional or this So this is the new way of approaching and treating things. Yes. So a few more clarifying questions here before we wind down. And I've just so appreciated this time with you. And thank you for your work and your mission.

And just I couldn't be more excited about the energy around this book. And I couldn't be more excited about it really does take often somebody with your background, your pedigree to get folks who previously wouldn't have paid attention to now say, Huh. Okay, I was a bit skeptical, but at least let me take a look. And that spark of curiosity, we need people to hit it from different angles. We need outsiders. We need outsiders like yourself. We need everything. We need patient testimonials. We need companies working on it. It's all part of the mission of creating better health in society. So first and foremost, thank you for that because I can imagine in this process here and just even some of the things that you shared here and what I've

read in your book, there probably been many moments where you've received a good amount of flack and maybe pushback. Well, I should even ask you, have there been many moments where you've received some pushback, were you ever worried about, is this going to affect my job and standing at Harvard? Was there ever pressure of people saying, this guy's a charlatan? What direction are you letting him go in? Did you face any of that? I was prepared for all of that.

I was prepared to be laughed at and potentially even reprimanded by my employer. And the shocking thing to date is no. It's a little dumbfounding. And I think part of the reason is, Part of the reason is because I was clear in my mind from day one that even with that very first patient, I recognized I have to explain this using science. I can't just go out and say the ketogenic diet cured schizophrenia. Nobody will believe it. Nobody, I'll be committed if I do that. So I can't do that. So I have to understand science.

And the tremendous gift benefit that I had was that we use epilepsy treatments in psychiatry all the time in tens of millions of people. And so we had all of this neuroscience data and 100 years of clinical experience using the ketogenic diet to treat epilepsy. And so it was a no-brainer. when I did a deep dive into all of that science, I was able to connect it with the science of serious mental illness. And I was able to connect the science of what we know about the ketogenic diet and its effects on the brain with the science of mental illness. And in so many ways, it was a match made in heaven.

Now, this bigger theory where I'm challenging potentially the use of medications that impair metabolism and mitochondrial function, I have not yet received pushback, but the book isn't released yet either. You haven't gone on the Huberman Lab podcast yet, the biggest podcast in the world for health and had the spotlight. But what I'm hearing from you,

sorry to just jump in, you know why you're on this mission, and you know that at the end of the day, it's to help people. That's what I'm understanding. So regardless of the flag, you're on a mission. There is no doubt in my mind.

I'm in my 50s. I recognize you only get one life. You only get one career. What do I really want people to say about me when I'm dead? If there is one thing that would make me happiest, it's that I helped people with mental illness. And I helped improve their lives. And, yeah, the science is there.

The evidence is there. The logic is there. There have been a couple of people who've told me, Chris, I don't think you've proven your theory. I can't prove it wrong, but I don't think you've proven it absolutely correct. And if that's an invitation to do more research, I openly welcome and invite that invitation. I want more research. And at the end of the day, I want the truth. if I've made mistakes in the book and in my theory, if I didn't fully understand some aspect of cell biology or science, and I misstated some aspect of my theory, I welcome revision. I welcome correction because the truth will help human beings.

This is an ego thing for me. This is about let's get to the truth and help human beings whose lives are dead. fascinated. Let's help them. And that's what empowers me. I'm not going to back down. I'm not going to back down. I'm fighting. I'm fighting for a group of people who are beaten down by society, who are stigmatized, who are shamed, who are humiliated, who are told that they are second-class citizens, who are told that they are worthless. that they're slackers, that they're lazy. I'm fighting for them. Well, they're all cheering you on. You know, often those individuals, they're in the silent majority. You don't often hear from them directly always,

but you know that they're out there and they're looking for somebody to step up and pave a new path, and that's what you're doing. I wanted to ask one clarifying question about the ketogenic diet that I know my audience will be very interested in. You were mentioning earlier that it's a therapeutic intervention. You know, many people are out there and they're like, the ketogenic diet is perfect.

It should be something that everybody's on, long term, et cetera. We've had many people on the podcast, including functional medicine doctors, researchers, talking about it, especially how there could be some downsides long term to being on the ketogenic long, you know, for quite some time, especially for, you know, for women, for instance. They might need a higher level of carbohydrates to create more balanced hormones with their rhythm and cycles and everything like that and many other aspects.

So when you put people on this protocol, and again, as we mentioned before, and we'll just say again, like this also includes exercise, removing substances, includes focusing on sleep. It's not just the dietary intervention, and we don't want to downplay the dietary intervention. Do you notice that sometimes people can pull back from a strict ketogenic diet and now start to incorporate some of the variability, once their metabolic health is back in balance. Absolutely. And I'll use myself as the clear example.

So I was ketogenic initially when I started, noticed dramatic improvement in my health, had metabolic syndrome. Now, you know, I've remained on a relatively low carbohydrate diet, but most recently I'm probably on what most people would call a paleo diet. I, you know, eat plenty of fruit, which has carbohydrates. I'm not in ketosis. I will sometimes skip meals as kind of intermittent fasting, especially if I'm not hungry or if I'm just busy. And I kind of look at that as, well, it's a little bit intermittent fasting. In patients with serious mental disorders, you know, it's early days in terms of understanding

what do people need long term. It is early days. And I draw from the epilepsy literature heavily So when people use this treatment for their epilepsy, usually neurologists recommend that they stay on the diet for two to five years and then try to go off the diet. And different neurologists have different opinions. There's no one recommendation about what diet do they go to. Sometimes they just go to the standard American diet, which you and I would disagree with, I know. and I would recommend more of a whole food, real food diet. Well, many do, and they see the return of their symptoms. Yes, they can't come from it.

But some actually are able to eat whatever they want, and their symptoms never come back. Wow. And so what that means is that the ketogenic diet is healing their brain. It's improving the quality and the function and the number of mitochondria and brain cells, and that results in a long-term healing repair process, autophagy and other repair functions. And once those cells are repaired, they may actually be able to handle more stress and more, you know, even a bad diet. But it's not across the board. It's not universal. There are patients with epilepsy who have had to be on the ketogenic diet for 40 plus years.

because every time they try to come off the ketogenic diet, their seizures come back with a vengeance. And so those, you know, so I think it's variable. There's not a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone. And there are some people born with a genetic problem, glucose transporter 1 deficiency syndrome. And basically what that genetic problem means is that their brain has trouble. getting enough glucose across the blood-brain barrier. So their brain cells actually have trouble. They are energy-deprived because they're not getting enough glucose. The ketogenic diet is actually the first-line treatment for those people with that genetic disorder. It's one of the few disorders

that the ketogenic diet is the primary first-line treatment. And for those people, it's a lifelong treatment because we're not repairing that genetic defect. So their brain just can't get enough glucose. And so ketogenic diet provides an alternate fuel source of ketones, and that allows their brain to function normally. So some people may, in fact, need this diet long term. A lot of patients that I've treated do not. A lot of patients with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are able to, after a couple of years, so it's consistent with the epilepsy kind of experience. after a couple of years, they can start to tolerate excursions from the diet. I'm usually recommending more of a whole food diet, still trying to stay,

certainly free of added sugar, because they've been off sugar for a couple of years now, so let's not add that back and get those cravings going again. And more often than that, I'm also recommending that they avoid grains. So they're going with more of a paleo-ish kind of a diet. diet, but adding back lots of vegetables, fruits, other things. And for a lot of them, that's working really well. It works really well. And interestingly, sometimes they do even better. Because I do think the ketogenic diet for some people, as you mentioned, like with some women, it's not allowing for the full normal regulation of hormones, for instance. And so the ketogenic diet can

be a phase of their treatment, allow this mitochondrial repair to take place. And then once that takes place, maybe put them on a slightly more, quote unquote, balanced diet that's going to maybe address some other issues. And once they address those other issues with a more balanced diet, that they actually are even happier and healthier, have more energy to exercise, get even better sleep, And then they're off to the races with a healthy, happy life, hopefully. Chris, this book just opens up a whole new paradigm of things, even just beyond mental disorders, like treating addiction. You know, treating so many of the things that we're dealing with today that we don't exactly have answers for, but it's giving us some hope. And as you mentioned, sure, there might be some additional research that we need to localize it for different treatments or different protocols or disease states that are out there.

but to see this glimmer of hope and this potential in a world where we couldn't even get anywhere close to the outcomes that you've seen through treating people with drugs and our traditional interventions as well-intentioned as they may be is it's mind-blowing it really is mind-blowing and I think that when people step into this and they fully understand that It's like, this is truly an opportunity for people to get their lives back. This is an opportunity for people to have some hope in a world that even in the world of functional medicine sometimes, a lot of practitioners, because they're scared of working with patients, they don't have as much experience and they're not trained as a psychiatrist.

They may not even have answers, the patient. They say at best, okay, these things could still help with the underlying root causes, but I don't know if it's going to work for schizophrenic patients or not. And here you're really bridging the worlds together, the best of both worlds, and you're offering a roadmap to people that has a chance to be a game changer for them. So I want to, again, acknowledge you for that work. And the book is out. Really, the best way to support you and your mission is anybody who's listening, even again,

if mental disorders is not something that knock on wood, your family has had to suffer with, you know somebody, you know who's somebody who's gone through it, or even just buying a copy this book and donating it to your local library for somebody you have access to that maybe doesn't have the resources to pick up this book or come across it. I can't wait to see what impact this all has. And I'm so excited about these trials that you're working on. I would hope one day you would come back on the podcast to share about some of the results that you've seen. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. No, thank you so much for all of your work. And as you said, this is a bridging of two fields. And I think we are going to be turning to you and functional medicine and many others

for help because a lot of traditional psychiatrists and mental health practitioners don't know how to do this. They don't know how to do root cause analysis and look for root causes. They don't know how to implement lifestyle interventions. So I think you and your field are going to be needed more than ever. And I'm hopeful that we will get a tsunami of interest and a tsunami of demand and that insurance companies will start covering these treatments. And they'll start paying for all of this. Why? Because there is a huge return on investment. If we can get people better in one or two years with aggressive dietary, functional medicine interventions and keep them off antipsychotics for the rest of their life, think of the savings. If we can get people off disability and on an employment

payroll, think of the savings. It's just a no-brainer. And if we can improve human suffering as a physician, as a human being, that's the real no-brainer. But I know money talks, so that's why I started with money. The book is out there, brain energy, a revolutionary breakthrough in understanding mental health and improving treatment of anxiety, depression, OCD, PTSD, which we didn't even get a chance to talk about. We'll say that for the future and more. People can pick it up, depending on when this is out. It's out on November 15th, but it's perfect time to pre-order.

Get it for you. Get it for a friend. If individuals from this podcast want to keep in touch with you, any other ways that they can follow you is Twitter the best way? What would you recommend? The one place I'm going to actually encourage them to go is brain energy. It's a brand new website. It is evolving rapidly. I am hoping to start a mental health movement. We need big changes in the mental health field. And trust me, I cannot do it on my own.

And the other people working in this space cannot do it. We are a very small group. even though we have very wealthy philanthropists helping us, they don't have the resources. We need a grassroots movement. We need people to get passionate about this and help out. So if they go to brainenergy.com, they can sign up, learn more, get involved, and certainly follow my work. Amazing. We'll have the links to all those in the show notes. Please pick up a copy of the book today.

Brain Energy, it's out. Chris, thank you so much for your work. And thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.

And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter. It's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more.

If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole-body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's, called Try This or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-O-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says try this.