The Resilient Mind - Neuroscientist Reveals the Overlooked Mechanism Driving Depression - Dr. Elena Gross

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

Watch the full video interview on the new Resilient Mind YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl7gGqRJ6WYIs your anxiety, depression, or brain fog a sign of a brain energy crisis? Neuroscientist Dr. Elena Gross reveals the link between your mental health and your cellular powerhouses, the mitochondria.In this episode, learn how to fuel your brain more efficiently with "cleaner" energy like ketones, and discover the "hormetic window" the reason why healthy habits like fasting might actually be harming you. This is a guide to fixing your brain's metabolism and reclaiming your mental clarity.Connect with Dr. Elena GrossGet $30 off their first box of Brain Ritual: https://www.brainritual.com/THERESILIENTMINDGet Book: https://www.brainritual.com/pages/master-metabolic-migraine-book----------Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_Journal Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind Podcast. In this episode, you'll be listening to Neuroscientist reveals the overlooked mechanism driving depression with Dr. Elena Gross. This episode is also available in video. Watch it on YouTube by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. Nobody could help me. I eventually had to go into neuroscience to help myself. The brain is about 2% of the body's mass.

How much of the energy that we are consuming does the brain? actually utilize. The brain is actually the most energy-hungry organ. It's between 20 and 25% of energy of the body that it needs. And you mentioned that the brain is fueled with three energy sources, glucose, lactate and what the brain eats and how against energy. I cannot think of a single neurological issue. If you have a psychological problem, it's neurological. It's in the brain. And you have explored ketogenic state as a therapeutic tool. The next decade will be the decade of mitochondrial research. Which organ is going to suffer first if there's an energy shortage?

Fuel your brain to master your mind. You're not a slave to your genetics. These things can be positively changed. I have basically four pillars for metabolic health that is good to go through and I think everybody should go through. Today I'm excited to be joined by Dr. Elena Gross. Dr. Gross, I'm curious to get a sense of how you started in terms of learning about brain metabolism, ketogenesis, as well as migraines.

Yeah, Sim, I'm so delighted to be here. Two brain enthusiasts and one recording studio online is found to be a good story or a good podcast. So I'm very excited. Thank you for having me. How did they get started? Yeah, as so often, some cashier comes with pain at first. So for me, it was a very personal story. I was always interested in the brain and psychology and basically the organ that makes us who we are. But when actually I discovered that I had migraine about now already over 50 plus or even two decades ago, actually, getting older, and nobody could help me.

I eventually had to go into neuroscience to help myself and better understand what might be causing this debilitating headaches, migraine, right? And when I dove into that field, I first studied psychology and then neuroscience, and it was all about basically anything from the neck upwards. And what I realized eventually is that the brain is on an isolated organ, and it's not all about neural connections, even though they are important, but then what the brain eats and how against energy and these mitochondria

will come to all of these difficult words, right, are so important for the brain to function properly. And the beauty here was, then, these are things that you can actually influence very well with your lifestyle, you died, many other things that you can do. You're not a slave to your genetics. These things can be positively changed. And, yeah, mine story is one of personal suffering. My migraine became from episode age, so happening occasionally, all the way up to really chronic migraines.

Halfways through my undergrad degree, like 20 plus days a month. Really was a life worth living at a time. I tried everything from classical drugs, you know, anti-apaleptic drugs. antidepressant drugs, other drugs, to alternative approaches like your Chinese urnobble medicine, acupuncture. Nothing helped.

They only got worse. And so I went to study neuroscience and eventually towards the end of my degree stumbled across that link between the importance of brain metabolism, ketone bodies as an alternative energy source for the brain as used in epilepsy. And this suddenly led to a whole PhD.

I left Oxford to do that in Switzerland, tiny Basel. So here I'm right now, still here. This eventually led to a startup and a first patent and a natural neurology publication, a natural biology reviews publication. But yeah, they all started with some personal suffering that turned into a passion of fixing things and finding a solution.

I have my brain back today, and now my vision is to give other people the knowledge, empower them really to take back their brain health into their own hands and especially their brain metabolism and get control of their life, ideally. And we often talk about resilience as a mindset, But you're saying resilience begins at the metabolic level. How does rethinking about resilience through the lens of brain energy

reshape how we might deal with the adversity? I love that question. I've never been asked before, but it makes so much sense. Because whether you can be resilience, whether you can stand in adversity, I think it needs, of course, some kind of an upbringing, probably some genetics are playing in that role as well, right? and whether you think that you have tools to make change and the power to change something, right?

We know this from these very early psychology experiments. If you have dogs and you're raising dogs and they are being shocked and it doesn't matter what they've done with full, right? And they have no matter of actually influencing whether they get an electric shock or not. They become depressed and they stop doing anything. So of course there is also a very psychological aspect to it. But from a metabolic perspective, whether or not you can be your best self, whether or not you can perform a certain task, whether or not you have motivation or not.

All of these things require energy and a good energy to first make the neurotransmitters that make you do anything. So if you don't have dopamine, then you will not move. You don't have motivation to do anything. We know this from Parkinson where the dopaminergic neurons in the brain are dying. Actually, the dopaminergic neurons, the ones that require dopamine to do things and that help us move, are also the ones that have about 50,000 connections. So they're the most energy-hungry energy-demanding neurons in the brain are actually the ones that give you motivation and dries, right? So these things require energy, serotonin, that gives you hope and a good feeling and makes you satiated the happiness hormone they say, right?

Also, this needs to be produced and home and all our neurons need energy to actually make and transport neurotransmitters. Right. So in order to really be resilient in adversity, believe that you can do better, believe that you will thrive. And kind of believing in your own destiny and your own ability requires energy. It requires hormones and requires a whole lot of things in your brain to go right. as well as, you know, a good psychological upbringing or certain psychological upbringing potentially a certain amount of genes. But none of this will work in the wrong environment.

And this is what we are probably going to talk about. Your genetics are not, you're not slave to your genetic genetics necessarily because how they are expressed in a certain environment will matter. And the environment includes the energy and the nutrients and the micronutrients and all the other things. your rest, your sleep, how much oxidative stress, how much toxins are in your environment, how much oxygen you have to make energy. All of these things will shape whether your genes express positively or negatively.

And whether or not you can be resilient, well, how resilient you can be also depends on energy, nutrition, but what you have held, probably seeing. So that was a long, winded answer, but I hope it made some sense. Oh, it does. And talking about energy, um, in the world. the brain, the brain is about 2% of the body's mass. How much of the energy that we are consuming does the brain actually utilize? Yeah, that's an excellent question as well, because the brain is actually the most energy-hungry organ, especially if you relate it to his mouth. So it's between 20 and 25%

of energy, of the body that it needs, whether you are awake or a sleep. That's the interesting heart, whether you're studying, whether you're walking, your brain never really shuts off. Even when you're sleeping, we're dreaming, we're doing stuff, right? This is always on in that sense. It's off your debt. So the brain is the most energy-hungry organ, and that also means, like, why do we have such an energy-demanding organ? Why is that, why did evolution even have that happen?

But that is because we are not the ones that's going to run, outrun the tiger or the lion or any other predatory animal, right? We're just too slow. We are probably not going to fly away either. So we are basically reliant on our brain function to outsmart the other predators. We're making weapons, right? We are maybe finding a way to climb a tree

or we are building traps. And nowadays, we have artificial intelligence do half of our job, right? So the Shulen evolved to have a brain that was so energy hungry, but it paid off. Evolutionary speaking, it was an advantage. So we are still running around with that very luxurious, energy demanding organs because it's taking up a lot of power and energy and so on,

but it helped us survive. And that's why we are carrying around that, seeing that even if you think about a human birth, right, a baby's head is massive compared to the rest of the body. We're getting the baby's head through that birth canal. it's as strong as I think, it's really, really hard. But even a baby already has that massive brain because we need it as a species

because that's most of what we have is the brain as an advantage towards other species. And when we think about like mental fatigue or like emotional instability or burnout, is that also related to maybe not having enough energy to deal with what's going on? I think you're spot on 100%. And that's, I even get goose bottles because I have been hearing about these things so many times from other patients.

I was stigmatized so much in my life with my mitochondria. Mitacondria are the little organelles that are the powerhouses of the cells that make your energy. And mine is still broken. There used to be much worse. But anything that requires energy, if these things are not working, depending on your genes, you are brain fog, right? You will not have motivation. you might have, depending on your genetics, might be angry, you might be sad, more depression-like behavior, there's emotional instability, could happen as well. It doesn't always have to be

just low energy, but if you look at newer research on any of these conditions, I cannot think of a single neurological issue. And I think all of these are psychological, neurological, it's all the same. The difference being in a neurological disease, you can kind of see something on a brain scanner in a psychological disease, the differences are so small on more molecular or cellular level that you can't see them in a scanner. Doesn't mean it's not physical. It's all physical. It's all in the brain, right? So I try to love those together. If you have a psychological problem, it's neurological. It's in the brain, right? Same, same cluster of issues, I would say. And if you look at them closely, then all of these come with these broken mitochondria,

this broken powerhouses, almost all of them, the more you dig deeper, right? So that could be secondary. I'm not saying that's the primary, the root cause of all of these issues. But, for example, whenever you have information, that's very bad. And I want to quickly dive in to what I'm mitochondria. I'm thinking a little bit deeper on this point

because it's one of the most important things that are inside of the human body. I think anybody who has a brain wants, needs to appreciate what a mitochondria is. Because you all have now heard about the gut microbiome, right? Everybody like the gut brain connection that has received some media attention and is important. And we know that we have basically more gut bacteria, that we have human cells. And it's all important, but it's actually an even older bacteria that to my mind, in my opinion, is even more important. And for that, we have to go back millions and millions of years

when the Earth was still a suit of volcanoes and sun for its water and oxygen appeared in the atmosphere. And we had single-celled organisms floating around the water and we had a couple of bacteria floating around the water as like the first life of Earth. Now, with the oxygen coming in, the little bacteria had a problem Because at this time already, whenever there's oxygen, there's oxygen-free radical species.

Oxidic stress might have heard of that, right? That's why I'm going to eat antioxidants. So these bacteria were damaged, and the single-set organisms were very slow in making energy. And so there was the first coalition, very powerful coalition, where mitochondrial bacteria, ancient bacteria in this soup, fused with the first single-cell organism, they formed the coalition, the cell said, I'm going to protect you from those free radicals. so you make my energy. And even today, millions and millions of years later, our cells have up to like 10,000 of these little bacteria in us, and they make energy.

Interestingly, we all get them only from our mothers. So you have 100% of your mitochondria from your mom, either too. But that also means whenever there is a strong mitochondrial connection to a disease that is in war, not acquired, in war, right? then you will have it more likely from your mother's lineage. And this is interesting for my grade, for example, that is the case. My brain what I had, like strong energy metabolism component, mytachondri component.

Even if you are a guy, you're more likely to get it from your mom. Not always, but more like, okay, so we still have these ancient bacteria in our cells that make our energy that make most of our energy if we're healthy. And sun energy demanding tissues like our eyes, the brain, up to 10,000 of these little machines. And we figure out more and more what they're doing. They're not just making energy. They're detoxing.

They're making hormones. They're making melatonin or sleep hormone. They make so much for us, right? They decide whether a cell is living or not. They can neutralize free radicals. They do wonders. And I think the next decade will be the decade of mitochondrial research and we find out how much reliant we are as humans.

On those little guys, mitochondria. Okay, so don't forget that name. So important. Mitochondria. Now, a lot of what we do in the current day and age is actually harming them very badly. It's like, you know, when you give antibiotics, right, we know it hurts the gut. Probably also hurts our mitochondria. When we get a virus, when we have a lot of toxins in our food, when we eat processed foods,

when we have a lot of blue light, even coming through our skin. blue light, increased oxidative stress can damage these mitochondria. So there's a lot of things that can actually damage these little guys. And over the lifespan, their health can get poorer, which means there's less energy output. Now, which organ is going to suffer first if there's an energy shortage? Probably the organ that needs the most energy all the time. And why is the brain so vulnerable as well? That's the last thing I'm going to explain.

And that's it. That's the biology one-on-one recap done. The brain is a special organ, not only in that, it uses up a lot of energy at all times. It also, first, is very reliant on only three more molecules to make energy because it has the blood brain barrier around it so that pathogens don't get in so easily, right? So it's protected.

It also means that long-chain fats or proteins or whatever can actually get into the brain to fuel it. So the brain is relying on either glucose, lactate, lachite, lachite only happens when we do sports. Inpatients, that doesn't happen very often, usually, because they don't have the energy, right? Or ketone bodies, and ketones will come back later. That's these small chain fatty acids that can be made by the liver and can also be taken exogenously in this recent day. They can also get into the brain. But three small molecules that can get in there, and the brain cannot store energy.

at all pretty much because it's surrounded by the skull. Now, the skull does not move. There's no fat stores. There's rarely any glucose stores, right? So we're in this situation where we cannot store energy around the brain. It's no space, right? We could only let very few molecules into the brain to fuel it properly. Right?

So we're very dependent on the rest of the body to supply it with energy. We have broken mitochondria in a lot of people today, but we have a constant energy need. Cannot slow it down, really. Whether we sleep or whatever, the brain always need energy. Now, you don't need to be an expert to just think that this might be problematic today. And I think this is where a lot of problems arise. If the brain and the mitochondria aren't fuel properly, you get brain symptoms. And this can be your brain fog. If it's more mild, this can be my own.

or mild depression or sadness or this can be migraines when it becomes more severe. This can be Alzheimer's or dementia. This can be eventually Parkinson has also been linked, not only, but this can be very serious. It can be, to an extent, turn around it. And this is where it's very hopeful, especially if you catch it early on it. For some, it may be just so tired in the afternoon, you know, you can't do without that snack and the coffee. and you kind of drag in the cells

from the day. This chronic fatigue syndrome is when all the COVID is around a lot, you know, this is also an energy deficiency issue, mitochondrial. So it can be connected to many, many things. And that's just my biology, mitochondria, one-on-one to get everybody up to speed before we really dive in.

Fascinating. And so would you say like mental health as we currently define it, is actually on a deeper level a metabolic imbalance, like a lot of the mental health conditions. It's a very good question. Now, I don't have the answer whether this is true for everyone, but I think for everyone it's true that there is a metabolic component.

For some, metabolism can be the root cause entirely. Now, we know for some that it can also be an adaptive response to an action trauma. So if you are losing a loved one, if you are, I don't know, getting a divorce, if you have something really ugly happening in your life, getting depressed for a period is adapted. Why? No, I try to look through and everything

through the evolutionary, let's say, glasses, right? So evolutionary lens. So let's put these on and then think about it. Anything that is more common than, let's say, 1% of the population, right, is not an accident of nature. What do I mean with that, right? We think about Darwin, survival of the fittest. Anything that doesn't have any purpose or any good to it will not be passed on over the hundreds of years.

It will eventually die out. That means that we have diseases that are around and they affect more than a percent of us. They must have had whatever trades or underlying genetics must have had an evolutionary advantage. Otherwise, they wouldn't be here today. This is not if you have Duchenne muscular dystrophy, right? Lanking one protein, so your muscles degenerate and you die with 25s. There's absolutely no evolutionary advantage there. This is very rare, and this is an accident and mutation.

This is very unfortunate and tragic. Nothing to it. But depression, so many people are depressed or anxious. What have my way for that matter, right? So what could have happened? Well, if you go back again to our not so far back, now we go back and humans are around and they are lying around chem virus, right? tribes or about 40 people, hunter and gatherers.

Now, one of them catches a virus. The virus is a deadly problem. If the whole tribe gets it, they may all die. Or most of them may die, right? So what did nature do now? We have this increase in oxidative stress that happens during an infection. We have an increase in inflammation. And we have a decrease in energy availability.

And this turns on and withdraw behavior. Now, these people become mildly depressed. They withdraw. They go to the cave. They don't want to see anyone, right? You withdraw. You don't want to talk to anyone. You're just hiding away until you feel better.

So I think depression is an inflammation and energy lack of withdrawal behavior that very transiently, for example, during an infection, would have been very good 10,000 plus years ago. Today, we are a chronic. infected by something like a, I don't know, along COVID. We are constantly in an energy deficiency state. We're stress. We're inflamed. We're not eating the right things.

We're my condition deficient. And so this, what was once adaptive, depression becomes a real chronic issue and you are not moving. So a chronic depression without a cause, let's say, I think is to a large extent metabolic issue. And even this could be even toxins. even if you're saying that some toxins can really eat to depression, anxiety and so on. Toxins also damage mitochondria.

So we have a similar issue. It's also metabolic. The root cause might be a little different, but it's still metabolic. And even when you look at the ones that have real trauma, this trauma is also on a cellular level. Looks like a chemical insult. Like whether you have toxins or you have the wrong diet and a lot of obsessive stress and inflammation, or you have one of that because you've lost loved one. On a similar level, it looks super similar.

And it would probably also hurt your mindfulness. So this was again a very long-winded answer, and I don't want to be too simplistic. So I'm going to say the root cause for all mental health? No. A part of all mental health, yes. A root cause of a lot of mental health problems, absolutely. And I would even say some of my colleagues have now founded

the whole field of metabolic psychiatry. I'm more a fan of metabolic neuroscience because I don't want to stigmatize psychiatry any further. Psychiatry neuro to me is the same. But we need to fix metabolism to really help these people

unless it is a pure psychological reason. If you get rid of the trauma, if you do psychotherapist for certain things, people can be cured. If that's the only root cause maybe not needed, but for a lot of lot of cases, looking at retaliation is such a good idea. And how do you think it will change in terms of how we treat depression, anxiety, chronic stress if we treated them first as an energy

dysregulation or deficit rather than from a chemical imbalance or personality aflo? Yeah, that's such a good question. Because for me, I mean, having been stigmatized so much because of my brain or chronic fatigue syndrome or whatever more of these like rare things that I had where you don't let me doctors know a lot about it if this is treated as a metabolic issue it does two things it really legitimizes the problem it makes it physical it's a physical problem it's not in your mind somehow it's in your mind still kind of makes it sound less bad even though it's so bad right if something's bad with your brain your brain is the most important organ it's terrible right? So first, it makes it sound more physical and hence more important. Sadly, that's still the case. I don't think it should be. And then second, it gives back power and control to the patient. Because that's absolutely something they can do. So first, it's making it real, physical. And second, it makes it fixable at least to an extent. It gives control, power and it takes away some of the guilt, I guess, as well. So that's maybe a sad component. Because a

metabolism issue. It's not Spanelge, right? It's not like you're not putting off the couch. And psychological therapies are, have their place, of course, right? But the worst thing, somebody who's completely out of dopamine, serotonin and energy

tell them, well, they need to get up from the couch and more into exercise, that's hard, right? And if they can't do it and it feels like a failure. If you restore energy metabolism first, they want get over the pouch.

They have the energy again, right? So it's just looking at the thing from a different angle and treating, I believe, what needs to come first, first. And very similar to chemical imbalance, right? Okay, yes, of course there is a chemical imbalance. Right? I told you, if you don't have energy, you are not making enough dopamine. You will not be making enough serotonin, melatonin, thyroid hormone.

All of your hormones will probably be of the balance, and there might not be enough of any of it. of those. That's just naturally, but that is second. So if you say, okay, you have a cannibal imbalance. Now I'll give you serotonin uptake inhibitors. Okay, then there might be a bit more serotonin in the clef, right? In between the neurons, because it's not recycled, so you might have a little bit more. And that may transiently help some people, but if you don't fix the cause, then that's, you can't be on these forever, right? And then you might get a document in balance. And then what do you do that? So I'm more, I always try to look at things from an

evolutionary perspective and the next thing I tried to find me because I used to be the patient and I still am, I guess, the root cause, what the root cause is like what, why is this happening? Because your body is always telling me something. Your body tries to protect you. You have symptoms of depression or rainfall or whatever. It's not a drug deficiency problem. It's It's a different problem, right? So it's not like you were lacking ancestors. No. So there's something else that is wrong and your body's no forcing you to rest.

That's the other thing, right? What does a depressed person do? What is a migraine person doing? They're in bed in a dark room. They're saving energy. So your body is forcing you to save energy. In a sense, if you'd say it's trying to help itself, right? What is it depressed and a migraine person sometimes do not all of them?

But a lot of times you get these food cravings. They're turning to like high sugary, fatty foods and they gain weight. Why the body is telling them, look, bright, hey, I'm starving, you know. Give me energy. But then you eat the wrong foods and it makes it even worse. But it's not telling you exactly what to eat, unfortunately, right? You just have these cravings as if you're starving. And people that listen to that, they're self-medicating.

That makes you feel transiently better, but then you crash again because the energy is down. So in a way, your body is always, that's the one thing I'm like. And for a decade, I listened to doctors only and I thought, you know, wide gone. There's amazing doctors out there. But nobody knows better than your own body and brain. We just have to learn to listen again. I don't fight against it, but work with it.

And try to see what is it telling me. Why am I so fatigued? Right. And not trying to fight the fatigue or take caffeine to not be fatigued for a while, but then just gets worse. I mean, the body was actually asking for rest. So, yeah, I'm digressing. I think that is very insightful because again, if a person is depressed or if they've got a migraine and they're getting those cravings, then it's like they know that they want something to feel better, but it almost requires discernment and asking themselves what exactly is my body wanting.

And it's not those fatty foods. It's not the alcohol or something that might mask what's actually going on because that will end up resulting like a short term. relief, but then the crash is going to come. Yes, exactly. And the problem is just saying to this, the problem is now, if we have eaten crap food, like SARS food for 30 years, it's all the body knows, right? And you have this addiction on top of this actual true signal.

So you kind of need to even detoxify yourself, get rid of at least the process and the sugar with food, and then even start listening in like a baby, right? A baby eats intuitively. A baby knows exactly, do I want the broccoli or not? or do I want the meat or the eggs or the yogurt or whatever. The baby will intuitively know I'm craving this. This is probably what the body needs in that sense, right?

And once we overcome these addiction symptoms, get rid of the process and crappy foods and turn to real food, whole foods, one ingredient, freshly prepared or several ingredients, but at least like not bought in like a 20 ingredient box, then we can start trusting our body again and will tell you it's craving something with protein. craving something with salt or craving something more fresh with certain vitamins. The sad truth is sometimes even if they eat the cleanest food, it won't have everything we need, which is why I made this in the end, right? And we might come to this later.

But no matter what you do, right, no supplement product or anything can undo a very unhealthy lifestyle. So unfortunately, the truth is uncomfortable. The brain needs real food. and certain nutrients and a good life sentence. It's not perfect, but we can come to that later what might be good for the brain. And you mentioned that the brain is fueled with three energy sources, glucose, lactate, and ketone bodies. Are all these equal in terms of being healthy or providing the necessary energy or are some of the energy sources better for the brain than others? Great question. First, I must say,

that the brain, whatever we do, right, even if we're starving, the brain always need about meets 30 to 40% of its energy needs from glucose. But that's not a lot. So let's say the brain is around 150 grams of energy per day. So 30 to 40% of that must be glucose. And then researchers show that actually if it has a choice between glucose and the ketoneys, it will then comparatively use even the ketone buttons because when they're burned, they will make less of these three radicals, these reactive oxygen species, less damage, less rummage. It's kind of like the solar power energy in a way, right? And less byproducts. And it will give you more energy per oxygen molecule burned as well. So in a sense, it's a more effective and a cleaner energy

source for the brain, but we cannot use all of our energy from keto bodies. Some always has to be glucose. Now, lactate and keto bodies use the same transatlose. transport system. This is interesting. There's not that much research on lactase yet. Maybe lactate are as efficient as ketobodies would, but we don't have it around so much, right? So that's maybe a limited factor. But we know that in the current day and age on a standard American diet, many people are insulin resistant. Insulin is the hormone that shuttles glucose, or the taxi driver, let's say. It helps shuttle glucose into certain cells. But if you're resistant to the taxi driver. That means the taxi driver cannot effectively bring the glucose into the cell anymore.

And that leads to more starvation of certain tissues. Even though your fat tissues become fatter, right? Your other cells might be starving or might be hungry. And the beauty about keto bodies and lactate is it's using a completely different transport, like a different tunnel, completely insulin dependent. So you can still get fuel inside, effective fuel inside of your brain cells, even when you're insulin resistant. Even when you're insulin resistant in the brain, which can be different to the rest of the body and can be a big problem, for example, in Alzheimer's, these all type three diabetes. So yes, I think there is a preferred energy source for the brain, at least partially, and that would be ketone bodies over glucose or at least

in addition to glucose. And this may stand to, again, if you look 10,000 plus years back, when was our survival as a species depending on our brain working best? Probably when we're starving, right? And we are running away from a tiger or whatever. So in that case, our ketone body levels are very high and our glucose will be somewhat high because we're stressed from the tiger or from whatever danger we were in. And really, if you ever have the chance to have both glucose and ketone body somewhat elevated,

this is when your brain is on fire, really. So it's an evolutionary important fuel. We didn't have much food in the winter. We were very dependent on hybrid functions because we couldn't chase that deer or meat or whatever it wanted to eat. We're too small. We need to outsmart it.

And you have explored ketogenic state as a therapeutic tool with keto Swiss. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? how it helps replenish some of those energy reserves in the brain. Yeah, thank you. So Kethe Swiss is the company, the startup that I founded. And then we just recently launched the product called Brain Ritual. Used to be Migricet, Microgate's migraine product.

So basically what I discovered in my research was that in general, like the ketogenic state seems to be very adaptive, right? Very very potentially good for our brain. But then I realized, especially, actually, my liver was already pretty hurt from all the migraine drugs. And my mitochondria went doing very well. And in general, it's very strict ketogenic diet, which is a fasting, mimicking diet, where you basically cut out almost all carbs.

You limit your protein and you go very high on set. So your body doesn't know, is it metabolizing its own fat stores? Are you actually fasting or starving? Or does it come from outside? So it turns on ketosis itself, which it usually would have done, during fasting or starvation whenever we haven't eaten much carbs back then, right? So putting yourself in a fasting state, they discover an epilepsy 100 plus years back that actually a lot of seizures would just disappear when they would faunt their patients.

Again, epilepsy and energy metabolism being so tightly connected. And migraine and epilepsy are genetically very related. So it's kind of like an epileptic patient might grow out. how do that ellipsy and get migraine? So genetically, they are related. And now they found, okay, so if you fast the patients, the seizures go away, you can't fast people forever. It's just not worth it, right?

But then the whole question, and this was how I went into that field as well, was they said, well, what if we mimic fasting in a diet? And this is what the ketogenic diet is basically if it's well formulated. Now, when I was in Oxford and wondering about migraine, what is it, what can you do? I always saw it could be an energy deficiency problem just because of the trigger factors, right? You have fasting is a trigger factor for my brain.

Exercise is a trigger factor, skipping a meal, not drinking enough. So some clear metabolic triggers, right? But then we did neuroimaging on chronic migraine patients. One day the scanner broke down and the woman had to come back two weeks later. She comes in, she walks upright, she looks like a completely different person. She's lost weight. You know, these chronic pain patients, they're almost crawling to the lab. If you know, they look very poorly.

And she just, I almost didn't recognize. So we're like, you're done crazy. She's like, well, I've been fasting for two weeks. I've even had a glass of red and wine, potent migraine trigger every night. And I didn't get a single migraine at her. And I was thinking, well, she hadn't eaten. Her brain must have been starving, right? Like, how does that make any sense?

This doesn't make sense. So we scanned her and then afterwards, I'm little, thank you for going all. We gave our participants some biscuits, cookies. And she had a very terrible migraine at C-Nines. When I even gave her a migraine, right? So sorry for that. I still remember her very vividly.

She probably has no idea who I was anymore. But yeah, sorry anyway. And now I know, right, that brain, even though she was starving, her brain was receiving energy, adequate energy for the first time. Because now she had keto bodies around. But the diet is very hard. So at the time, the idea was, couldn't we try to imitate a well-formulated ketogenic diet somewhat in a product? Can we spare the liver and do what the liver was doing in the lab and put it in a product?

And this is basically mentioning what is the same. So we have agdotelous ketone bodies in the DB dioroxalotroate 4, which is basing exactly the molecule that your liver would be making during fasting. And then because we know that the ketos bodies are the fuel, they're the diesel in the tank, right? But for your car, if you're a Ferrari car with a very energy-hungry-brain engine, right, you need other things for the cars who run well. You need water, we need oil, right? You need other things.

So the engine can, and I'm not a car expert, as you can tell it, as much as I know once said. But the body needs a bit more. So we've put methylated B vitamins, we've put antioxidants like cocutin, we've put set soluble vitamins, like vitamin E and C, that can help you inside. Like Jazean, your most powerful antioxidant, vitamin C, we have an amino acids for your liver like talwin. We have all carinatein that shovels fatty acids into the mitochondrial energy and so on. We have all the trace minerals that our soils are so deprived of. So it's a one-stop energy shock. basically that's how it's designed at least

and this how I came up with it basically for my own self because I started experimenting with this after Oxford and we did the first ever clinical trial in patients using exorkeman's ketone lot in a randomized control way in the world back in Switzerland

so that's how I ended up in Switzerland because Oxford at the time said it's too risky we don't have much data on this at all can't do it here but Switzerland allowed me so thank you so much and This is how brain ritual came in the world. And brain ritual, it's a ritual for my brain every day. I don't need to take it every day.

Two and a half years I needed to take it to basically have some gene adaptation and fill up all my reserves. And that's a bit the backstory to the product. I would still recommend you need to have a healthy lifestyle still on top of this, but it can help you restore some mitochondrial function, some energy reserved so that you have the resiliency

see, the willpower, the actual energy to change anything in your life, right? Because when you really, really rom bottom, it's so hard to even change something, even if you know how to do it or what to do it, because it needs energy. And changing habits requires a lot of energy and willpower. And to be really resilient, you need energy. And so this is helping you, even if you just use it as a tool, at the onset. That's what I was doing.

and then I'm slowly changing my life around the product, basically. And that's specifically for individuals with migraines or even people that might not have a migraine or they have feeling low energy, burnt out, maybe I've got depression or anxiety. It's a tool that can help at the very least boost those energy reserves so that they can start doing what they need to do for them to feel better. Now that's the next question.

Thank you for asking this. So I must say in all full transparency, we have had patients that have migraine and, for example, depression or even diabetes, reach out and say that these things gone better too. We had one person that bought all antidepressants using the product. We only have done. So this has migraine research behind it. But the individual ingredients, they're all generally regarded as safe. We are currently doing a depression trial, actually. We're a year and above in it.

We don't have results yet. And we're also looking into aging and dementia. So that trial is starting in two months time. So we don't have a randomized controlled trial behind it, but from everything I've been saying and from just case studies reporting to us, I think the assumption is this may help with metabolism. Other neuroscientiatric diseases outside of migraine is very strong. Amazing.

I mean, we'll send you a box for sure. So you can try yourself and experiments a little bit around. And you look fit and healthy. you might be at the top. So whenever you are, your metabolism is super awesome. You have everything you need, right? You will not feel much.

But when you have a deficiency, whatever, and for some, this is a huge gap, and for some, it's a smaller gap. You should feel the difference eventually. I must say you need some time to adapt. So probably at least a box that you take regularly, slowly work your way up. It's a lot of nutrients in there that can be a bit hard on the GI tract.

So start with half the sashet, work your way up. over a month and give you time to your body time to adapt. Maybe it hasn't seen ketone body since you were born. We're all born in ketosis and then we put it on a Western diet or even a Western formula, infant formula, if I'm lucky. And then you have forgotten about ketone body. So for my body, it took forever so that even started expressing the transporters and remembered what keto bodies are, you know.

It has been two decades and more that I have not. had these things around. And having them around makes a lot of difference. And in 10,000 plus years ago, we would always cycle in and out of ketosis, right? Because we would be with periods without food. In winter, there was no fruit. There was no starches. There were only meat.

So I think our brains are designed to have ketone bodies around, at least some of the time. And then this is a way to help at the very least mimic some of those cycles for those individuals that, again, I don't know how much people love fasting. I'm not a fan of it, but I know it's helpful. But it's kind of a way to augment that process and still experience it. And it's good you mention fasting, because fasting is a double-edged sword. And this is something so important for people to understand as well. All of these things that we call very healthy are stressors.

Stressors that in healthy people are low enough so that they can grow stronger. You put any kind of stress on an already stress body, and it will make things work because it cannot grow. If you can't grow, it will make you sicker. So, for example, sauna, cold water, exercise, fasting. These are all stressors. So they will transiently raise oxidative stress for you to hopefully adapt, build more antioxidants, and then be stronger the next time the stressor comes around. But if you have somebody who is depressed or whatever they may have or has migraine,

and they're already inflate, they already have oxen stress, and their mitochondria are already struggling, and now you add more stress on top of the stress, right? They're just running into even more issues. So thank you. Fasting in migraine is the number one trigger factor or one of the number one true factors, right? Because the system is already struggling. No, you take food away.

It's struggling even more. So here again, it's so important, and I didn't want to believe it. I thought I need to go running, and running was triggering or migrate every single time, but it had been made fashing. And I didn't listen because I thought everybody tells me sport is so good for you. It cannot be true. It can absolutely be true, right? So nothing, almost nothing is good for everyone.

So really listen to your body and stay in your homantic window. That's the window of growth. And this window is different sides of sperm. Somebody very fit and healthy, might have a huge homeatic window. They can go jogging and then they can go cold plunging and then they go into the sauna and then they fast for a few hours and they're fine. Right. And somebody might not be able to even take a cold shower or fast for two hours in the morning

without crashing or feeling worse. And whenever you try these stresses start very slow and work your way out, that's my advice. Can you call it a homatic window? Hometic window. Homic windows. is the consent. Yes. And so how dark?

And there's mitochondosis too. And that's the homosis. Maitomyces is the romiesis is the romiesis for your mitochondria. And so is there a way for a person to know what their hometic window is? Yeah, that's a good question. I think you can absolutely find out. I think everybody can find out, but you need to listen. Now, if you already are very fatigued during the day, right, you can hardly get

up in the morning. You're very fatigued in the afternoon. You are crashing on the couch in the evening and you feel like you cannot move anymore just by getting through a normal day doing your job, right? Your window is probably going to be very small. If you are, if you have any kind of a chronic disease where you have a lot of inflammation, your window is probably also smaller. Now, I have the lot, let's say. Migraine is a warning signal. So my brain will tell you, stop, this is too much, this is wrong. So when I step out of my heretic window too much, I get a migraine that tells me this was wrong. If she don't have a migraine, it's going to be even more listening to your signal. So say you do cold plunging and afterwards you're more

fatigue than before and you're shivering and you can't warm up, right? Or you do fasting and you feel like, oh my God, I'm so hungry. I'm sitting here. I'm supposed to not eat. I can't concentrate. I can't really do my job anymore, right? It's probably too much stress. So these transient stressors, they should not make you feel worse a couple of hours after. If you feel much worse after, that it was too much. And a good amount, and I've never experienced this,

a good amount of exercise should need that after the shower, you can go on with your day, full energy, right? We should not then have to sleep for an hour or two. before you can go to work again, right? That's too much. That makes chance. And for someone listening to this who's like, okay, I want to take the first step

in terms of replenishing the energy in my brain, what would you recommend as a potential first step for them? Yeah. So, I mean, getting help and inform yourself is good. So it may even help to just get this as a tool to start. But then I have basically four pillars for metabolic health. that is good to go through, and I think everybody should go through if they want to be really healthy.

Now, the number one pillar is stabilizing blood glucose. And this is where basically your whole food's dying comes in. Because what happens in a lot in migraine especially, but also in other conditions is if you eat a lot of sugar or a very processed meal, right, you get a huge sharp rise in glucose. And now insulin needs to come and bring that into your cells. Now, the problem is, This is not natural.

So insulin comes in a delayed fashion in some of us. And then there might be too much insulin coming for the glucose that came in because the stimulus is broken. It takes out all that sugar. Now the sugar is down here, even below where we started. Now what happens? You crave a lot of fatty and sugary processed foods. So you have that same foods again.

So blood sugar goes up really high, too much insulin, crashes low. And you have that roller coaster of too much and too little glucose. whole day. That's the recipe for disaster and which organ suffers the most, the brain. Because where there's too much glucose, the brain doesn't get enough food. So it then says, we're starving, eats. And then you're eating too much again, right? So the number one pillar for metabolic brain health is you have to have a more or less stable blood glucose that never dips too low, never goes crazy, crazy high. This involves whole foods, get rid of sugary, processed foods, but also control your sleep, control your stress.

There's one thing that you'll see when you monitor your blood glucose with one of these guys here, like a permanent decometer. You will see that you have a very bad night's sleep. You're glad you're going sky high because you're so stressed. Right. So that's pillar number one. Pillar number two is getting enough micronutrients. The first pillar we hopefully have a macronutrient glucose at least around, right?

And ideally, if we add more fat and protein to our diets, that will also help keeping blood sugar stable, right? I'm not a big sign of low-proseal low-fat diets because there are essential proteins and essential sets. There's no essential carbohydrates. We need good fats and proteins to survive, period. That's important. Number two is I'm looking at micronutrients. Myconutriens are the thing that nobody has heard of usually, but some vitamins you have heard of. These are vitamins, antioxidants, these are trace minerals that the machinery in your body to make energy absolutely needs.

Now, 35 of them are in this product, so you could have a look at what they are, and you might have never heard of them. But they are important. And even if you use the best organic local foods, if the soil doesn't have this inland, the products won't have either, right? So even the healthiest person can be deficient. So if you have the budget check, if not a broad, let's say medium, low-level supplementation might be beneficial. Sad Pillar is now antioxidants and oxidative stress. So important for migrate, so important for aging, so important for brain health.

Now we have these free radicals back. Free radicals, this oxidative stress, are little bombs that destroy anything in your body that they touch. and we need to have antioxidants or bomb neutralizers to water of the damage. Now, if you don't have enough antioxidants, you'll be in trouble and a lot of us don't because so much toxins come in. So processed foods in the U.S., sometimes the water, the air, even your hygiene products. I like to say, oh, I try to not put on my skin what I wouldn't put on my tongue,

especially perfumes are so toxic, they're not controlled. Through the nose, the blood brain barrier is actually open. Otherwise, it wouldn't smell. So toxins and perfumes go straight to your brain. And there they do a lot of damage. So be very, very careful with anything that smells very intensely. And especially anything that smells for like 24 hours, that is highly chemically processed.

Your flowers in nature, right? You cut flowers off or you have like an essential oil, like in an hour that's gone. And that's how it should be. So, oh, so it's true. and hygiene products, cleaning products, anything that smells, be careful there because we always want to have more antioxidants and this we can

increase by a so forth. Smooth in your diet and so on supplements, co-cutin, PQQQ, add Bichydro, the ketone body's a strong antioxidant and so on. And then getting rid of oxidative stress involves the chemical part and now we're in the psychological part. So it's also important not only

chemically and physically. So don't over-execisance, too much of also stress, also psychological health plays into that pillar and has a huge role because in the body, molecular or cellular level, right, whether you are stressed chemically or psychologically looks very similar. So this means really tidying up your friendships. Anybody who's a net negative takes up more of your energy than they provide just because you were friends in high school, 10 years ago or 20 years ago doesn't mean you still need to be around each other, right? So really start to be more selfish, check your relationships.

If you're related, it's more difficult, but even there, you can try to receive a, this is, we could do a whole episode just on this, but just trying to receive a message differently. Sometimes you cannot influence the sender of a message and there you're boss in there around, can get rid of them, but you can influence how you receive it. And sometimes you can overreact based on parts. experience and it's not even meant that way. So that's one thing one can work on. Learning to say no, so

important and so hard to zoom. Especially for female migrainer, I find, but really try to say no, when you feel like you're overwhelmed, you're overburdened, you can't do everything, you can't be perfectionist. That's also going to damage your energy with how it.

What have I forgotten? Yeah, so relationships, trauma, psychological well-being is super important in that pillar as well because it causes oxidant stress. And the fourth and final pillar is about an alternative energy source. Even

if buccal is stable and we have fats and proteins around, sometimes it's not enough. And this is basically where then the other alternative energy sources for the brink come in, which means ketone bodies or the lactate

and this could be either a various triglyogenic diet or less trigotogenic diet where your liver is making, those keto what is for you or this could be an alternative and some

MCT oils which are patogenic or some high quality beta adroxy nutrient or kick the body into the car

as well. Yeah, so four pillars are done. And so what does your current brain diet look like now?

Yeah, so what does my diet look like? It changes occasionally but I'm actually back to a more or less

paleo diet, paleolithic diet. So basically how we think we used to eat 10,000 plus years back. So I eat some wood vegetables like sweet potatoes. I eat fruit. I eat vegetables, all colors of the rainbow. I eat the whole animal. I eat quite a lot of meat, but not only meat, but also the fat.

I eat the lungs, the heart, the liver from, and I'm not to now, from free roaming animals that are behind us on a meadow and they're organic. And really, I try to make bone growth from me. the bones so I get the minerals. I take this every day again just to make sure that I have surplus my nutrients as well and some keto bodies because I'm not very ketotic anymore. But I generally feel better than I like cooking if I have some variety in my diet. I do eat nuts, especially macademia nuts or avocados. I try to add healthy oils in that. I mean mostly olive oil, MCT oil, coconut oils. I eat a lot of ghee actually.

or a lard. I do not eat seed oils and I especially don't heat anything that's liquid because of oxygen stress again. But I will eat saturated fats, even some butter sometimes. And because I have a German heritage,

I also like to ferment things. So I make no of kombucha, sometimes yoghards, a little bit of cheese here and there, not too much, but I'm in Switzerland. Can I do raw milk cheese if I can? Common here. What I sometimes dried

Fruit, if I need a snack and I'm on the goal. And chocolate. Oh my God. I love dark chocolate. I try to get less toxin-containing, less carburel-containing, dark chocolate. And then matcha, coffee, red wine, or any wine, actually, but in smaller quantities. Hometic window, right?

What doesn't kill you? It makes you stronger, hopefully. As a rare treat, some glitful-free beer. No juice, usually. Sometimes I have like a, I don't know, So some like supplement drink You know this this is a dream That pays any good depending on your taste buds

But then something for my gut as well Cabucha or a kaffir or yeah And I think that's Most of what I eat I would say I hope I haven't forgotten anything What do you eat Simba? What is your diet like? My diet is simple usually eggs, nuts, rice Oh eggs, yes

Me. Love eggs. Yeah. And then I do whole food supplement to help like anything that might be missing. Because me and vegetables, they've got to, we're still working on our relationship with vegetables. So the whole food supplements help with them. Yeah, and vegetables, I don't know, it's a double-edged salt as well, right?

Some do have anti-nutrients. So you have to play around with what vegetables you can tolerate or not. I just, I didn't even carnivores or four weeks. it didn't feel really good. So I think for somebody like me, where you have some toxins that are moving around, you might want to have some fiber to bind the toxins so you can excrete it better. So fruit and vegetables, it's variable, right? Also with rice and these kind of things, some people tolerate it super well,

and some not as much. So I really encourage you to play around. And I wrote a book even. It's not yet published, but it's finished since two years. I just need to find the time to publish it, where I basically introduce all the different types of diet that can be healthy that you can experiment with. It's a very individual choice, right? So there's one thing I believe that it's good for everyone, which is whole foods.

And it can be rice for some, right? Rice and fish or meat and vegetables, whatever. And it's something that would not do very well with any kind of grains. And they should be more maybe all the lower carbs and more fruit and veg, but not rice and vegetables. But very individual. Some do better with ketosis, but some might have to do cypricotosis. So you do that only in winter.

Or you dough in one month and then one month once, you have carbs again. Or you have one carb meals at night and you are ketogenic during the day. So there's so many different ways of building that around your own lifestyle, your social circle, your preferences. And in the end, it really needs to become a lifestyle that you are happy eating. because if it's not a lifestyle and you can't, it's usually it long term. It's not going to work.

So really try to make it yours. There's so many recipes out there. Try to find things to replace what you're craving. At the beginning, I'm very much in favor, these like keto treats or you can make keto bread. You can make keto desserts that are delicious, like a low car. I would say before you are falling off the wagon, allow these for the transition period and see how long we need it for as well.

For the listeners that want to learn more about your work, about your upcoming book, about your supplement, where can they find you? Yeah, so there's basically two main ways. So I have my own website, it's a very simple website, Dr. Elenagross.com. And there you find free resources like a migraine management guide. You will find the YouTube course. So I have a 10 series YouTube course entirely for free. how to manage migraine or master migraine, but in reality, it's how to improve your metabolism.

So everything I explained there, explain is more the mitochondria, energy metabolism, insulin resistance, and the four pillars in detail. This is about brain health metabolically. So if you have any other brain condition, I'm curious about metabolism, this is where to go. And then the product is actually brain ritual, because it's a ritual for your brain, hopefully.

BrainRitual.com. And there we have super many blog resources as well, other resources, customer service and the product. And for your listeners, Simba, of course, we have a $30 discount and who can link that in the show notes. So if you're interested in trying, we'd be happy to hear from you, how are you getting on. We also have a Facebook group with anybody who tries where you can ask all your questions. I'm there. I'm meeting it. So if you have a question about anything, you'll free to reach out more to fellow page.

It's a safe space to ask your questions and to communicate with us. And if there's one key takeaway, the listeners can leave today's episode with, what do you want them to take away from today's session? Oh, just one. I'm leaning between two. What is the best one? Or two. Or two. I would say, number one, fuel your brain to master your mind.

And number two, always listen to your body. It has your back. Love that. Thank you, Dr. Elena Gross. This was an amazing, insightful session. And all the resources that I were mentioned will be available in the show notes as well. Thank you, Dr. Gross.

It was amazing. Thank you so much for having me. Your great questions. Loved it. Thank you for listening. Continue strengthening your mind by subscribing and listening to our other episodes. Thank you.