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Jan 20, 2023 · How does food affect mental health? A psychiatrist explains how a low carb diet may help depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism, ADHD, Alzheimer’s, and eating disorders.
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Does the low-carb diet decrease serotonin in the brain and lead to depression? What's a low-carber to do?
- Overview
- How keto may affect mood and relieve depression
- How keto may cause depression
- Tips if you’re feeling depressed on keto
- The bottom line
The keto diet is a low carb, high fat, moderate protein diet that was originally used by people with epilepsy to help manage seizures (1).
However, it’s now widely used as a weight loss tool. Being in a state of ketosis, in which your body burns fat instead of carbs for energy, imparts some benefits that make it easier to stay in a calorie deficit (2).
Yet, because the diet can affect the brain and nervous system — as it does with epilepsy — it may also affect your mood (3).
This article reviews how the keto diet may relieve or cause depression, and steps you should take if you’re on keto and feeling depressed.
The keto diet exerts some positive effects on the brain and nervous system. It not only appears to have beneficial effects for epilepsy but also migraine, other seizure disorders, and Alzheimer’s dementia (4, 5).
What’s more, some scientific evidence supports the use of the keto diet to help treat mood disorders, including depression, as the diet may positively affect your brain and nervous system in several ways (3, 6, 7).
On the other hand, the keto diet may cause depressive symptoms or exacerbate depression in some people.
Keto can be difficult to adjust to, and some common early symptoms of your body switching into ketosis — known as the “keto flu” — can be difficult to manage. The keto flu can involve headaches, sleep disturbances, cramping, and fatigue (22).
However, symptoms occasionally resolve if fluid and electrolyte intake is increased (22).
Regardless, dealing with these symptoms may make you feel depressed.
Additionally, the diet is extremely restrictive for most people, requiring you to avoid sugar, starch, legumes, and carb-rich fruits and vegetables.
This excessive restriction may cause you to feel depressed — be it from avoiding “comfort” foods, making a significant, abrupt change to your regular diet, or even a nutrient deficiency.
It’s important to remember that there’s a difference between feeling depressed occasionally and having a depressive disorder. It’s normal to feel sad sometimes, but if it’s affecting your ability to live your life normally, you should seek professional help.
If you feel that the diet itself is causing you to feel depressed because it’s excessively restrictive, has unpleasant side effects, or is contributing to social isolation, you should discontinue it.
Keto is not the only successful weight loss diet, and you can find weight loss success on other, less restrictive programs. However, if you’re using the diet to manage your blood sugar or epilepsy, you should consult your healthcare provider for further guidance.
If you want to continue the diet, here are some strategies you can consider:
•Wait out the keto flu. If you’ve only recently transitioned to the keto diet, your symptoms may be tied to the keto flu. Waiting out the first few days and making sure to drink plenty of fluids and supplement with electrolytes, will make the transition easier.
•Focus on high quality protein and veggies. If you’re not getting enough mood-supporting nutrients, try including more high quality, whole foods in your diet. Magnesium-rich foods like avocado, almonds, and low sugar dark chocolate may help with depressive symptoms (23).
Keto is a popular diet for weight loss and blood sugar management, but it was intended to treat epilepsy. It can also have other powerful effects on the brain and may play a role in managing mood disorders.
Emerging evidence suggests that keto may help with depression in several ways. However, the restrictive nature of the diet may leave some people feeling depressed.
If you’re concerned you may have depression, you should seek help from a qualified mental healthcare provider.
Moreover, if you want to try the keto diet to see whether it may help relieve depressive symptoms, talk to your healthcare provider first.
- Improve blood glucose control. The higher your blood sugar, the higher your brain sugar . . . so every time your blood sugar spikes to unhealthy highs, you’re flooding your brain tissue with excess glucose.
- Lower blood insulin levels. Persistently or repeatedly high insulin levels can cause the insulin receptors on the surface of the blood-brain barrier to become insulin-resistant, meaning they can become damaged, desensitized, and dwindle in number.
- Reduce inflammation. High-sugar diets promote excessive, unnecessary inflammation inside the brain, triggering the release of various inflammatory cytokines—tiny SOS signals that recruit first-responder cells to the scene.
- Boost antioxidant defenses. High-sugar diets cause excessive, unnecessary oxidative damage. Flooding cells with too much glucose all at once leads to a spilling over of oxygen free radicals, which are normally mopped up by our own natural, internal antioxidant molecules (such as glutathione).
Apr 21, 2023 · Find out what you need to know about the keto diet, how it can increase or reduce depression, and what you can do if you’re experiencing depression while dieting.
Mar 15, 2023 · No significant association has been shown between a low carb ketogenic diet and the risk of depression and anxiety. •. Well-designed clinical trials are needed to prove the efficacy of KD before considering it in the clinical care of patients. Abstract. Background.
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May 22, 2023 · The keto diet may help relieve depression due to its positive effects on the brain. However, someone may initially experience adverse effects from this diet, which may affect their mood.
