It may seem like one of the many fads, more or less fleeting, on the subject of nutrition. But the ketogenic diet also finds space as authentic therapeutic option. It basically consists of minimizing the intake of carbohydratesso that the body begins to use the fat as a source of energy. This leads to the formation of chetonic bodies which give the diet its name, summarized by liver starting from lipids, to give energy to muscles and brain. And their presence in the organism is defined physiological ketosis, is proving useful for treating various serious pathologies. Including some of the most serious illnesses in the psychiatric field: a study just published in the journal Psychiatry Research in fact it seems to suggest that the ketogenic diet could mitigate the metabolic effects from the therapies antipsychoticswhile reducing the severity of symptoms of schizophrenia he was born in I disturb bipolar.
A diet for the brain
The idea of ketogenic dietIn fact, it was born in the medical field. Until the first decades of the last century fast it was in fact often used in the treatment of Seizures. And when in the early 1920s it was discovered that fasting caused the production of chetonic bodies in the organism, and that the same happens when one follows a diet rich Of fats but almost private Of carbohydrates, the idea was born to exploit this mechanism to guarantee the therapeutic benefits of indefinite fasting. Its creator, the diabetologist Russell Morse WilderI baptize it diet ketogenicand with colleagues at the Mayo Clinic began using it to treat diabetes (where the problem is blood glucose levels) and crisis epilepticespecially in pediatric age (in adults it seems less effective).
For a few years, Wilder’s diet was used routinely in the treatment of epilepsy, only to disappear from the radar for several decades with the arrival of first anticonvulsant drugsand re-emerge at the end of the 90’s as a treatment for forms of drug-resistant epilepsy. It is currently also considered effective in the treatment of type 2 diabetesfrom the syndrome metabolic And of obesityand it is precisely in this context that one of the authors of the new study, the Stanford psychiatrist Shebani Sethishe came across the ketogenic diet: working in an obesity clinic – he says – he found himself studying a patient with a form of drug-resistant schizophrenia who had a sudden remission of the symptoms of the disease by cutting carbohydrates. A case that deserved to be explored further, as happened in the study just published.
Research
The study involved 21 adults with a diagnosis of schizophrenia you hate I disturb bipolarunder treatment with drugs antipsychotics and suffering from some metabolic alteration – such as insulin resistance, weight gain, hypertriglyceridemia – problems that often arise as a side effect of therapies, and which can prove so debilitating for patients that they push them to suspend treatments.
Participants were asked to follow for four months a ketogenic diet without calorie restriction, in which they were allowed to eat whatever they wanted but trying to consume approximately 10% of calories daily in the form of carbohydratesThe 30% coming from proteins and the 60% from fats. The researchers then monitored how much each participant adhered to the diet by measuring levels of ketones present in the blood on a weekly basis, with the result that at the end of the trial 14 participants they had diligently followed the ketogenic diet, 6 they had made it so less stringentAnd a Alone participant was considered non-adherent to the diet.
