Dr. Georgia Ede - 'Our Descent into Madness" video on diet and mental health
 

This is an extraordinary video by Dr. Ede from last year's Breckenridge Conference. (Can't find a transcript, sorry, but there are places to download the PowerPoint slides as a PDF.)

She makes such clear connections between mental health and what we eat. Like her, I found the less vegetables and more animal foods I ate, the better my brain would work.

And as I have painfully learned, when your brain doesn't work, nothing works!

Summed up in Six reasons to go paleo for mental health

A comment led me to this article:

Bread Madness – Schizophrenia or Gluten Sensitivity?
Read more at https://www.glutenfreesociety.org/bread-madness-schizophrenia-or-gluten-sensitivity/#SATTE4D2MHlpVXo8.99

and many other sources which refer to this strong connection between gluten and certain kinds of mental illness.

I also know how much my eating disorder was fueled by those sugar highs followed by crash/burn/depression.

It only makes sense, and it's true to my own experience. Adding therapeutic niacin works like nothing else for my anxiety and PTSD.

Nutrition IS the key.

Great talk. Thanks for posting. Wish more people would take this message to heart.

good stufff.....

Very good, balanced talk.

I read some of the comments, and there were a few complaining about how pre-agriculture vegetables don't exist today, or how conventionally grown meat affects their human consumers because the animal has been fed grains, how we're being affected by vaccines, or the part that electromagnetic/cell phones/etc play in all this - If she had gone into all those factors in great detail, it would have been a 25 hour talk, rather than the much more manageable 30-some minutes.

Besides, if people can make the changes she suggests, then they'll still go a tremendous way towards improving brain function and mental health. It'll be difficult enough for a lot of people to give up what they're convinced they need (such as the girl who told her that she couldn't give up sugars, because she "deserved" chocolate). If Dr Ede had insisted that the only way to do it properly would be to adopt a perfect, organic, grass-fed LC/Keto diet, with only heirloom veggies - such drastic changes would seem so insurmountable that even fewer would ever want to try.

Im surprized at the low number of comments....sure hope everyone gives this 30 minutes....our mental health is driven by many factors that we can manage, steps we can do easily.

I'll have to watch that. I had an uncle (by marriage) who had schizophrenia. He didn't eat sugar except for honey, but he still ate wheat. This was back in the '60s when whole grains were seen as very important for health. It's hard to know if his 2 children (who he kidnapped & kept hidden for years) were affected by the genetic part of schizophrenia or living with a crazy father for so many years. Or a combination of the 2. One does have schizophrenia, but the other one is just strange. He also has nothing to do with the family, including his mother.

For myself, I know that a high carb diet causes confusion & depression. Never want to go there again!

Dr Daniel Amen wrote a number of books for self help as he clearly recognized the lack of mental health support. His books are remarkable. Lots of self diagnosing info, otc options AND how a professional can help. The brain is complex a nd his list of OTC supplements tailored to each problem is amazing.

The biggest take away imo, is most of us suffer from a brain not working at maximum capability and too often we dont know, because it is our personal normal.

So much this! It's not just our thinking, either. A brain that doesn't work will get physical things wrong, too. We don't realize how much gets managed in our head, and it has all kinds of downstream effects.

In a kind of transition phase with eating, and it's also affecting my mood. Yesterday was OMAD because I got very tired and depressed as the day wore on. This convinced me that fasting was a better idea, since I got to bed very early.

After a good night's sleep (which I am FINALLY getting) I feel okay again. I don't think the tiredness and the depression are unconnected at all.

I think they were both symptoms of the same thing, which is low brain chemicals. Nothing gets done without that! And when I came home and took my L-theanine/GABA combo, I felt better.

Are we tired because we are depressed or depressed because we are tired? I think it's both.

I stumbled across some support for my thesis above by reading the memoir The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live by Heather Armstrong. After years of successful treatment for a rampant family tendency towards depression, she fell into such a deep pit she was willing to try an experimental treatment, a safer version of ECT which uses anesthesia instead of electricity. (Because of the well-known severe side effects of ECT. About time!)

It's a good read, a gutsy move, and I wish her all the best. What is pertinent to this discussion is how her lifestyle unfolded in the book.

-----------here there be spoilers--------------------------------------------

She pinpoints the start of this severe depression from her agreeing to run a marathon for excellent, altruistic reasons... except she'd never run a marathon before. So she immediately did what any sensible person does in this day and age.

She becomes a vegan.

So it's miles of training on top of full-time mom and full-time work, all on the dubious fuel of "mung beans and kale" as she herself says. Also, shortly before the treatment began, she was adding "a little bit of meat to her diet," which actually cleared up some digestive issues. Doh!

So, did veganism and overtraining (and I bet I could throw a banana in an urban environment and hit a dozen women who do this) contribute to her terrible depression? Studies are not definitive, but I think that depends on whether the lightening of depression symptoms are reported early in the process (the honeymoon period) or after a period of years (as what happened in the book.)

I think too many of us experienced mood improvement on low carb/sensitivity awarenesss to think diet has nothing to do with mental health.

Imo..... marathon training is rediculously stressful to the body, quickly using up many nutrients, keaving the body in a nutrient starved state. Then add vegan. sheesh

Is book worth reading....or did u hit all the highlights??

I found it well-done, touching, and I admire her for coming forward to help others. The vegan elements were exasperating to read about :) but other than that I would say if you like this kind of memoir, it's top-notch.

Yes, sharing to help others is truly valueable in a time when more and more people are reaching out to each other over calling a physician.

In some other post, I linked the case study update of Dr Westman's 2009 case on schizophrenia and Keto. Dr Chris Palmer wrote the update and adds more blog posts on a regular basis. He has a new "grand rounds" overview for health professionals and was recently interviewed on NPR. Check out his blog on a regular basis for the latest: https://www.chrispalmermd.com/

Overview presentation for Healthcare professionals

Grand Rounds – Ketogenic Diet in Medicine and Psychiatry

This is a one hour Harvard Medical School presentation but Dr Palmer makes it perfectly understandable for anyone. He bravely spends a good chunk of time providing the studies like PURE that show that high fat diets did NOT raise CVD risk, including Harvard's own Women's Health study, and other low fat studies for weight loss like Harvard's that did not lower CVD events. He does not get into Mental Health until the last ten minutes, so this is a very good overview of the diet for diabetes, weight loss, epilepsy, etc.

Video at:
https://www.chrispalmermd.com/ketog...l-grand-rounds/

Oh, great, right?



But then, the kicker:



WHY THE (*&#%$(&% NOT?!?!?!?

https://www.verywellmind.com/gluten...ophrenia-562957

Is it any wonder we are all so fat and sick? With the medical "profession" constantly trying to monetize it and taking corporate money?

Cue incandescent rage.

I have lost all patience with the pious "I want this many peer-reviewed studies in this many journals before I give up eating my junk food because there's nothing you can measure in a lab."

Except, yanno, MY WAIST.