Essentials: Diet & Nutrition for Mental Health | Dr. Chris Palmer

Huberman Lab

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, Dr. Chris Palmer, a board-certified psychiatrist and Harvard Medical School assistant professor, explores the profound

Key takeaways

• Nutrition directly influences brain function and mental health through metabolic pathways.
• Carbohydrate restriction and ketogenic diets can produce antidepressant effects comparable to pharmaceuticals.

Main topics

• Nutrition and mental health
• Ketogenic diets and metabolic health

Notable quotes

Within three months, my metabolic syndrome was completely gone. Everything got normal.

Conclusion

Dr. Palmer's journey from personal struggle to clinical breakthrough demonstrates that dietary

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. Speaker 1 (0:11) I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. And now for my discussion with Dr. Chris Palmer. Chris, Dr. Palmer, thank you for being here. Speaker 2 (0:23) Thank you, Andrew, for having me. Speaker 1 (0:24) I have a lot of questions for you, and I'm really excited about this topic because I think most people know what mental illness is, or they have some idea what that is. Most people have some idea what nutrition is. Fewer people certainly know how... closely those things can interact. I think everybody is familiar with the feeling of a food or the ingestion of a food making them feel good in the short term. But I believe that very few people understand or are familiar with the fact that nutrition and our mental health interact in this very intimate, maybe even causal way. And that is something that occurs over long periods of time, meaning what I ate yesterday, the day before, maybe even 10 years ago could be impacting the way that my brain and body are making me feel now. So if you would, I'd love for you to just tell us about a little bit of the history, in particular, your history with exploring the relationship between nutrition and mental health. And then we can dive into some of the more particulars of ketogenic diets versus other diets and some of the truly miraculous findings that you and others are coming up with based on real patients and real experiences of people who suffer and then find relief by altering their nutrition. Speaker 2 (1:45) Sure. This story really starts with my own personal story. I don't need to go into great detail, but to set the stage, when I was a kid, I definitely had mental illness. Started with OCD. I went on to have subsequent depression, suicidality, all sorts of things. Somehow or another, I pulled myself together. and got through medical school, actually did quite well in medical school, and then was doing my internship and residency at Harvard. And at that point in time, I was diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. So I had high blood pressure, horrible lipids, and prediabetes. And I was doing everything right, supposedly. I was on a low-fat diet, and I was exercising regularly. And year after year, my doctor kept telling me diet and exercise. I was doing everything he kept telling me to do. Everything was getting worse. My blood pressure kept going higher. And at some point, he said, you're going to have to go on medication for your prediabetes, something for your cholesterol, and something for your blood pressure. So three pills. Basically, you're screwed. It's your genes. You're just going to have to bite the bullet and take meds. As a physician, I knew what that meant. I knew that. I'm in my 20s. If I'm already on three meds for metabolic syndrome, I'm going to be screwed by the time I'm 40 or 50 and I'm probably going to be having heart attacks. I'd heard through the rumor mill that the Atkins diet could somehow help people improve their cholesterol and prediabetes. I was highly skeptical and I believed everything I was taught in medical school. Why would... Why would my professors lie to me? They knew what they were talking about. Low-fat diet was the thing to do. And the Atkins diet was clearly dangerous and reckless. And I had been trying the medical dogma for years, and it wasn't working for me. And so for whatever reason, I decided this is going to be my last attempt at something different. And then I'll just bite the bullet and go on meds. So I tried the Atkins diet. Within three months, my metabolic syndrome was completely gone. I probably lost about 10 pounds through this process, but everything got normal. And when I went back to my doctor, he was shocked. Speaker 1 (4:04) The thing that was the most striking to Speaker 2 (4:07) me after doing the diet for three months was not the fact that my metabolic syndrome was gone. That was my goal. And it was a seemingly miraculous achievement because I got rid of everything. with one dietary change. But the thing that I noticed was dramatic improvement in my mood, energy, concentration, and sleep. For the first time in my life, I started waking up before my alarm went off and feeling rested. That never happened to me before. I was meticulous about planning when my alarm went off and how many times I could push the snooze button. in order to be on time for wherever I needed to be, whether it was school or the hospital or whatever. Speaker 1 (4:54) Prior to the diet, I always felt like Speaker 2 (4:57) there are two types of people in the world. There are these happy, peppy people who Speaker 1 (5:01) just are so positive and they've got energy Speaker 2 (5:04) and they have the saying, they like to work hard and play hard. But I never understood who the hell wants to play hard. Like, who's got energy for that? Like, aren't you tired from working so hard? I assumed that they were just lucky and privileged. They either had good genetics or maybe they had good childhoods or good parents or something, something that I didn't have. What was the journey forward Speaker 1 (5:29) into the work that you're doing now? Speaker 2 (5:32) So within a few years, I'm... You know, an attending physician, I've got all these patients in my clinical practice with treatment-resistant mental illness. I'm in a tertiary care hospital, so I almost never get somebody off the street with their first episode of depression. Out of the gate, as part of my career, I get treatment-resistant mental disorders. So I get people who've already been to six-plus psychiatrists, therapists. They've usually tried dozens of different medications. They've been in decades of psychotherapy. They've often had ECT and other Speaker 1 (6:07) things. And nothing's working. Speaker 2 (6:09) And I'm thinking, you know, well, we're kind of out of options for these other people. And this diet is having this really powerful antidepressant effect. I think I'm going to try it and just see if any of my patients are game to try it, to see if it might help them. Sure enough, it did. Didn't help everyone, and not everybody was interested and or able to do it. But some of the ones who were able to do it ended up having a remarkable and powerful antidepressant effect. One woman actually became hypomanic within a month. And she had been depressed pretty much nonstop for over five years, chronically depressed, suicidal, in and out of hospitals. And I saw her become hypomanic and I'm thinking, wow, this really is a powerful antidepressant effect. Like this is amazing. This is like a medication. but better because it actually is working for her. At that point, we didn't have many clinical trials of the safety or efficacy of the Atkins diet for even weight loss or diabetes, let alone any mental disorders. And so I really actually felt like I'm on the fringe here and this is not going to be met with praise by anyone. So I'm just going to lay low. I'm going to offer it to patients. Speaker 2 (7:27) went along that way up until 2016. Speaker 1 (7:32) I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, 8sleep. 8sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. 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