Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Patients say keto helps with mental illness. Science is racing to understand why

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 145 posts

Re: Patients say keto helps with mental illness. Science is racing to understand why

#41

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

elliotec wrote: post #4

I can't help but think "finally" and "told ya so" regarding this news. It's difficult to describe how massively my life changed when I started keto. Like the subject of the article, I've had Bipolar (1 in my case, they didn't specify their version) for most of my life, since way before it's supposed to manifest in late adolescence. I was misdiagnosed here and there since I was a very young child, but I finally got on…

The brain likes keto, no question. I'm not sure it is a good to do it for longer periods of time, it supposedly stresses the body [0]. I did it for a year and continually lost weight, and it wasn't for lack of calories.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qcAStYJwpg

Re: Patients say keto helps with mental illness. Science is racing to understand why

#42

Post by spidersenses »

As a person of normal weight, I tried a keto diet a couple of times but just couldn't get it working under vegetarian/vegan dietary restrictions for a daily work + workout schedule.

I got either underfed to the point of fainting, had to rely on expensive restaurant meals and questionable supplements, or had to spent an enormous amount of time on meal preparation.

So either I approached this in a completely wrong way or keto just isn't for "normal" folks like myself with busy schedules.

Re: Patients say keto helps with mental illness. Science is racing to understand why

#43

Post by jdietrich »

elliotec wrote: post #4

I can't help but think "finally" and "told ya so" regarding this news. It's difficult to describe how massively my life changed when I started keto. Like the subject of the article, I've had Bipolar (1 in my case, they didn't specify their version) for most of my life, since way before it's supposed to manifest in late adolescence. I was misdiagnosed here and there since I was a very young child, but I finally got on…

>I can't help but think "finally" and "told ya so" regarding this news.

I don't want to dismiss your personal experiences, but I think that's the wrong conclusion to draw.

Common mental illnesses - particularly depression and anxiety - have incredibly high placebo response rates. Everything looks like a promising treatment for depression in an uncontrolled trial. You can pick practically any intervention - including literal sugar pills - and get ~40% remission rates in an open-label pilot study. Many thousands of potential treatments supported by plausible theories, anecdotal accounts, case reports and small uncontrolled trials have fallen flat as soon as they were tested rigorously. The base rate suggests that the chance of a keto diet (or any other intervention with this level of evidence) being an effective treatment for depression is on the order of 0.1%.

If keto works for you then you should stick with it. The problem is that it's overwhelmingly likely to be no more effective for other people than a low-fat diet or a low-GI diet or sugar pills or faith healing. Articles like this one do a huge disservice to patients, because they completely neglect the base rate and perpetuate a cycle of hype and disappointment that can ultimately lead to distrust and despair.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7945737/

Re: Patients say keto helps with mental illness. Science is racing to understand why

#44

Post by Almondsetat »

theclansman wrote: post #35
Almondsetat wrote: post #22

People have shit diets (and they don't realize it) so when they finally decide to stick with a famous one they get results. Every popular diet tells you to eat less and eat natural, keto amongst them. Unless you have allergies: no, it'a not keto, no, it's not Atkins, no, it's not veganism: it's not eating crap.

Keto has nothing to do with eating less, in fact you can eat all you want as long as is the appropriate foods.

The "appripriate" foods fill you up. It's all a psychological trick.

Re: Patients say keto helps with mental illness. Science is racing to understand why

#45

Post by eptcyka »

yoaviram wrote: post #34

Also worth mentioning that Keto shows promise as a treatment migrants. Here's a good place to start: http://www.ketoformigraine.com/ (I'm not affiliated).

Ketosis nominally is associated with a state of hunger, which in turn contorts this innocent typo into something darker.

Re: Patients say keto helps with mental illness. Science is racing to understand why

#46

Post by dustincoates »

spidersenses wrote: post #42

As a person of normal weight, I tried a keto diet a couple of times but just couldn't get it working under vegetarian/vegan dietary restrictions for a daily work + workout schedule. I got either underfed to the point of fainting, had to rely on expensive restaurant meals and questionable supplements, or had to spent an enormous amount of time on meal preparation. So either I approached this in a completely wrong way…

Vegan is decidedly not "normal" if we define normal in the sense that it is common. Only 0.5% of the American adult population is vegan (only 2% vegeterian).[1]

Not that there's anything wrong with being vegan! But it definitely a minority position.

1: https://veganbits.com/vegan-demographics/

Re: Patients say keto helps with mental illness. Science is racing to understand why

#47

Post by freedomben »

spidersenses wrote: post #42

As a person of normal weight, I tried a keto diet a couple of times but just couldn't get it working under vegetarian/vegan dietary restrictions for a daily work + workout schedule. I got either underfed to the point of fainting, had to rely on expensive restaurant meals and questionable supplements, or had to spent an enormous amount of time on meal preparation. So either I approached this in a completely wrong way…

Yeah Keto when you can't have dairy or eggs (food sensitivities) is really, really difficult to do. I'm in that boat too and my weight got dangerously low when I was trying to keto.

Re: Patients say keto helps with mental illness. Science is racing to understand why

#49

Post by watwut »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #31
Almondsetat wrote: post #22

People have shit diets (and they don't realize it) so when they finally decide to stick with a famous one they get results. Every popular diet tells you to eat less and eat natural, keto amongst them. Unless you have allergies: no, it'a not keto, no, it's not Atkins, no, it's not veganism: it's not eating crap.

This is the real answer. Keto, Paleo, intermittent fasting... all these things work exactly the same way: by limiting your calorie intake. When the population approaches an obesity rate of 40% (not overweight, clinical obesity!), anything you try will help to counteract the highly processed, far too calorie dense food we get on every corner. People swear on their own diet approach because of some biochemical aspect,…

And then you have rising rates of eating disorders due to all the messaging being all about restricting calories which creates fear of food which puts people in a real acute danger.

Re: Patients say keto helps with mental illness. Science is racing to understand why

#50

Post by Ekaros »

theclansman wrote: post #35
Almondsetat wrote: post #22

People have shit diets (and they don't realize it) so when they finally decide to stick with a famous one they get results. Every popular diet tells you to eat less and eat natural, keto amongst them. Unless you have allergies: no, it'a not keto, no, it's not Atkins, no, it's not veganism: it's not eating crap.

Keto has nothing to do with eating less, in fact you can eat all you want as long as is the appropriate foods.

My understanding is that good diet program means that you don't actually want to eat more. Where as what is modern diet seems to do exact opposite off.
Post reply on HN