> From a metabolic perspective (e.g. ketogenic therapy), mind wandering can be seen as the result of blood glucose fluctuations that cause mental fogginess and impair focus
Gosh! Another self-help book to "cure" my ADHD and depression! /s
Sarcasm aside, we already have cures for these disorders. It's absolutely insulting to struggle for decades dealing with mental health problems, for the medical industry to hold the cure (which, incidentally, is also the key to allowing you to perform a lot of self-care steps which would improve your mental health), and to then be told that — no, you won't receive the cure because you're not our "ideal patient" so, instead, maybe try and bang your head against this self-help book that "cures" the disease. Obviously, the disease will be cured if you just try hard enough! Or if you just, idk, Cope With It.
The majority of self-help books exist to generate money and only end up reinforcing the point of view that if you are struggling with mental illness it must be your fault. They take the burden off the rotting, decrepit husk of capitalism and put the burden back on to you. "Oh, you have struggled every day of your life with X? Ah, but this self-help book solves X, so if it doesn't work that must be your fault and you need to struggle harder with the methods in the self-help book!"
I hear you. I lost a best friend last year after moving in with him and getting effectively bullied and belittled over my ADHD, which he was adamant was made-up and was just a skill issue that I could meditate my way out of. After he became increasingly hostile and psychotic I had to cancel my lease. Really screwed me up for a while.
I suffer from severe mental illness since I was young - ketogenic therapy is evidence based medicine and has changed my life in a way medication never has.
When you downplay this emerging field of metabolic health you're preventing many people to have access to a treatment that can save their lives.
Please inform yourself better - do not careless spread misinformation that can hurt other people.
There is only anedotal evidence and an animal study that a ketogengic diet reduces ADHD symptoms. There are reasons to be hopeful, but to call this "evidence based medicine" is a lie.
I find it unfortunate that the Keto diet attracts such fanaticism. It makes it much harder to find good information about it.
I couldn't find anything on that site that wasn't marketing material. I didn't dig deep into that organization but it appears to be run by the type of fanatics that I am talking about. It is dedicated to advocating for a certain type of treatment, not dedicated to gathering what we do and don't know about the topic.
I'm not sure why you keep using the term fanatics in what should be a civil cpnversation - it makes me think that either you have an agenda you're trying to hide your simply put you're an extremely rude person.
I'm using the word "fanatic" becuse I think it's meaning is the closest to what I am trying to describe: "a person marked or motivated by an extreme, unreasoning enthusiasm, as for a cause." It isn't intended as an insult or perjorative, but a descriptor.
I am coming from the perspective of being genuinely interested and wanting to try such a diet but unable to find any good information in the sea of fanatical marketing.
> Please inform yourself better - do not careless spread misinformation that can hurt other people.
Please inform yourself on ADHD research. When you downplay the role of genetics in mental illness you're preventing many people from having access to life-changing treatment. The irony of your last statement is quite something. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC161723/
It's wonderful that ketogenic therapy has changed your life. That has absolutely no bearing on people with different a brain structure. Ketogenic diets can be beneficial, meditation is essential, but there are aspects of ADHD that simply cannot be fixed other than introducing more dopamine into your brain.
It's a Oxford’s Keto for ADHD & Depression Randomized Controlled Trial
My personal story is with psychosis which is as severe a mental illness as there can be - and I'm very thankful there are doctors and researchers out there battling all the misinformation about metabolic therapies.
People have different brain structures, but all brains are composed of cells and cells depend on their normal metabolic pathways to do their job.
I actually took dopamine reducing drugs for more than 20 years and I do know from personal experience how these drugs mess up people's lives.
So, yes I'm following a ketogenic therapy to, via metabolic normalization, regulate my dopamine pathways, and after 20+ year of misery I finally feel like I have a brain and a life.
I hope everyone has the chance to benefit from this research as I am benefiting, because I do know how painful it is to be prescribed these drugs for life.
> I actually took dopamine reducing drugs for more than 20 years and I do know from personal experience how these drugs mess up people's lives.
I mean — and I don't mean to be harsh here — if you have ADHD and Depression, of course dopamine-reducing drugs messed up your life. The issue with ADHD is (generally) insufficient dopamine with unusual dopamine release that leads to peaks and troughs in the dopamine response. Even a cursory amount of knowledge here makes it easy to conclude that dopamine reducing drugs will obviously make things worse.
Where are the studies? His list of publications only had individual case studies, which are nice, I guess, but... Lots of people have theories. Where is the science?
I see you did not read the book - if you go to the notes section you'll find references to all the technical papers that support each chapter of the book.
I suffer from a severe mental illness and following a ketogenic therapy has been life changing for me.
It is giving me hope and I see the mind blowing results every day.
I don't have the book, since you have read it, could you provide some of the scientific studies that it cites? I believe you when you say it helped you, but you will have to agree that your anecdotal evidence is not sufficient as proof that it was the ketogenic diet that helped you.
It's a book. You read it. You are helped by the words and insights in it. Its tagline is "If you or someone you love is affected by mental illness, it might change your life." It is a more accessible format of the scientific papers it uses as sources. That's some definitions of a self-help book, no?
ADHD has been linked to a reduced amount of dopamine receptor sites in the brain, and an abnormally high amount of dopamine transporters, which has a profound neurological and physiological impact.
Please, explain how this is just a metabolic issue and how simply adjusting my blood sugar and meditating will magically grow me more dopamine receptors.
When your insulin levels are deregulated, the receptors in your brain-blood barrier became insulin resistant and despite being drown in a sea of glucose your brain cells cannot access it and let their mitochondria use it to produce energy.
Your brain cells then start malfunctioning and neurotransmitter pathways, like dopamine, serotonin or GABA, get messed up.
This is the link from carbs, to glucose levels, to insulin resistance, to the pathophysiology of neurotransmiter pathways which are the SYMPTOMS, not the CAUSE of mental illness.
Read the book.
Watch videos from metabolicmind.org.
There are a lot of researchers working on metabolic health studies as we speak.
My brain has sufficient glucose otherwise I literally couldn't function and there would be other problems caused by the cell's inability to access the large amount of glucose.
In fact, we have a term of that exact disease — diabetes. You're talking about a book that misdescribes diabetes as ADHD, and then purports to cure ADHD with diabetes cures!
Yeah. If someone repeatedly refers you to external resources instead of explaining a process clearly in their own words, it's a sign that they don't know what they're talking about or are deliberately full of shit. I'm charitably categorizing OP in the first bucket, but their approach is still aggressively ignorant to the point of harm.
I don't need to read some guy's book or watch random videos when I can read peer-reviewed, published medical papers. You're misunderstanding the role of genetics in brain development. From birth, the ADHD brain begins developing differently. In the presence of childhood trauma, often exacerbated by ADHD itself, the brain's development diverges even further.
Your worldview fails to account for genetic, environmental and sociological effects on brain development, and you seem to think that someone can just will their brain to suddenly develop more dopamine receptors and better neurological dopamine regulation systems.
Please read the book. The genetics are accounted for as are all other biopsychosocial factors that correlate with a lot of metabolic and mental illnesses.
Could you please provide some sources for this?