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8 Reasons to Try Low-Carb for Mental Health

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  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    diannethegeek wrote: »
    Just to add the other side, I believe I'm not the only one on these boards who's had personal experience with my depression worsening on low carb. It's n=1 and no one likes to talk about it and I think I've only seen a couple of people say their experience was the same and we tend to get brushed aside in keto threads, but I do think carbohydrate levels can have an effect on mood and mental health and I do think it's important to watch out for both positives and negatives when trying out different macro splits

    @diannethegeek Lyle McDonald talks about depression worsening on low carb here:

    https://bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/carbohydrate-intake-and-depression-qa.html/
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
    kshama2001 wrote: »
    diannethegeek wrote: »
    Just to add the other side, I believe I'm not the only one on these boards who's had personal experience with my depression worsening on low carb. It's n=1 and no one likes to talk about it and I think I've only seen a couple of people say their experience was the same and we tend to get brushed aside in keto threads, but I do think carbohydrate levels can have an effect on mood and mental health and I do think it's important to watch out for both positives and negatives when trying out different macro splits

    diannethegeek Lyle McDonald talks about depression worsening on low carb here:

    https://bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/carbohydrate-intake-and-depression-qa.html/

    Thanks
  • gatamadriz
    gatamadriz Posts: 68 Member
    I have been on low carb and off low carb and I haven’t experienced it dealing with anxiety or depression. However, I had a wonderful nutritionist in Spain and when I was feeling depressed and anxious, he would give me a week where I ate a lot of roasted turkey, pumpkin, squashes. The tryptophan from all this brightened me up amazingly. So, as he said, when you are feeling depressed, make yourself turkey!
  • HoneyBadger302
    HoneyBadger302 Posts: 2,085 Member
    I would think it's quite a stretch to say that certain diets could or could not affect mental health in terms of psychiatric issues.

    The fact that low-carb does have an effect on the brain is pretty well proven in my research - it has been used to help treat epilepsy in some people for a rather long time (long before "keto" was a buzz term). There also seems to be backing to show that it can help reduce or minimize issues from TBI/RHI.

    I'll have to dig back for my sources, but I tried to stick to actual scientific and medical studies, not just random doctors or bro-science articles.

    So, it may have potential for helping with certain other mental issues, but many of those are so individual, I think it would be very difficult to ever make a blanket statement about it - and I could see it only causing more problems for some people.

    I have TBI/RHI issues (minor, but they do annoy me), and am transitioning to a lower carb diet to see if it helps - I won't go strict keto (the grumpy hangries from that would NOT be worth it LOL), but more along a "paleo-ish" diet. For me, I'm not out much if it doesn't help, and if it does, awesome.
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