Experimental Subject #001, formerly known as an old friend of mine with severe treatment-resistant bipolar disorder, has reported in.
https://theheartattackdiet.substack.com/p/spreading-dangerous-misinformation
He's been on ex150ish for about two weeks now.
Keto flu was an appalling experience, apparently, exhaustion and vomiting.
The exhaustion we expect, suddenly having all your glucose go missing is a major thing. Especially if you’ve never done it before, it takes a while for the backup system to come on line.
Vomiting is completely new to me. He thinks it's mainly because he's not used to dairy.
Cream doesn't seem to agree with him, although apparently that's getting better as time goes on.
I expect this is some gut-flora thing. I've always swilled milk by the four-pint carton and cream suits me fine. It might take a while to acquire the bacteria necessary to digest cream.
But it seems to be working. Increased mental clarity and focus. Better sleep. Better mood.
He wrote me a report one week in, and I'm just going to quote it in full:
Keto-flu – despite being warned about this it hit harder than expected. Being better prepped myself would have been helpful, but I really hadn’t given credence to how hard this would be for 18-24 hours. Still, keeping topped up with water and Cream along with salt water helped get through this.
Once unexpected side effect was a bit of a dodgy stomach.
Discussion with John put this down to struggling with the cream, especially as I’ve never been much of a dairy eater.
Entering Ketosis – initial experience seemed to be in line with the benefits outline by John, loss of weight experienced from the outset. There seems to be increased mental clarity and focus especially from the past couple of weeks and there is if not greater energy definitely more focus in getting things done. I’m definitely sleeping better. The combination seems to be a positive reaction to the shift into Ketosis.
On another note I am still struggling somewhat with my stomach at times – which seems to reinforce the sense that I might be struggling with the heavy dairy intake.
Still, I’m continuing to pursue the experiment.
A week in:
A meeting with my consultant and support worker reinforces the perception that there is an improvement in mood and focus, but given the speed at which I tend to cycle quickly between depressive and hyper-mania cycles. Reflecting on this it seems that I need to retain this Ketosis-state for a period longer than the two weeks suggested by John in this experiment.
I’m definitely happy to maintain this state for longer with the hope that this is resulting in a positive psychological change.
Given the extent I appear to be struggling with the cream I do wonder if the diet John has put me on offers the ability for me to sustain beyond this two week window,
My current thinking is that I need to find a diet that I can sustain over a longer period as I don’t think I could sustain this one much beyond the current window.
Given the purpose of this experiment is to explore the impact of Ketosis on my Bi-polar this doesn’t seem to be an unreasonable starting point.
I’m sure that maintaining this Ketosis state will take significant discipline, regardless of the diet approach adopted. There is lots of research ahead to build up a diet plan which allows me to retain Ketosis state and see if the benefits I’m currently experiencing are a result of the Ketosis or if they are simply part of my normal mood cycling.
And I just got off the phone with him today after two weeks and a second meeting with his support worker.
He's still in a good mood, he reckons that his hypomania phases don't usually last two weeks, so that's looking increasingly unlikely as an explanation for improvements, and his support worker agrees.
He's finding cream less and less trouble digestively speaking.
He is going to try to stay in ketosis permanently. He's researching a way to make it an affordable permanent lifestyle change. Reading recipe books, learning to cook things.
Since I'm thinking along the same lines, he's probably going to end up teaching me how to do no-PUFA low-protein keto.
Smugly, arrogantly, and prematurely I note:
I pulled a theory out of thin air, based on an observation that no-one outside oncology seems to think is important:
https://theheartattackdiet.substack.com/p/polyunsaturated-fats-will-suffocate
It makes obvious predictions:
PUFAs cause mental disorders.
Ketosis patches mental disorders.
PUFA-abstinence may eventually fix them.
Googling pulled up many supportive anecdotes, and not one study.
So I just tried it, on a dear friend that I care about.
And the indications so far are that I've just fixed a case of severe treatment-resistant bipolar disorder.
Whether it actually works, long-term, time will tell.
But provisionally:
I just did a magic trick.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, medical "science".
This stuff is not even hard, is it?
Before you get too smug, L. Amber O'Hearn has kept her bipolar in remission since 2009 with a carnivore diet. She's blogged about it on Mostly Fat, and is also on the FaceBook group Keto AF. But good luck to your friend, and you also. For the people who do it long-term (7 years so far for me) it is phenomenal. I would never change.
> And the indications so far are that I've just fixed a case of severe treatment-resistant bipolar disorder.
Imagine how I felt when I put an idiopathic, incurable condition (nay, disorder!) into remission after 3 days of mild keto :)
Congrats. Feels good don't it.