Overview
Currently, one in five Americans live with a mental illness, and these rates have been tracking alongside increases in metabolic disease. Yet, conventional psychiatric care does not typically include discussion of food or an assessment of metabolic dysfunction, obesity, or insulin resistance in the evaluation or treatment of mental health conditions.
On this episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy, I was happy to sit down and talk with Dr. Shebani Sethi about the relationship between mental health and metabolic disease, and how we are gradually coming to understand that inflammation, oxidative stress, and insulin resistance may represent important root causes of many chronic brain illnesses, including many psychiatric disorders.
We often hear about food in the context of physical health—eating for a strong heart, healthy weight, and glowing skin. But what about the other impacts of food, like how it makes us feel emotionally and mentally?
Dr. Sethi and I discuss metabolic psychiatry, a term she coined, which looks at the connection between psychiatry and overall metabolic health. Metabolic psychiatry considers how nutrition affects the brain, specifically focusing on reducing sugar, processed foods, and refined carbohydrates as a mechanism to improve mind and body health. Dr. Sethi discusses how highly refined carbohydrates and ultra-processed foods can alter brain signaling, appetite-satiety mechanisms, and reward signaling, and how the use of a ketogenic diet can be an effective intervention to address mental illness, including binge eating and food addiction.
Dr. Sethi also shares with us the single most effective intervention we can implement today to support our overall health, and prevent mental health and metabolic disorders.
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