Most Replayed Moment: Your Food Could Be Making You Depressed! How Diet Impacts Mental Health!

This year, most business owners I speak to are fixated on making AI work for them, and on this show we keep circling back to food and mood because diet is a big lever.

People laugh off the idea that food matters for serious mental illness, but a century of evidence points to mental illness having deep metabolic roots, and diet is a major dial on metabolism. In my own training I carried low-grade depression and OCD and developed metabolic syndrome on a low-fat, processed diet, then I switched to low carb, reversed the metabolic markers in three months, and felt mentally better than I knew was possible.

Are we talking mitochondria here, as in better fuel and fewer additives steady the system so brain chemistry aligns with healthier mood? If I wanted to give my mitochondria the best shot, what would you have me eat and avoid?

I do not hand out one template, I start with your mental and metabolic picture.

I do not think I have a disorder, but I sometimes get a jolt of anxiety after years of high-stakes, always-on work.

Given that, your spikes sound like a normal, useful stress response rather than an illness. Your history can teach your system to stay alert in risky moments, which can actually protect you.

If I kept eating ultra-processed stuff for a decade, am I raising my odds of a disorder by overwhelming mitochondria?

Yes, we cannot ethically randomize that in people, but large cohorts link heavy ultra-processed intake with more depression and anxiety, and the animal work shows obesogenic, cafeteria-style diets drive obesity, diabetes, and more anxiety and depression. We measure those states well in rodents, even if ADHD or psychosis are harder to capture.

Your book lists tight links: ADHD often coexists with obesity, and obesity raises the odds of bipolar by about fifty percent and anxiety or depression by about twenty-five percent.

Weight gain around puberty is tied to roughly four times the risk of depression by early adulthood.

Insulin resistance at around nine years of age multiplies the chance of a psychosis-risk state by about five times.

Across diagnoses, the risk of Alzheimer’s rises from roughly fifty percent up to twenty times.

So the common thread here is metabolism and, under the hood, mitochondria.

Exactly, metabolism means mitochondria, and only about seven percent of Americans look metabolically healthy. Most have at least one marker like prediabetes, abnormal lipids, high blood pressure, or excess abdominal fat.

What do we actually offer the other ninety-three percent?

We personalize, because diet is one lever among sleep, substances, and medications, and I begin with what you eat now and any preferences or constraints.

Give me an extreme case from your practice.

Doris grew up with severe trauma, developed schizophrenia at seventeen, lived with daily hallucinations despite many meds, gained to about three hundred thirty pounds, had a guardian, and attempted suicide multiple times in her late sixties.

At seventy she tried a ketogenic plan at a Duke weight clinic, lost weight, her psychosis remitted within months, she tapered off meds, stayed well and out of hospitals for fifteen years, kept about one hundred fifty pounds off, and died at eighty-five from COVID pneumonia.

Keto was created a century ago to stop seizures, and we borrow many epilepsy tools in psychiatry because biology overlaps.

We know it shifts neurotransmitters, inflammation, the microbiome, and gene expression while improving mitochondrial function, and in epilepsy two to five years on it can produce lasting remission for many even after stopping.

What is that diet taking away or adding to drive this? It basically cuts sugar almost entirely, right?

It is very low in carbohydrates with no added sugar, and while some point to gluten removal or extra protein or nutrients, the big effect is a fuel switch that makes the liver produce ketones.

Those ketones feed the brain and also tune mitochondria, epigenetics, neurotransmitters, and inflammation, which can quiet seizures and psychosis for some.

What about fasting for mental health?

Keto was designed to mimic fasting because fasting can quickly calm seizures, and the benefits come from similar metabolic shifts that help mitochondria, insulin signaling, the gut, and brain chemistry.

The problem is you cannot fast forever, so the diet lets you capture those effects more safely over time.

Caveat: people who are underweight or have lost significant weight from depression or cancer should not fast.

In those cases, fasting-mimicking plans like keto can help but need medical supervision.

If I eat a very high sugar diet, what does that do to mitochondria and metabolism?

Some people handle treats now and then, but most are not metabolically resilient, and chronically high sugar drives oxidative stress that tracks with both metabolic and mental disorders as a marker of mitochondrial strain.

Sustained high glucose dysregulates energy systems and pulls you into a downward spiral.

That was one of our most replayed moments; the full conversation is linked in the description, and thank you for listening.

If you know this show, you know I bang on about sleep because I ignored it for years and learned it sits upstream of almost everything that matters.