How One Harvard Doc Is Astonishing the World by Curing Mental Illness with Diet

This is a repost from the early days of my Substack since I'm still on vacation. If you haven't heard Dr. Chris Palmer's stories of helping people recover from mental illness, you're in for a treat!

File this newsletter under “things you never in your wildest dreams thought you’d hear a Harvard professor and psychiatrist say.” If I sound crazy in some of my claims of what fasting can do, this guy has me beaten by a long shot. 

Healing Severe Schizophrenia with Diet Alone? Say What?

Meet Chris Palmer, MD

• He’s been a clinical psychiatrist at McLean Hospital for 27 years

• Director of the Department of Post Graduate and Continuing Education at McLean Hospital for over 20 years

• An Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School

• Has 15 years of experience as a neuroscience researcher

His private practice in psychiatry specializes in treatment-resistant patients. This means a patient comes to Dr. Palmer after they’ve seen five or more other psychiatrists, already tried dozens of medications, often have had electroconvulsive therapy, and nothing has worked.

He tells a fascinating story about something that happened to one of his patients that changed everything for him. 

Once upon a time, there was a man we’ll call Tom. Tom had severe schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression that persisted for years despite receiving the best treatment available. When he came to Dr. Palmer, he had daily delusions and was tormented by his disorder. He had tried 17 psychiatric medications and none of them helped even slightly to reduce his symptoms. But they caused him to gain over 100 lbs, bringing him up to 340 lbs. 

Tom asked Dr. Palmer to help him lose weight. Dr. Palmer put him on the ketogenic diet, since Dr. Palmer had tried it himself and it had worked well for him.

Within two weeks of starting the keto diet, Dr. Palmer noticed a dramatic reduction in Tom’s psychiatric symptoms. Tom was noticeably less depressed, making eye contact, and talking more. Within 6 weeks, Tom reported that his long-standing hallucinations and paranoid delusions were going away.

One day he said to Dr. Palmer: “You know, maybe all these things I’ve been thinking aren’t actually true and have never been true like everyone has been trying to tell me.”

Tom eventually lost 160 lbs bringing him down to a healthy weight of 180. He has kept it off to this day (6 years now). But much more importantly, Tom is a normal person living a peaceful life, delusion-free and medication-free. 

This puts me in tears to think about how amazing the human body is when we allow it to work properly. But we still have so much to learn (or unlearn).

Tom’s story upended everything Dr. Palmer had been taught as a psychiatrist. One thing that there is an absolute consensus about in the field of psychiatry is that you don’t ever, ever get over schizophrenia. But Tom did.

That’s just one story, you say. Except it’s not.

A woman we’ll call Sue came to Dr. Palmer with schizophrenia so severe that she sat in a chair and stared at a wall all day wetting herself. She had been on over 30 medications, in and out of inpatient programs, had electroconvulsive therapy, and had tried every last standard of care treatment.

After seeing what happened to Tom, Dr. Palmer thought: why not put her on the ketogenic diet too? After a couple of weeks, she began to come out of her catatonic state. Within 3 months, her hallucinations were disappearing. She is now a completely healed patient who is in graduate school, at the top of her class, and speaks with Dr. Palmer on stage about her recovery.

Doris’ Story: Healed from Five Decades of Schizophrenia

Doris had a horrible childhood and suffered from PTSD and depression as a child. By the time she was 17, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and had daily hallucinations. For five decades, she tried antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and various other medications. None of them helped her symptoms but they did cause her to gain massive amounts of weight.

From the age of 68-70, Doris tried to kill herself 6 times and was hospitalized for her suicide attempts. At the age of 70, she was referred to a weight loss clinic at Duke University and put on the ketogenic diet.

Within two weeks, she told the clinic that her auditory hallucinations, which had been present for 53 years, were disappearing. Within months, all of her symptoms of schizophrenia were gone. Within 6 months, her doctors had weaned her from every psychiatric medication. She was then able to lose 150 lbs.

Doris ended up living for 15 more years, remained symptom-free that entire time, never went back on psychiatric medication, and remained out of psychiatric hospitals. She never tried to kill herself again. (She passed away a year ago from pneumonia.)

When Dr. Palmer last spoke with her, she told him how happy she was to be alive and that she attributed her recovery primarily to God. She said her recovery was a miracle from God, and she asked Dr. Palmer to please tell her story to as many people as possible.

You can listen to Dr. Palmer tell Doris’ story in this 3-minute video:

Dr. Palmer is careful to note that the keto diet helped these people before he began tapering them off of his medications. This is important because one thing he admits in his book Brain Energy (another thing I never thought I’d hear a psychiatrist say) is that in his 27 years of clinical experience, long-term meds create long-term disorders.

People came to him with only depression and he put them on meds. But soon they became bipolar, then OCD, then they developed panic disorder, then sleep problems. Since all this progressed while on medications, it’d be easy to surmise that perhaps his patients got better simply by going off the meds. However, he didn’t start tapering until they first showed marked improvement from the keto diet. 

This week I asked Dr. Palmer the following question on X:

“What is the approximate number of people that have successfully responded to treatment on the ketogenic diet?”

He responded by saying:

“There's no official tally, but putting together the people that I've treated myself, along with people described in case reports and clinical trials, plus people who have reached out to me personally, I'm aware of at least 100 people who have responded.”

Dr. Palmer’s Premise in Brain Energy

Dr. Palmer wasn’t content to just watch the anecdotes pile up, he wanted to know why the ketogenic diet was helping so many of his patients when all other treatments had failed them. 

His quest to answer this question led him to write this book released in November:

The basic premise of the book is that just as the kidneys or the heart can become damaged and sickly from the wrong diet, so can the brain. The brain is an organ and needs the correct nutrition to function properly.

Here’s a succinct summary of his research from this podcast. The interviewer asks Dr. Palmer what his research found as to why the ketogenic diet heals patients with mental illness. Dr. Palmer says:

The body has an innate ability to heal itself but we have to set the stage for that to happen, and fasting and fasting mimicking diets [keto diets] are one of many stages we can set to improve metabolism.

So tying in with the mitochondria connection, fasting and fasting mimicking diets do a lot of things to the body that change neurotransmitters, decrease inflammation, change the gut microbiome, promote autophagy. But they also promote mitochondrial repair and mitochondrial biogenesis which means that your cells end up with more healthy mitochondria after people fast or do a fast mimicking diet. [43:00]

Just as a little refresher from high school biology, every cell has a host of organelles called mitochondria that produce energy for the cell in the form of ATP and have numerous other functions.

Dr. Palmer goes on to tell us how ketones heal the mitochondria when we fast and/or do keto:

[Ketones are] a signaling molecule as well and they represent this dramatic shift in whole body and brain metabolism. 

Ketones change neurotransmitter systems and inflammation and actually changes gene expression in different cells…

That process appears to stimulate three things that I think are key: 

• It stimulates autophagy, which is this repair process that our cells use to get rid of old or defective parts and replace them with new ones.

• It stimulates mitophagy, which is a mitochondrial version of autophagy; so it means that you're getting rid of old and defective mitochondria and replacing them with new ones.

• And it stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis, which means that your cells will have more mitochondria and those mitochondria will be healthier. [46:32]

If any of this fascinates you, as it does me, you might enjoy listening to this podcast below that gave me a lot of insight into Dr. Palmer’s compassion for people suffering and his determination to help them:

Here’s one of my favorite quotes from this podcast:

We prescribe medications that cause premature death. Read the package inserts. [It is] inhumane that they [keto haters] would let people suffer and writhe in mental pain and be disabled by their illness and not offer them an effective treatment [the ketogenic diet.] That is just inhumane!

I just never thought I would ever hear any mainstream psychiatrist, much less a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, talk about how harmful psychiatric medications can be and how a ketogenic diet is a simple solution for many people.

I’m so excited about this research for a number of reasons!

Tying It Back to My Initial Question

My question that started this newsletter: what if there are other fields of medicine besides just diabetes where a simple, non-medical, solution can be found?

Dr. Palmer’s work is answering my question in a surprising way. It’s showing that non-drug solutions can be found in places where we never dared expect them.

The first interview I linked to ends by asking Dr. Palmer to list the best foods he would recommend for everyone and the foods that every person should avoid.

His best foods were fish, low-starch vegetables, and healthy oils such as olive oils.

The foods that he says everyone should avoid for optimal brain health are any and all forms of sugar and corn syrup, and all grains (even whole grains).

A note about Dr. Palmer’s book Brain Energy. I really enjoy reading books that challenge my mind, especially when it comes to science, so I loved Brain Energy. But I want to warn you, it’s very much written for the scientific community and not for the general public. If you are not fascinated by the thought of reading chapter after chapter about the biochemical inner workings of the mitochondria in brain cells, then the book may not be for you.

However, I have another suggestion. Dr. Palmer’s colleague Dr. Georgia Ede just came out with this book, and it’s everything that the average person interested in this topic could want. It has just the right amount of easy-to-understand science along with plenty of practical advice about how to implement the diet. I highly recommend!

Beginner Fasters Tip: Pushing through a Tough Spot

Here’s a common pattern I see in beginner fasters. Many people who start slow with something like 16:8 find the first week of fasting relatively easy. However, as they near the end of their first month and they are increasing their fasting a little more, they often hit a rough patch.

There’s a biological reason for this. I’ve mentioned before that the liver can store between 12-24 hours worth (depending on factors such as how active you are) of temporary, easy-access glucose in the form of glycogen. As you transition to eating two large meals instead of three and focus on high protein instead of high carb, your liver glycogen will slowly decrease and you will eventually run out.

So let’s suppose that in week one you start out with your liver glycogen at 100% and each day you fast for 16 hours, you’re burning through about 60% of what’s available during the fast. Then when you eat on day one, you only have enough carbs to go back to about 90% capacity. By the end of week one, your liver glycogen right before you eat is now dropping to 30% and you’re refilling to only 75%.

If this trend continues and you keep eating fewer carbs (fat and protein do not contribute to liver glycogen), you’ll eventually run out of liver glycogen during your fasts. When happens, you will feel it and usually fasting will get a harder for a time.

I want to assure you that if it stayed as hard as it feels during that transition, then nobody would do it long term. But after you conquer this adjustment phase, everything begins to get easier.

Think about a butler at a large estate who is walking slowly down to the basement to where the deep freezers are kept, and he’s taking his time because it’s been so long since he last took anything out of that freezer. The people in charge of shopping have been stuffing food down their daily for years and kept buying more and more freezers to store it all. But now there’s no food in the kitchen, so he has to begin a new habit: pulling food out of deep storage.

The more weight you need to lose around your middle, the more painful this transition process will be. Abdominal obesity indicates insulin resistance (there’s that insulin word again) and high insulin is the enemy of fat burning. A transition period is needed. Two people could both need to lose 20 lbs, but the person who needs to lose a little everywhere will likely have an easier time than the person who carries all their weight in the waist.

But if that’s you, never fear, just know that your battle will feel a bit fierce for awhile. Support yourself by drinking plenty water with some added salt since the body locks toxins away in fat stores. Part of this initial discomfort is also the toxins released as you burn through fat stores, so make sure to flush them out constantly.

The worst advice that anyone can give you as you transition to being a fat burner for the first time since—well, a very long time—is to listen to your intuition. Being an intuitive eater is something that most experienced fasters eventually do achieve, but only after a lot of hard work. Some of us may never be able to be intuitive eaters when it comes to highly palatable foods. I’m to the point where I’m definitely intuitive about meat and cheese—my appetite tells me how much to eat. I will probably never be able to rely on my intuition when it comes to ice cream. That doesn’t mean I’ll never eat it again, but if I do add it back in, it won’t work to “follow my heart” on the appropriate amount.

In a similar way, if your body is really ramping up the hunger signals and throwing a little fit, caving only encourages the tantrum. Give it some water and tell it to go rummage around in the deep freeze. It’ll eventually figure it out.

I’ll use weightlifting as an example. Suppose you go to your doc and find out that you have sarcopenia (muscle wasting) as well as osteoporosis (loss of bone density). He will prescribe lifting weights and dramatically increasing protein. So you get a coach because you’ve never lifted before and you want someone to show you the ropes. After a couple of weeks of giving you low weights and few reps so you can work on form, the lifting starts getting harder.

Your coach tells you to do 10 reps. Do you say, “No, I’m going to follow my intuition here on how many I want to do?” If you have a good coach, she is not going to ask you to do more reps than is safe. If you stop at 7 instead of 10 because you feel like that’s all you want to do for now, you’re defeating the whole reason you got on your workout clothes, drove to the gym, and did the first 7 reps. All the results come in you pushing yourself beyond what you feel like doing. If following your intuition resulted in muscle loss and weak bones, it’s time to submit yourself to something hard.

Fasting is the same way. We may have to push ourselves a little beyond what’s comfortable. And if you’re feeling a bit uncomfortable that’s a really good sign that something positive is happening.

Being a little hungry is not a feeling that most Americans ever experience. It takes time to learn how to be productive in spite of some stomach rumblings. Part of the trick lies in learning to ignore it. Drink some water or black coffee and wait 20 minutes. I’ve personally found that true hunger is much easier to overcome than the munchies. I define the munchies as that feeling you have when you’ve eaten just one warm chocolate chip cookie. Once you’ve had one, you really want another.

But that’s not how I feel fasted. As I type this, it’s been 22 hours since I last ate. My stomach has a slightly hollow sort of feeling but I don’t mind that because it keeps me alert. There’s plenty of stored fuel on the system, my body knows how to utilize it, so there’s no feeling of panic or emergency. I could continue like this for days, but I’m looking forward to eating tomorrow.

You will know you’ve crossed to the other side when:

• You find yourself reading twice as fast as you used to and no longer needing to reread sentences.

• When you start listening to everything on 1.25 or 1.5 speed but are still able to follow no matter how complicated the material is.

• When you have tons of energy to do things like clean and no longer suffer from decision fatigue.

That, my friend, is the magic of ketones: upgrading the mitochondria in your cells, and giving your brain a boost. If it can bring someone out of a catatonic state, it can surely do something for you. But you’ll never know unless you try.

Final Note:

If you have started fasting and then quit and then keep saying you’ll start again tomorrow, don’t give up. It takes a long time to relearn a lifetime of input telling you to eat processed junk around the clock. Not only is your body learning a new trick, to burn its own fat, your mind is still figuring out if you believe this stuff or not. It’s a long process, and that’s okay. Tomorrow is a new day so keep trying and upgrading yourself to the new 2.0.

Until Next Week, Fast Well and then Feast Well,

Leslie Taylor

[This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not designed as a substitute for medical advice or to treat, diagnose, or cure a medical disease. Talk to your doctor before beginning any dietary changes, especially if you are on medications for diabetes. Fasting while taking certain medications such as Metformin and especially insulin can lead to dangerously low blood sugars. If your doctor does not support fasting, search for a physician who will support your fasting journey. Fasting is not recommended for those pregnant, breastfeeding, or for children and teens still growing and developing. For those with diabetes, personal fasting coaches are available through TheFastingMethod.com. I receive no compensation or ad revenue for anything in this newsletter including links to books, videos, websites, coaching services, podcasts, or supplements.]