How Diet Affects Your Mental Health | Dr. Chris Palmer

The science is overwhelmingly clear. What we eat, whether we sleep, our exercise levels, and other lifestyle strategies play a profound role in our brain metabolism. There is no way around it.

That what you eat matters, especially for your gray matter.

People with obesity on average are at 50% to 350% more likely to develop a broad range of mental illnesses across the lifespan.

Like heartbreak or finding purpose in life, you know, how can these things be tied to the effects on a There are tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people who aren't getting better with current treatments.

And what I'm here to say is that we have an entirely new range of treatment strategies that we can begin to think about offering these people.

Are there specific diets you have found to be most beneficial?

Unfortunately, most mental health professionals today will tell you, no way, wherever you heard that from, that's quackery. Don't listen to that. It's worthless.

What do you think the key is to not giving up and still staying on track and being open?

People have to have a reason to stay open. A reason. They have to have a reason to live. They have to have a reason to fight.

You need small, simple steps because sometimes that goal is too overwhelming.

When people suffer from mental health conditions, they want nothing more than to feel better.

I'm 100% responsible for my life. Everything is figureoutable, which gives me hope.

We are going to get you better. It might take us a little bit of time to figure out what the right mix is for you, but we are going to get you better and we're not going to stop. Until we succeed.

What other lifestyle factors do you consider crucial in managing mental health conditions?

Here are some themes that I will offer that have been highly effective in many of the people that I work with.

One is mental illness can feel very isolating. We know that, but the truth is we are more connected than we realize. And everything from depression and anxiety to more severe things like schizophrenia, They share underlying causes potentially that are rooted in metabolism and mitochondria. We'll be discussing in this episode why mental illness is skyrocketing and is medication the answer? If there's hope of real healing and most importantly, the practical steps anyone can take to improve their brain energy starting today. So we're going to be talking about brain energy. So get ready. Welcome back, Kwik Brains. I am your host and your brain coach, Jim Kwik. The reasons behind mental illness still remain one of the most complex fields of study. My guest today is Dr. Christopher Palmer, and he is the bestselling author of Brain Energy. This is a revolutionary breakthrough in understanding mental health and improving treatment for anxiety, depression, OCD, PTSD, and More. And just remember, this podcast is not intended, just like with all our shows, it's not intended to diagnose or treat any disease. Just make sure you consult your health practitioner. So saying this to protect all of you, protect us, and just, just be smart about this, everybody. So welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jim, for inviting me.

I was saying before we started recording, Christopher, that a lot of people have been asking for this conversation to happen. So I think we've never addressed some of these topics before. Before we get into to it, maybe you could share just a minute or two what inspired you to explore the relationship between diet, metabolic health, mental health, and how has your perspective on this kind of treatment evolved over time?

So as a day job, I work in a tertiary care psychiatric hospital. I treat people with horrible, chronic, lifelong, debilitating mental health conditions all the way from depression, anxiety, PTSD, schizophrenia. When I started my training, if somebody had said diet might play a role in mental health, I would have kind of laughed at them and said, no way, you don't understand mental health. You don't understand the brain disorders that I'm working with. These people's lives are ruined. And so my, my interest in this work and my passion for this work really started with, through serendipity and just really astute observation. It, you know, probably the most poignant case was a patient of mine who suffered from something called schizoaffective disorder, a cross between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He'd been my patient for 8 years, had tried 17 medications. Nothing was stopping his hallucinations, his delusions. He was chronically impaired, but asked for my help to lose weight. For a variety of reasons, we decided to try the ketogenic diet. We tried the ketogenic diet. Within a couple weeks, he starts losing weight. I start to notice dramatic improvement in his mood and energy. And within about 2 or 3 months, he spontaneously starts telling me his longstanding hallucinations and delusions are beginning to recede. That man was able to go on to lose 160 pounds, has kept it off to this day, but much more importantly, was able to do things he hadn't been able to do since the time of his diagnosis.

Mm-hmm.

And initially that just shocked me. I literally was just shocked and dumbfounded and in disbelief. But that sent me on a journey to understand the science of what may have just happened to him. I've been using this now in dozens of patients. Clinical trials are actually already underway around the world, and this field is exploding.

You know, your research has led you to findings which demonstrate that mental disorders are a lot metabolic disorders of the brain. So maybe we could discuss the known contributing factors to mental illness. I mean, we're thinking about like genetics, inflammation, neurotransmitters, hormones. Our audience is pretty sophisticated, you know, or even more elusive things like heartbreak or finding purpose in life. You know, how can these things be tied to the effects of metabolism and our mitochondria? Yeah.

So, you know, your audience probably knows if you ask the leading psychiatrist and neuroscientist what exactly causes mental illness, like the mental disorders that cause people's brains to malfunction, that torment people with symptoms like panic attacks or psychosis or unrelenting depression or OCD, um, or even some of the milder ones like just a heartbreak that you can't get over. Everybody has heartbreak. If you don't have heartbreak, you didn't really love the person. But if you have heartbreak and you just can't get over it, and we've all had friends or family members that just can't get over it months or years later, what is different about them? What is going on? If you ask the leading people what exactly causes all of that, they'll say, oh, it's just too complicated. Nobody can figure it out. And as you said, there are many factors that we do know play a role, and we usually talk about them as biopsychosocial. We talk about neurotransmitters, hormones, genetics, but we also talk about inflammation, the gut microbiome, and the gut-brain connection. But we also talk about trauma, stress, loneliness, and how do all those things fit together? And up until now, we really haven't been able to answer that question. And what I am proposing in Brain Energy is that we can actually connect all of those things, but we have to connect them through this big picture called metabolism. And that if we understand how all of those things fit together through metabolic pathways, and more specifically through pathways related to these tiny things in our cells called mitochondria, That we can actually begin to not only understand how mental illness works. So why do some people develop mental illness and why do other people not develop mental illness if they are exposed to the same trauma, for instance? But also, we can begin to identify new treatment strategies. And those new treatment strategies are going to focus more broadly. Not just on mental health. So we're still going to use a lot of the same treatments that we use today because those treatments can be highly effective for some people. So some people can use antidepressants and do great. Other people can use stimulants for their ADHD and do great on those. Some people can be on a mood stabilizer for their bipolar disorder and it works well. I'm not at all trying to take any of that away. And if somebody's benefiting from psychotherapy, I don't want to interfere with that either. But unfortunately, tragically, there are tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people who aren't getting better with current treatments. And what I'm here to say is that we have an entirely new range of treatment strategies that we can begin to think about offering these people. And they include things like dietary strategies, but also other metabolic enhancing.

So whether I'm talking to the audience here, whether they've been following our work for 3 days or 30 years, we've always talked about how brain health leads to better mental health, right? And you mentioned the efficacy of like even diet, you know, that what you eat matters, especially for your gray matter. So maybe we can unpack that a little bit. How effective have you seen dietary interventions in managing or even reversing psychiatric conditions. And I guess what I'm asking is, what are— are there specific diets? And I know people— I recommend everyone get a copy of your book, and we'll put links as we always do in the show notes. Specific diets you have found to be most beneficial? Is it kind of one-size-fits-all, or how's your approach on that?

I think the most important message that I really want people to hear is there is not a one-size-fits-all diet. So some people can actually have metabolic brain problems. That result in mental health symptoms because they are overweight or obese. But other people can actually have metabolic brain symptoms that result in mental health conditions because they are actually underweight, severely underweight, malnourished, say somebody with anorexia nervosa or somebody with really crippling depression who has lost a tremendous amount of weight. Now, obviously, those 2 people need very different dietary strategies. Some of those people need to gain a lot of weight, and other people might need to lose weight. And I just want to highlight that one— those 2 examples of how dietary interventions can sometimes have polar opposite goals.

Hmm.

But dietary strategies, in addition to helping people lose weight or gain weight when needed, Dietary strategies can sometimes help people identify sensitivities or allergies to certain foods. So somebody with celiac disease, for instance, might be highly sensitive to gluten, and going on a gluten-free diet could be a game changer for their brain in addition to their digestive tract. Other people might be deficient in nutrients like vitamin B12 and Figuring that out and getting appropriate B12 supplementation, whether it's through food or vitamins, can be a game changer. But there are dietary strategies like low-carb diets, Mediterranean diet, ketogenic diets, and others that can help people improve broadly improve metabolic health. And when we improve metabolic health, when we improve insulin signaling. When we get people to healthy, sustainable weights, when we improve hormone levels. And so it's really, sometimes it is a general health and wellness fitness diet that a fit body can result in a fit brain, which can result in improved mental health. And I just want to say for the record, Although this sounds like generic health and wellness advice that you've probably heard a million times, and that you're probably thinking, well, duh, of course that works. I'm also helping people recover using specialized strategies for these people. So there's no one size fits all. But I am helping people recover from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. and chronic unrelenting depression. I am still treating the sickest of the sick patients at a tertiary care hospital, and I'm helping their brains heal and recover. I'm helping through dietary and other lifestyle strategies. I am sometimes, not always, but sometimes helping these people really dramatically improve their lives.

So are you recommending a certain, um, Diagnostic or some kind of assessments before, you know, as our listeners are listening from around the world, food sensitivity, microbiome tests, nutrient profile tests. Is that, is that a good starting point or?

It can be. Probably the best starting point would be that I would want people to assess their metabolic health if they have a mental health condition. So if you have depression, anxiety, ADHD, OCD, whatever, I would want you to actually care about your weight. I would want you to care about your glucose levels and insulin signaling. So do you have prediabetes or diabetes? Do you have high blood pressure? Do you have abnormal lipids? Do you have high triglycerides or low HDL or really high LDL cholesterol? All of those can be signs of a metabolic problem. And although most people think that those are problems for your primary care doctor or a cardiologist or someone else, those things are also impacting your brain. And so those tests are easy to do. You can go to a Walmart and get your blood pressure checked. So it's not, not expensive, not hard to do. But for some people, if they are still struggling to identify problems, yes, absolutely what you said. Thinking about, could I possibly have a food sensitivity or an allergy or something? And could that be playing a role? The people who should particularly think about that are the people who not only have mental health symptoms, but also digestive tract symptoms.

Hmm.

So they may have been diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease, or they may just have an, a sensitive stomach or They may get a little bit nauseous, um, every now and then. Those are all overt signs that maybe something's going on in your digestive tract. And it's not unreasonable to consider the possibility that maybe what you're eating is playing a role in those symptoms. And that although you are experiencing it in the immediate term as a stomach problem or a digestive tract problem, That actually might be impacting your brain as well.

Now, our audience, they are— they really thrive focused on behavioral change. That's a big part of our message. A lot of people like to learn a lot or read a book, but they're not making changes in terms of— they have an idea in their mind that they want to start something brand new, but Let's talk about maybe the challenges in adoption. Like, do you see certain main barriers maybe you've encountered in integrating dietary and metabolic health strategies into psychiatric care? And so what would like one or two of those challenges be? And then how do you approach to overcome those challenges with clients or patients?

You know, in my mind, actually, the biggest challenge right now for most people is that if they talk to their mental health provider and say, could changing— and ask the question, could changing my diet improve my ADHD? Or could it improve my depression or my anxiety or my OCD? Unfortunately, most mental health professionals today will tell you, no way. Whoever, wherever you heard that from, that's quackery. Don't listen to that. It's worthless. So the biggest challenge that I have is trying to convince people to take this seriously, that no, I'm, I'm actually really serious that what you put in your mouth is going to affect your digestive tract, and that can travel up to your brain and it can affect your brain. So the first step is getting buy-in that this is actually something worth doing. And it really has a potential reward for you. When people suffer from mental health conditions, they want nothing more than to feel better. They want nothing more than to just be normal, to be happy, to have their brain firing on all cylinders. But if they're being told that they have chemical imbalances and that they need pills to correct those chemical imbalances, why change your diet? Why go through the trouble? Why exercise? That's not a— that's not addressing a chemical imbalance. And what I'm here to tell you is that the science is overwhelmingly clear. What we eat, whether we sleep, our exercise levels, and other lifestyle strategies play a profound role in our brain metabolism and the brain chemicals or neurotransmitters in our brains. There is no way around it. So that's the first step is getting buy-in, convincing people this is something worth trying. Usually I make it time limited. I let people know I'm I'm looking for 3 months, 3-month commitment, and we're gonna see if it works for you or not. We're not gonna do it indefinitely. I'm not gonna keep leading you on. I'm not gonna make you do something that you don't really wanna do if it's not benefiting you. So 3-month commitment. And then the biggest thing is creating SMART goals. So make them specific, measurable, Um, you know, all of those things that go into concrete, doable, achievable, time-limited, very specific. We're going to measure an outcome. And so it might be a change in diet. Sometimes people like to do a start date and go all in, make dramatic changes to their diet on day 1 and just get through it. Other people don't like that. Other people want to make gradual changes and kind of work up to a dietary plan. So it might be, hey, could you do without dessert for 3 days a week? Now could you do without dessert 5 days a week? Now could you do without dessert 7 days a week? And and and maybe then gradually eliminate some of the junk food, and we're working our way toward. a dietary change or a dietary plan, and it might take people a few months to get there.

Yeah.

What I have found over and over again, because one of the biggest questions that I get from mental health providers and even patients and family members is, how on earth do you get seriously ill people, people with really crippling mental illnesses, how do you get them to do a diet or a lifestyle plan and stick with it? And what I'm here to say is, please don't underestimate those people. They are desperate. They are desperate to feel better. Don't underestimate them. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. Let's give them support and education and actionable information to allow them, to empower them to take control of their health. And I don't say that just this pie-in-the-sky hopefulness. It actually works. I'm seeing it in hundreds of people now. And I'm hearing from people all over the world who have done nothing more than just read my book. And then they reach out to me like, oh my God, you changed my life because I'm so much better. And I think, well, that was easy. I didn't have to do much at all. I just wrote a book and you read it. That's great. But I think we underestimate people sometimes.

Yeah, when we get those kind of stories from our readers, you know, for the work, and I'm sure you hear this, but, you know, I always congratulate them back because they're right. While we wrote a book, they did the work. And that first you create your habits, then your habits create you. And little by little, a little becomes a whole lot. Your book is full of stories and solutions. So people are getting The hope from the stories of some of these case studies and also from the solutions, they're getting real help. And so the brain energy approach, in my— when I read it, I saw it as a holistic approach. So beyond diet, what other lifestyle factors that you mentioned do you consider crucial in managing mental health conditions? And then how do Our listeners begin to incorporate these into their treatment or lifestyle plans. Are you a high achiever constantly seeking that next level of success? Welcome to the Kwik Success Program. It's a deep dive and support system to master your life and scale to new heights in personal and professional achievement. Included is our exclusive monthly book club where we process Transformative ideas from amazing books to level up your learning and your life. We also bring the author to the club to answer your burning questions. You can also participate in monthly live coaching calls with me where your questions meet my decades of expertise. Simply go to kwiksuccess.com. That's K-W-I-K success.com and choose the plan that works best for you.

I think that the 2 that I would put at the top with diet are sleep, getting good restorative sleep. And although again, everybody's gonna say, yeah, we already knew that, 1/3 of Americans aren't getting enough sleep, just for the record. So even though everybody kind of sort of knows it, They're not doing it. Um, so sleep, and we can, we can get into even the complexities of, you know, some people have sleep problems like sleep apnea or restless leg syndrome. So I'm not trying to say it's all simple and it's always, there's, there's an easy solution for everyone. But for some people, it is an easy solution. It's turn off your phone, turn off the television, turn off the computer, and go to bed at a good time and then wake up. And keep your room dark and maybe get some light in the morning. That can be a sleep plan for a lot of people. And the third thing is reducing or eliminating harmful substances. So for some people, that can be excess alcohol. For others, it might be marijuana use or heavy CBD use or other recreational drugs. Those things are actually increasing in prevalence. More people are using— about 1 in 10, I think, uh, United States adult men meet criteria for alcohol use disorder, which is alcoholism. Most of them don't even know it. And, and they would, you know, they'll cringe at anybody suggesting that they might have a problem with alcohol. But those are the sad statistics. With the legalization of marijuana, more and more people are using it. And it can actually impair brain metabolism. So although people think that those substances are taking the edge off, and there's no doubt they do, I'm not here to deny that they do take the edge off in the moment, but over long periods of time, they can actually result in impairment in brain metabolism, and that can actually then cause more anxiety. Or more depression or more bipolar symptoms, or in extreme cases, schizophrenia symptoms. And then people are developing more and more serious disorders, and then they feel like they need more and more marijuana and alcohol to treat those serious problems. So those would be the 3 hallmarks: diet, sleep, and removing harmful substances. Exercise definitely plays a role. Having meaning and purpose in your life, having relationships and connections, stress reduction, all of these things also play a role. But I would put those 3 kind of buckets at the top.

Our listeners know that they're familiar. Well, we teach something called the Limitless Model, where you control the controllables, and there's 3 areas of focus. That can move the lever and 3 Ms. The last one are the methods. And a lot of people know what to do. Your book is full of methodology, right? Giving people those options, the different roads that could take them to the same destination that they desire and deserve. But preceding the methods, because a lot of people don't, common sense is not common practice. As much as you mentioned, you know, the importance of sleep and exercise and you had a good diet and stress management and a positive peer group protecting your brain and always learning. And the importance of your environment is motivation. And so we have a formula we teach for motivation, which is P times E times S3, that if you want to motivate yourself or motivate somebody else, the P is purpose, because without reasons, you won't get the results. And I want to remind people as they're listening, it has to be something you feel, not something intellectually, because a lot of people know the reasons they should do something, but if they don't feel it— and that's why I think the stories in your book are so very powerful, because they're very relatable. People going through, you know, a lot of suffering, which I know that's a lot of what the world is experiencing right now. But once you have purpose, you need the E in the S3. The E is energy, which your book is again full of strategies for energy. Some people aren't motivated because they don't have— they lack energy. You know, if they had a big processed meal and they're in a food coma, they're not gonna be very motivated to study or do the things they need to do for work. Or if they haven't slept well because they have a newborn or whatever. But then you could have limitless purpose and energy and still not be motivated. Because I want to remind everybody here, you need small, simple steps because sometimes that goal is too overwhelming just to kind of fix your mental illness or whatever goal you're setting. And a confused mind rarely does anything. So, you know, and your book is full of small, little, simple steps where people could have those wins and move them in the right direction and one step and another direction could completely change your destination. And preceding the— besides methods and motivation, the third and the first M is mindset. And so the last question I had for you, because if people don't believe it's possible, they're not going to take the action. If they don't believe they deserve it, if they don't believe they're capable of it, maybe the people, other people are capable of making that change and that turnaround, that healing. You mentioned the situation where a doctor gives a diagnosis or even a prognosis to a patient and it teaches them to be— that there are no— there's not hope, you know, because you tried everything. There's a learned helplessness, right? Or that patient comes to that determination themselves because they tried everything and they've learned that they're helpless. And maybe you could explain, you mentioned in the book what learned helplessness theory is just so we could just reinforce that with our listeners, that the mindset does play a role in our own healing.

It absolutely does. And there's no way around it. I think humans and even other animals are programmed for learned helplessness, that if we try something over and over again and fail to succeed or fail to get results, or if somebody is tormenting us, let's say you're in an environment where there's abuse or trauma happening, You could be in one of the war zones throughout the world today, and there's not much you as an individual can do. Sometimes people can learn helplessness. They can feel like there's, I'm powerless. There's nothing I can do about it. And it is natural to start to feel depressed and demoralized. And unfortunately, it's natural to, at some point, potentially start to give up. So I think the first step in addressing it is really just recognizing that's what's happening to me. I'm giving up. And this is where the other strategies that you just discussed and that we've talked about already, having hope, recognizing that this is the place I'm stuck in right now and I can kind of Even if you can just pull yourself out of that position for 15 seconds and recognize, and recognize to yourself, I'm in a really bad place for good reason. These are my life is not going well, and there are a lot of things that I can't easily control or stop. I can't stop the war, and that has me giving up, and that has me hopeless. I think the next step for a lot of people is to recognize that position that you've just adopted, this learned helplessness or this hopelessness. This passive position is actually only making your life worse. It's not enhancing your life; it's actually making it worse. And and now you're not even doing basic self-care, and you've given up trying. So then the next step is hope, like we talked about. Find some hope somehow, some way. Find some hope. Find a reason to fight. Find a reason to live. And sometimes when people People talk to me, they're like, but you don't know how bad my life is. You just don't know. How dare you say that? You're a Harvard psychiatrist. You must just have a really perfect life. The real answer is I haven't, but I'm not going to use myself as the model. I'm going to use a guy named Viktor Frankl as the model.

Yeah.

He was in a Holocaust camp. He had all reason to believe that he was going to be killed. He had seen friends and family members slaughtered in front of him, and he and some of the other prisoners were able to figure out a path of hope, a path of meaning and purpose, that no matter how bad these people are that are tormenting us, we are better than this, and we have a purpose. We have a reason to be alive. He had a reason to stay alive.

Yeah.

And that, just that alone, he argued, was what helped him get through. So if he can do it, we can do it. And at the end of the day, it is about that passion, not the rational thought, but the thing you feel, the thing that burns inside of you, the thing that you are like, yes, this is real. I've got to fight for this. If you can cling to that and hold on to that, or just remember that, Yeah, that can set you on your journey to get out of the place you're in.

Yeah, wonderful book to everybody, uh, Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning. We'll put it in the show notes as we always do at jimkwik.com/notes. But we could always decide what to focus on, and we could always decide what those things mean to us, right? You can't always control the external world, but you have more influence on the internal world. And, um, you know, for those For many of our listeners, they know I had a series of traumatic brain injuries when I was a child. I had learning disabilities. I lost my grandmother to Alzheimer's at age 7. And so all these things informed what I do. We hear a lot about post-traumatic stress. We don't hear a lot about post-traumatic growth, you know, coming on the other side of adversity where we find meaning and hope and a mission or clarity on a certain trait or strength that we have that challenge led to some kind of internal positive change. What got me through these 2 beliefs when it comes to mindset is I'm 100% responsible for my life. And then my second core belief is everything is figureoutable, which gives me hope, right? As long as I'm willing to be— have an open mind and I'm looking for knowledge from experts like yourself. I think it's wonderful that you have decades of experience and somebody can sit down and read this book in a few days. and they could download decades of your wisdom and research into days. You know, that gives me hope and help. I'd love to ask you, and I know we're over time, just a question on looking ahead. You know, do you see any emerging trends or technologies that you're personally excited about in the field of metabolic health or psychiatry?

I do. So the really phenomenal news is that This isn't just Chris Palmer with a fringe book and a fringe theory. The great news is that we have world-renowned leading psychiatrists, neuroscientists who are conducting controlled trials, who are really analyzing the data, publishing studies. We've got people setting up treatment programs with a very different model in mind. Integrating traditional mental health treatment services with metabolic health treatment services. We've got biotech companies reaching out to me who are developing products to improve brain metabolism. Um, and those things include medications, supplements, vitamins, bright light therapy, red light therapy, all sorts of things. And I think that is the tremendous hope, is it's not just 50 pathways from point A to B. There are probably thousands of pathways from point A to B. And it's hard for me to pick just one or two, but I don't need to pick just one or two. I want them all because there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone. And I want a thousand options to be able to share with somebody and let them know. We are going to get you better. It might take us a little bit of time to figure out what the right mix is for you, but we are going to get you better and we're not going to stop until we succeed. That is the greatest hope to me.

Dr. Christopher Palmer, I want to thank you for your work and your mission to help helping so many people in the world. I think you change your brain, you change your life, you change your brain, we could change, we could change the world. Where can people get their copy of Brain Energy?

So you can definitely get it on Amazon, Barnes& Noble, and other, even some local bookstores can have it. If you go to brainenergy.com, uh, you can sign up for our newsletter, get more information. There's a lot of, uh, learning and education articles and other things on there. So, uh, yeah.

Wonderful. And people can find you on social media as well? They can.

I'm active on Instagram and Threads and X now.

Okay, beautiful. And we'll put all the links again to your social media, to your website, where people can buy the book, again in the show notes at jimkwik.com/notes. Dr. Chris Palmer, thank you so much for being on the Kwik Brain Podcast.

Jim, thank you so much for having me.

I want to thank all our listeners from around the world. Thank you wherever you're consuming this. One of the best ways of doing it is on YouTube. Join our approaching 1.5 million subscribers there where we put the extended version of If you love our show, make sure you leave a rating and review and share your stories because your stories are what inspire other people to make that positive change for their life. Until our next episode, this is Jim Kwik. Be limitless. Be limitless.