Robert Lustig, MD: Food Has an Effect on the Brain

Food has effects on the brain. Okay. I mean I don't have to like convince you of that. You already know that. But like what? It's not just growth but also behavior. Food connect centrally or peripherally can act via the gut of the liver via afferent mechanisms or could act directly via the blood brain barrier to alter neuronal function. Food can act as an initiating or an aggravating factor for many psychiatric diseases. It can affect brain metabolism through changes in mitochondrial function, through glutamate neurotoxicity, through insulin resistance and its effect on leptin and bdnf, or through microbiome dysfunction, leaky gut and autoimmunity. Now the ketogenic diet seems to affect many of these. We don't know if it's due to the sugar restriction or the carbohydrate restriction or the insulin reduction or the ketones themselves because of the sirtuin effect. We don't know yet. Anecdotal data and case series support the association but we need the randomized control trials. They are now ongoing.