Your Brain on Ketones

Ketogenic diets have been prescribed for seizures for a long time.  The actual research diets used in the past were pretty dismal and seemed to involve drinking a lot of cream and eating a lot of mayonnaise.  At Johns Hopkins, pediatric patients were admitted to the hospital for a 48 hour fast and then given eggnog (minus the rum and sugar,...

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Proof that Our Ancestors May Have Practiced an Early Form of Yoga

She called the pose, "I'm being a bunny fro...

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Family Tree

(Right click to open in new tab this lovely version of Mark O'Connor's Appalachia Waltz)That song reminds me of home.  Though, oddly enough, it was a home where I never lived, though we visited the family land in the mountains of western North Carolina every other summer.There's something you say when you meet someone new in the southern U.S. ...

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Ketogenic Diets and Bipolar Disorder 2

Yesterday I made a brief introduction to the topic of ketogenic diets and bipolar disorder.  Today I want to discuss some of the issues raised in that post a little more thoroughly.First let's talk a bit about how nerves work.  It's pretty cool, really, but involves a little biochem and physics, so bear with me.  Now a picture, courtesy...

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Ketogenic Diets and Bipolar Disorder 1

Bipolar disorder is a challenging illness, with various clinical presentations. In "type one" people struggle with alternating symptoms of mania and depression. In "type two," depression is the primary state, with the occasional rare bit of hypomania. By mania, I mean increased energy, increased sexuality, religion, insomnia, and spending money. It feels great right up until reality comes knocking...

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Yoga (ba) GABA

One of my standard recommendations for people who have anxiety is to practice yoga. There are controlled clinical trials demonstrating its efficacy (1)(2), and who hasn't felt that amazing sense of serenity and well-being after a particularly good yoga class? Part of treating anxiety is to bring people down from the state of constant alertness, to help someone be comfortable in his or her own skin...

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Zombieland

Back in the day, we ate a lot of brains.  Stands to reason.  All animals come with one, after all.  And we certainly wouldn't leave behind such a great source of important fat.   Have you seen the movie Zombieland?  I highly recommend it if you're into gore and fun, and while the dietary advice isn't necessarily paleo,...

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Chronic Stress is Chronic Illness - Wherefore Art Thy Regulatory Mechanisms?

So here's how mammals roll.  We perceive a threat, and then our brains jump into action.  First step - the brain's fear center, the amygdala, and the brainstem stimulate the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) to secrete corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH).  CRH moseys on down to the pituitary gland, where CRH stimulates the production and release of adrenocorticotropic horomone (ACTH). ...

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Stress is Metabolic Syndrome

In a previous post I described a little bit about the HPA axis. That's hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, or master glands of stress and how they rule the body and the world. In today's post I want to explore a little more about how stress affects our metabolism and our minds.Just to review, we have a stress response system in case something dangerous happens. And it works great for that kind...

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Love and Opium

First a few interesting tidbits from the news. The stories reference presentations of data at a conference, so I don't have more specific information. But what there is has some interest from an inflammation/chronic disease perspective: Childhood stress leads to adult ill health, studies say (BBC)"A series of studies suggest that childhood stress caused by poverty or abuse can lead to heart disease,...

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More about sunlight, food, and serotonin

The problem with mucking about with our biochemistry is that you are never really sure what exactly is going to happen. For most substances there is a a range of acceptable amounts, though the best range may depend upon levels of something else (zinc and copper, for example, or vitamin D3 and A and K2). Serotonin is a tricky one to figure out. Too high, and we get confusion, high blood pressure, and...

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Theory of Mind and Evolutionary Psychiatry

We are human because we are social.  There is some debate as to why we became quite so social, but the predominant theory is that when we left the forests for the savanna, a larger group offered better protection from predators.  Living in large groups (on Facebook and elsewhere we tend to have 150 people we keep fairly decent track of) required...

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The Evolution of Serotonin

Jamie Scott's Midwinter Blues post was the fourth of four (unplanned) complementary fructose/fructan posts on Primal Muse and Evolutionary Psychiatry. Here's the whole "series" in case you missed out:1)FODMAPS (on Primal Muse)2)IBS, Fructose, Depression, Zinc, and Women (on Evolutionary Psychiatry)3)Dietary Strategies for Fructose Malabsorption (on...

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Western Diet and ADHD

Thanks again to Dr. Hale for pointing out a new study on diet and ADHD. And thanks again to Australia for studying diet and psychiatric issues observationally, though a prospective controlled dietary trial (from any country) would be nice every now and then. Throw us psychiatrists a bone. I know we aren't cardiologists and don't make the big $$ with procedures, but we're important too. Ahem.The...

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Circles of SAM-E

Figuring out biochemistry is rather like watching a group of kids playing on the playground. Lots of kids bounce off each other, swing from jungle gyms for no apparent reason, and toss balls around. In the end, energy was consumed and fun was had. One of the ball-carriers in our livers and brain is the vitamin co-factor SAM-E (pronounced "Sammy"). Otherwise known as S-Adenosyl methionine, SAM-E...

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