How a Ketogenic Diet Reduces ADHD Symptoms - Four Possible Mechanisms
In this video, I explain four different ways a ketogenic diet can help reduce or eliminate ADHD symptoms.
transcript:
How a ketogenic diet reduces ADHD: The mechanisms behind it.
Today, I want to tell you about how a ketogenic diet can drastically reduce ADHD symptoms.
In the next few minutes, I'm going to teach you the biological mechanisms behind it so that if you or someone you know struggles with ADHD, you can implement this diet, give it a shot, or spread the word and try to get the word out about this because it works.
So, who am I? My name is Julie Saad. I am a functional therapeutic diet specialist. That's always hard to say, and it never gets easier. I'm a functional therapeutic diet specialist, ADHD coach, and a holistic wellness coach. And more importantly, I accidentally fixed my brain on keto. That's the only qualification that I really care about.
What I want to do is tell you the four main mechanisms by which keto can reduce ADHD symptoms. And here's where it gets a little bit random: we don't even really know exactly which one it is, if it's all of them, if it's some of them.
But here are the four mechanisms that appear to be working. We don't know which one it is, and frankly, who cares if it works, it works; who cares why.
But let's talk about the mechanisms so that you can understand it a little bit more and decide if this is something that you would like to implement in your life or in the life of your child or a family member or friend or boyfriend or girlfriend or dog. Believe it or not, they've done studies on dogs with this, and it can help dogs with ADHD-like symptoms.
Alright, so the first one, and what seems to be the main one, kind of the one that's winning the race, is that ADHD, along with many, many, many, if not all, mental, let's call them conditions, seems to be related to an issue with glucose metabolism in the brain.
Now there is an excellent book on this called "Brain Energy" by Dr. Chris Palmer if you want to really get into it. But long story short, the brain might be taking too much glucose in or might not be taking in enough glucose, and this can cause all kinds of problems.
So, a ketogenic diet really stabilizes this because you become less dependent on dietary glucose; your body makes the glucose you need for you, and you get off the blood sugar roller coaster too.
And the brain just likes it. So, mechanism number one is that it improves the glucose uptake, which, you know, may be broken in some.
Alright, number two is that it works to optimize levels of neurotransmitters, specifically dopamine and GABA are two that have been researched in relation to keto, and it would appear that dopamine and GABA levels are improved, meaning that they're where we want them to be when a ketogenic diet is implemented. Not too shabby.
Another one is the gut microbiome. You know, gut microbiome is all over the place; everyone loves talking about it. Did you know that people with ADHD have been shown to have a different gut microbiome?
And who knows, definitely more research is needed; the gut microbiome is still a very, very new field of study, so we're still learning about that. But keto can help with the gut microbiome, get it to be a little bit, let's say, better functioning, more the way it should. So in turn, it can help with that.
The last one is inflammation and oxidative stress. So oxidative stress, you know it's from the stress of life; it can be physical stress; it can be psychological stress.
The brain can become inflamed, and a ketogenic diet is shown to reduce inflammation in the brain, in the body, wherever you want to look for it. Keto can help reduce inflammation.
So, those are four mechanisms.
Let's review:
- It can help with the glucose metabolism in the brain
- It can help with neurotransmitters, specifically dopamine and GABA, to name a few
- It can help with the gut microbiome
- It can reduce inflammation in the brain.
So, those are four ways that keto can help with ADHD.
I have created a little video training that will show you how to get started on therapeutic-grade keto.
It's the basic kind of default settings that I would use to get somebody started, and it's what I use with my clients when they want to go on keto.
So, if you're interested, just email me, and I will send it to you. Thanks so much for listening, and have a happy and healthy day, and message me if you want that training.
