Roller Coaster Ride for Low Carb Keto Diet First Popularized by Dr. Robert Atkins

The keto diet, a low carb regimen for weight loss that skyrocketed to international acclaim with the publication of “Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution” more than two decades ago, experienced a roller coast ride in terms of new medical and health bulletins this past March. While weight loss programs are often ultimately labeled either good or bad as they come under renewed scrutiny by health experts, the keto diet experienced both–all in a single month.

As every nutrition expert knows, carbohydrates are your first source of energy. In the 1970s, Dr. Robert Atkins, a cardioligist first proposed instead that fats were more efficient energy boosters, a situation known as ketosis. He first proposed it in the early 70s but when he wrote it all down in his second book Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, it caused the diet to explode in popularitty following its publication in 2002. The book has subsequently sold more than 15 million copies worldwide and the keto diet is now often referred to as the Atkins diet.

Given what medicine now recognizes about fats and cholesterol, it’s no surprise that the Atkin’s diet has been criticized as increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke. The latest such critique appeared in last March’s Current Problems in Cardiology. Data from researchers at the St. Paul’s Hospital Healthy Heart Program Prevention Clinic, and University of British Columbia’s Centre for Heart Lung Innovation in Vancouver, Canada, once again documented keto’s ability in increase levels of artery-clogging LDL “bad” cholesterol. In addition, as Harvard Health Letter editors Julie Corliss and Chrisopher P. Cannon point out, the keto rules seem to lead people to shun “sugary” high-carb veggies and fruits such as apples and pears and load up on leafy greens instead. Yes, Yes, greens are good food but, it depends on who’s eating them because their vitamin K may interfere with the anti-clotting drug warfarin taken by some heart patients.

That was the month’s bad news. March’s good news turned the question on its head. Literally.

In the 1920s when scientists first began researching the effects of fasting on the human body, they discovered to their surprise that a low carb diet might reduce the incidence of seizures in children with epilepsy apparently by quieting neurons in the brain. Time and experiments march on to last March when data from a small clinical trial led by Stanford researchers found that the metabolic effects of a ketogenic diet may indeed help stabilize the brain.

As a medical student, lead author Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Shebani Sethi found that the keto diet seemed to soothe drug-resident schizophrenics by reducing their auditory hallucinations. Coining the term “metabolic psychiatry,” she moved to testing the theory in larger groups of patients with various mental illnesses.

Data from her latest effort, a pilot study published in Psychiatry Research, are, she says, “very promising and very encouraging that you can take back control of your illness in some way, aside from the usual standard of care.”

To reach that concussion, Sethi and her cohorts from the University of Michigan; the University of California, San Francisco; and Duke University, followed 21 adults diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, who were taking antipsychotic medications, and had a metabolic abnormality—such as weight gain, insulin resistance, or high levels of fats in the blood. After four months on a ketogenic diet, none of the participants had metabolic symptoms, as a group they lost an average 10 percent of their body weight, and lowered their blood pressure and body mass index (BMI). The subjects also reported improvements in energy, sleep, and quality of life. The standard psychiatric benefits were also striking. On average, as the experts reported, “the participants improved 31 percent on a psychiatrist rating of mental illness known as the clinical global impressions scale, with three-quarters of the group showing clinically meaningful improvement.”

Will all such patients experience similar results? Yes, no, and maybe. As every medical person understands, how well a drug -- or in this case a diet -- performs may depend on individual differences: Each body is special and often singular in its responses. In short, to rephrase the classic cop-out: “No food is either good or bad; your body makes it so.”