Professor Tim Spector

the energy supply of the brain from glucose to ketone bodies, which is a switch that we've always had in evolutionary terms when we couldn't get food.

So after about two days of not having food, we used up our glucose reserves, we used it up from our muscles, and you switch to this other form of energy.

And

It's a survival mechanism.

But what it tends to do is reset the brain.

And so in epilepsy, that's what they think.

It's a bit of a...

Like rebooting your computer.

Epilepsy is rather strange because, and it used to be thought of as a mental illness, as I said, because you can get hallucinations, delusions.

It's associated with depression.

All the same, you can have all the same symptoms.

You get all mental illnesses, interestingly.

And it can be cured by keto.

So that made me curious as to what else is going on.

So in theory, some of the other mental health issues could be improved by keto.

At the moment, there isn't sufficient good evidence.

There's lots of anecdotal stories, studies of seven patients, open-label studies.

not convincing enough for me to say, let's do it.

But I think definitely worth doing some real studies, but also suggesting that even if you don't go as far as keto, just by improving the metabolism and how the brain is getting its energy could be really important.

How long for, though?