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Ignite Your Daily Routine
How does metabolism impact mental health? Does psychiatric medication affect your overall health? How does the medical ketogenic diet affect your health and wellness?
Meet Dr. Christopher Palmer

Dr. Christopher M. Palmer is a Harvard psychiatrist and researcher working at the interface of metabolism and mental health. He is the Director of the Department of Postgraduate and Continuing Education at McLean Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. For over 25 years, he has held administrative, educational, research, and clinical roles in psychiatry at Harvard. He has been pioneering the use of the medical ketogenic diet in the treatment of psychiatric disorders—conducting research in this area, treating patients, writing, and speaking around the world on this topic. Most recently, he has developed the first comprehensive theory of what causes mental illness, integrating existing theories and research into one unifying theory—the brain energy theory of mental illness.
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Connect with Dr. Palmer on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Learn more about Dr. Palmer, his book, and his new approach to mental health at www.brainenergy.com.
In This Podcast
Summary
- Metabolism and Mental Health
- Psychiatric Medication and their Effects
- Medical Ketogenic Diet
Metabolism and Mental Health
Dr. Palmer has spent years studying the function of metabolism on mental health and how a medical ketogenic diet can really help people suffering with these disorders.
He started looking at research and realized that the ketogenic diet actually changes neurotransmitters, changes calcium channel regulation, changes gene expression, impacts the gut microbiome, and even counteracts inflammation.
With all of this promising research, Dr. Palmer started doing more research and using this method on his patients with really good results!
Psychiatric Medication and their Effects
Psychiatric medications slow down metabolism. You tend to sleep more, gain weight, and they really slow you down in all sorts of ways. While these are very common side effects, they are slowly making mental health conditions chronic
The medications commonly prescribed for psychiatric disorders hinders cell function making cells weaker. Over time, this type of cell function inhibition can make depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or any other mental health disorders worse.
Medical Ketogenic Diet
The medical ketogenic diet is a 100 year-old evidence-based diet used to treat people with epileptic seizures. Most psychiatric medications that are prescribed today started as anti-seizure medications, the connection was clear to Dr. Palmer and he started using the medical keto diet as a treatment for psychiatric disorders.
The diet worked and then became the basis that informed Dr. Palmer’s research and treatment of patients with complicated diagnoses.
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Meet Melissa Vogel

Melissa Vogel is an energetic keynote speaker, business owner, certified personal trainer, certified group fitness instructor, 1st degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do, a mother of three, and a podcaster.
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Melissa has also contributed to numerous publications and has been featured in the Trail Blazer Magazine, and published in the April 2020 edition of Health Magazine. Her approach incorporates personal experience, energy, humor, and charisma.
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