The Emerging Field of Metabolic Psychiatry
What is metabolic psychiatry?
Metabolic psychiatry is an emerging field about the relationship between metabolic health and mental health. Experts take the principles of biological psychiatry with a metabolic perspective to better understand how our physical bodies impact our mental health. This includes improving inflammation in the body, insulin resistance (blood sugar regulation), and energy pathways. This research could lead to metabolic therapies that improve the chemical and physical systems in our bodies, allowing our minds to focus on our mental health.
What is the relationship between mental health and metabolic illnesses?
Metabolic processes such as insulin resistance or diabetes controls how your brain produces and uses the chemicals that help you feel happy or process emotions and triggers. Think about it this way. If you have diabetes, your body is not producing the right chemicals to help with blood sugar regulation and general physical health, and that impacts your dopamine, serotonin, and other chemicals responsible for regulating emotions. This is why individuals with insulin resistance or diabetes are twice as likely to struggle with depression. Additionally, those with depression are 30% more likely to develop a metabolic syndrome.
Recents studies have found that 40% of individuals with a metabolic syndrome also suffer from severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Additionally, people with a metabolic syndrome also have a higher risk of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. All these studies show a strong correlation between mental health and metabolic illnesses.
What is the goal of metabolic psychiatry?
More studies have shown that factors like inflammation, oxidative stress, and insulin resistance may be underlying chronic brain disorders and serious psychiatric conditions. The goal of metabolic psychiatry is to study how improving those metabolic factors can also improve symptoms of mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar, and others.
What are my next steps?
One major step you can do while looking into mental health care and speaking with your doctor is simply changing the foods you eat. Even if you’re on a limited budget, avoiding highly processed foods with refined sugars and carbohydrates will improve your health significantly. Finding the time and money to prepare healthy food is no easy task, but there are recipes for casseroles, one-pot dishes, easy soups, and simple salads that are delicious, healthy, and affordable. You can check out some ideas here.
While metabolic health is out of our scope of practice as therapists, many of our providers are knowledgeable on the subject and can refer you to several different providers of metabolic psychiatrists based on where you live. We often collaborate with providers to provide a holistic approach to healing.
If you are looking to work with a therapist who has a whole-body and holistic approach to healing, book a discovery call with our team.
Want to take a deep dive?
Dr. Shebani Sethi, MD, is one of the founding directors of the metabolic psychiatry clinical and research program at Stanford University. Her biography page includes information on her upcoming research trials and her previous publications.
If you really enjoy reading, then we have a couple titles to suggest!
Brain Energy explores the relationship between the body and the mind so thoroughly. Here’s what one reader had to say about it:
“This is the book that will forever change the way we understand and treat mental health. If you or someone you love is affected by mental illness, it might change your life. We are in the midst of a global mental health crisis, and mental illnesses are on the rise. But what causes mental illness? And why are mental health problems so hard to treat? Drawing on decades of research, Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Chris Palmer outlines a revolutionary new understanding that for the first time unites our existing knowledge about mental illness within a single framework: Mental disorders are metabolic disorders of the brain.” - Goodreads
Dr. Robert Lustig is a world-renowned pediatric endocrinologist who explores the relationship between food and our mental health. He tackles several problems in his incredible book Metabolical. You can read an excerpt of a great review here:
“Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric neuroendocrinologist who has long been on the cutting edge of medicine and science, challenges our current healthcare paradigm which has gone off the rails under the influence of Big Food, Big Pharma, and Big Government. Making the case that food is the only lever we have to effect biochemical change to improve our health, Lustig explains what to eat based on two novel criteria: protect the liver, and feed the gut. He insists that if we do not fix our food and change the way we eat, we will continue to court chronic disease, bankrupt healthcare, and threaten the planet. But there is hope: this book explains what's needed to fix all three.” - Goodreads
