This Stuck With Me: Harvard Psychiatrist Reveals The #1 Foods You Must STOP Eating To Heal Your Brain

Could what you eat be affecting your mental health? Dr. Chris Palmer reveals groundbreaking research connecting metabolism, diet, and mental illness. From the role of mitochondria to the impact of ultra-processed foods, he explains why conditions like depression, anxiety, and even schizophrenia may be linked to metabolic dysfunction. Listen to the full episode here - Spotify- https://g2ul0.app.link//D8YKGKa38Qb Apple - https://g2ul0.app.link//GrQnbmd38Qb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Chris: https://www.chrispalmermd.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Steven Bartlett?

  Running a small business can feel a lot like being alone at sea. And too often, you're not steering the ship yourself. You're getting dragged underneath all of the admin. Things like offer letters, onboarding, wages, payroll, filing taxes and health insurance.

• 0:17Steven Bartlett?

  And that's where our sponsor Gusto helps. They help you break free of all of this clutter and all of this admin work and all of this headache. Gusto is an online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses, just like some of you. It's an all-in-one, remote-friendly and incredibly easy-to-use platform. So that you can pay, hire, onboard and support your team from anywhere in the world. That way, you can channel all of your energy into growing your business, rather than just keeping your head above water, which is a feeling I know very, very well. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/dairy and get three months free when you run up your first payroll through Gusto. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/dairy. That's gusto.com/dairy. If you're running a business, people have probably told you to use AI or get left behind.

• 1:02Steven Bartlett?

  And I get that urgency. Still, AI doesn't fix a messy business. It exposes one, because AI can only work with the information it can see. So if you ask AI something about your business, about stock or sales or customers or about your team, that information needs to be connected to the AI to be useful. That's the idea behind NetSuite by Oracle, the sponsor of this episode. NetSuite is the AI-powered business management suite that securely connects your financials, your inventory, your commerce, your HR and your CRM into a single source of truth. And with NetSuite Next, AI is built into that connected system. It can surface useful insights, help with routine work and let you ask questions about your business in plain English. For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free

• 1:45Steven Bartlett?

  if your business is generating seven figures or more. Just go to netsuite.ai/bartlett. That's netsuite.ai/bartlett.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Most people have no clue that diet plays any role in mental illness or mental health.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Ninety-five percent of mental health clinicians think it's laughable that anybody would suggest that diet can play a role in mental illness. They think it's laughable. What do you think? I think if you do a deep dive into the science, all of the science that we have accumulated over the last 100 years, and longer sometimes. If you do a deep dive into all of those neuroimaging studies that we've been doing, all of the genetic studies we've been doing, all of the neurotransmitter and hormone studies, and trauma studies, and adverse childhood experiences studies.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  If you do a deep dive into the science, and you understand what is happening in the brains and bodies of people as a consequence of those things, or what could be causing those things. If you put it all together, you come to this soundbite that mental disorders are metabolic in nature, and there is no questioning whatsoever. It is incontrovertible that diet plays a massive, huge role in metabolism. And therefore, I believe very strongly

• 3:37Speaker 01

  that diet might be playing a role in the mental health epidemic that we are seeing. And it also might provide an avenue of hope and healing and recovery. And I use the word "might" as the scientist in me. As the clinician in me, I know without certainty it can heal and recover people who have had chronic, horrible, debilitating mental illnesses.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  And I know from my own personal story. When I was in medical school and residency, I'm still suffering from low-grade depression, OCD, other symptoms. But I also developed what's called metabolic syndrome. I developed high blood pressure, high cholesterol, prediabetes. And I wasn't really overweight. I was exercising, I was following a low-fat diet, mostly of processed foods because they're cheaper. But that was the diet that was touted as a healthy diet. It was low in fat. And as long as it was low in fat, that was supposed to be good for us. And my metabolic syndrome just kept getting worse and worse.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  And so at some point, in order to treat my metabolic syndrome, I changed my diet to essentially a low carbohydrate diet. And within three months, my metabolic syndrome was completely gone. But the thing that just dumbfounded me was that my mental health was better than it had ever been in my entire life. And I just couldn't believe what I was experiencing. I didn't know that I could be that kind of a person.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  I didn't know that I could be happy and positive and energetic and confident. I had no idea. I didn't think that was in me. And by changing my diet, all of those things happened.

• 5:54Steven Bartlett?

  At the level of the mitochondria, are you saying, do you believe that because you changed your diet to more sort of natural, healthier foods, at the level of the mitochondria, the mitochondria were able to function more naturally themselves in a more functional way, which meant that? They released the chemicals they released and the processes they go through were more consistent with positive mental health. Is that like the simpleton's way of understanding it? And before then, you talked about manmade compounds in the foods, et cetera. I'm assuming you're saying that some of the modern foods that we eat, the ultra-processed

• 6:37Steven Bartlett?

  foods that have all of these random named chemicals inside them that we see on the labels, the mitochondria don't know how to deal with that. So it's causing the same sort of dysregulation and dysfunction that they might see if we'd gone through like an extreme trauma or something else, or some other adverse environmental situation. It's just this dysfunction of the mitochondria, which is causing the knock-on effects we see. But there's many things that can cause dysfunction in the mitochondria. And we went through a bunch of them earlier. Is that like a simple way of understanding it?

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 7:05Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, great.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 7:07Steven Bartlett?

  Super interesting. Okay, so on that point, then, we have to zoom in on this thing of diet. If you wanted my mitochondria to be perfect, and maybe even give me a case study of, I don't know, patients you've worked with that you've prescribed a certain diet to, what diet, what food would you tell me to eat? And what would you tell me not to eat?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  So I actually don't have a one-size-fits-all prescription. And so I want to say that upfront. So I would want to know, who am I working with? And how is there mental and metabolic health now?

• 7:47Steven Bartlett?

  Me.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  So you?

• 7:49Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  So I would want more details. Are you having symptoms of any mental health condition?

• 7:56Steven Bartlett?

  I would say no. However, I can, I can have moments where I feel a little bit anxious. So, you know, I've been through a lot of, I'd say like stressful events in my life because I was running a big business, we had hundreds of employees, paydays all the time. So I had this, at one point, I had this constant subtle stress.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  And so I would want to know, do you feel like you have anxiety for no good reason?

• 8:23Steven Bartlett?

  Sometimes. Sometimes it can feel a little bit like that. It's very infrequent, I'd say.

• 8:33Steven Bartlett?

  But I can also have moments where I just think of something and then I get the same kind of like, it's almost like the fight or flight response has just kicked in.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  But you think of something adverse or stressful?

• 8:43Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  So, so the, so the one thing I would say about that, and we could get into a lot more details, which we probably don't want to do now.

• 8:54Steven Bartlett?

  I don't mind.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Podcast, but my, my strong guess, based on just what you've said, is that that level of stress and anxiety is quote unquote, "normal."

• 9:06Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Because you, you are sensing, "I have to go do something that's really scary right now," or "I have to go do something that's going to ruin someone's life," or "that, that might threaten my success." It is normal and actually healthy to have anxiety and stress in those situations. The anxiety and stress can sometimes be quite helpful and adaptive because it can make you pause and reflect on, "Is this really what I want to do?" As opposed to being overly confident and just proceeding.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Your own personal history almost certainly informs your level of stress response. And again, so if you go back to your own traumas, you're going to remember, when I'm facing a situation like this, it's helpful to be on hyper alert. It's helpful to be hypervigilant. And your body and brain will remember that helped you navigate this safely and effectively.

• 10:17Steven Bartlett?

  But if I have that profile, if I have that sort of mental profile now as I sit here, and then for the next decade, I ate processed junk food.

• 10:29Steven Bartlett?

  Am I going to send my mitochondria into disarray, which is going to increase the probability that I have a mental health disorder?

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yes, I think yes. We've got, you know, we, there's no way we will ever be able to do a human randomized controlled trial to test that precise

• 10:47Steven Bartlett?

  unethical.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  hypothesis. But we have large epidemiological studies that strongly suggest that people who eat a lot of ultra-processed food have higher risk for developing depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders. And based on the science, the granular science,

• 11:12Speaker 01

  based on animal models. So we can do that to mice and rats. And in fact, that's exactly what we see in mice and rats. We feed them an obesogenic diet,

• 11:26Speaker 01

  which is usually high in fat, high in carbohydrates, ultra-processed foods. Some researchers have fed rats and mice cafeteria diets, where they feed them a lot of delicious junk food. And those mice develop higher rates of obesity, but also higher rates of diabetes and prediabetes. And oh, by the way, also higher rates of depression and anxiety. Because those are the two things that we can kind of measure in mice and rats. We can't necessarily measure ADHD symptoms. It's really hard to actually measure psychotic symptoms.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  But we can measure depression and anxiety symptoms pretty well in animals. And so in animal models, we know that that's unequivocally true.

• 12:16Steven Bartlett?

  And we see the same in humans, though, because I was reading your book. And in chapter four, you say, people with ADHD are more likely to develop obesity. People who are obese are 50% more likely to develop bipolar and 25% more likely to develop anxiety or depression. And weight gain around the time of puberty leads to a 400% increase in the chance of depression by the age of 24.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Yes, and insulin resistance at age nine.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Makes increases your chances of developing a psychotic at-risk mental state, which is like, meaning you're at high risk for developing schizophrenia bipolar disorder, 500%.

• 12:54Steven Bartlett?

  And Alzheimer's?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  All mental disorders are associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease, anywhere from the lowest is 50% increased risk and the highest is 2,000% increased risk.

• 13:11Steven Bartlett?

  And the thread that unites all of these problems is metabolism.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Metabolism. And at the end of the day, you have to talk about mitochondria in order to understand metabolism.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Only 7% of US citizens have no signs of metabolic health problems. Meaning 93% or so of US residents will have at least one of the biomarkers of metabolic syndrome. Meaning they have prediabetes, or abnormal lipids, or high blood pressure, or abdominal obesity, or abdominal fat, excessive abdominal fat.

• 14:02Steven Bartlett?

  So what do we offer those 93%?

• 14:05Speaker 01

  So those people, diet interventions would absolutely be a part of a healing strategy. A part of it, not the only strategy. I would want to know about their sleep. I would want to know about substance use. I would want to know about medications, lots of things. But for dietary interventions, I would want to meet them where they're at and just find out, well, where are you at? What are you eating? Do you have preferences or demands for what your diet should be?

• 14:44Steven Bartlett?

  Running a small business can feel a lot like being alone at sea. And too often, you're not steering the ship yourself. You're getting dragged underneath all of the admin. Things like offer letters, onboarding, wages, payroll, filing taxes and health insurance. And that's where our sponsor Gusto helps. They help you break free of all of this clutter and all of this admin work and all of this headache. Gusto is an online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses, just like some of you. It's an all-in-one, remote, friendly and incredibly easy to use platform. So that you can pay higher on board and support your team from anywhere in the world. That way, you can channel all of your energy into growing your business, rather than just keeping your head above water, which is a feeling I know very, very well.

• 15:25Steven Bartlett?

  Try Gusto today at gusto.com/dairy and get three months free when you run your first payroll through Gusto. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/dairy. That's gusto.com/dairy. If you're running a business, people have probably told you to use AI or get left behind. And I get that urgency. Still, AI doesn't fix a messy business. It exposes one because AI can only work with the information it can see. So if you ask AI something about your business, about stock or sales or customers or about your team, that information needs to be connected to the AI to be useful. That's the idea behind NetSuite by Oracle, the sponsor of this episode. NetSuite is the AI-powered business management suite that securely connects your financials,

• 16:09Steven Bartlett?

  your inventory, your commerce, your HR and your CRM into a single source of truth. And with NetSuite Next, AI is built into that connected system. It can surface useful insights, help with routine work and let you ask questions about your business in plain English. For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free if your business is generating seven figures or more. Just go to netsuite.ai/bartlett. That's netsuite.ai/bartlett.