Dr. Chris Palmer: The Mental Health Discovery That Transforms How Entrepreneurs Perform | Mental Health | E402

Mental health care has a silent crisis, and Dr. Chris Palmer has spent 30 years watching patients exhaust medication after medication with little relief despite world-class treatment. His search for answers became the foundation of his brain energy theory, a framework that proposes an entirely new way of understanding and treating mental illness. In this episode, Dr. Chris breaks down the science of mental health and metabolism, explaining how the brain's ability to produce and use energy may be at the root of psychiatric conditions. He also shares practical tips to support better brain health and overall wellness. In this episode, Hala and Dr. Chris will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (02:18) The Real Causes of Mental Illness (06:11) Accidental Discoveries in Medicine (11:35) How Bad Is the Mental Health Crisis? (23:04) How Metabolism Shapes Brain Health (29:48) The Brain Energy Theory (35:27) Too Much vs. Too Little Brain Energy (46:37) Delirium and the Brain Energy Theory (51:28) The Power of the Keto Diet for Better Health (01:03:50) Neurodivergence in Entrepreneurs (01:10:01) Advice for People Currently on Antidepressants (01:14:30) Habits to Optimize Your Mental Health Dr. Chris Palmer is a psychiatrist and researcher at Harvard Medical School with over 30 years of clinical experience at McLean Hospital, one of the world’s top-ranked psychiatric institutions. He is the author of Brain Energy, which explores mental illness as a metabolic disorder of the brain. Through his clinical work, research, and public education, he is helping expand the conversation around mental health treatment, metabolic health, and lifestyle medicine. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Quo - Run your business communications the smart way. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/profiting Remitly - Transfer money internationally across 100+ currencies with no hidden fees. Download the Remitly app or visit remitly.com to get started. Use code BUSINESS to get a $100 bonus after you send $300 or more. New customers only. Prolon - Reset your body with Prolon’s five-day plant-based program. Go to ProlonLife.com/PROFITING for 15% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Resources Mentioned: Dr. Chris's Book, Brain Energy: bit.ly/DrCP-BrainEnergy Dr. Chris's Website: chrispalmermd.com Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Biohacking, Motivation, Manifestation, Life Balance, Self-Healing, Positivity, Happiness, Sleep

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

• 0:00Hala Taha?

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• 0:45Hala Taha?

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  In any given year, about 1 billion people on the planet will be diagnosed with a mental disorder. Western countries like the United States, the rates are higher and have been higher for decades.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  Dr. Chris Palmer, a leading expert in metabolic psychiatry. He helps uncover the powerful connection between metabolism, brain health, and overall wellness.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  93% of Americans right now have at least one biomarker of poor metabolic health. A large study of millions of people looked at, of those who have obesity, are they at increased risk for developing a subsequent mental illness? And the answer was overwhelmingly yes.

• 1:51Hala Taha?

  Something that was really surprising when I was reading your book is that when you have mental illness, it can actually shave off years of your life.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  On average, men are losing 10 years of life. Women are losing seven years of life. What are they dying of? It's heart attacks and strokes.

• 2:06Hala Taha?

  What would you say to the listener right now who's on antidepressants?

• 2:10Speaker 01

  If you're taking an antidepressant and it has changed your life for the better, by all means, please keep taking it. However, 90% of people taking antidepressants, that's not the case. So if you're having any of the side effects, or it didn't really fully work for your symptoms, I would strongly encourage you first and foremost to-

• 2:32Hala Taha?

  Hey yap fam, what if everything you've been told about mental health is only half the story? Today, we're looking at mental health in a totally new lens. I'm sitting down with Dr. Chris Palmer, Harvard psychiatrist, researcher, and author of Brain Energy. His work is reshaping how we understand mental health, metabolism, mitochondria, and even the role a ketogenic diet may play in supporting brain health. And we'll explore all of this more deeply in the conversation. But before we dive in, if this is your kind of podcast and you haven't followed us yet, this is your friendly reminder to follow Young and Profiting Podcast on your favorite platform and subscribe to our YouTube channel. It takes two seconds and it keeps you plugged into conversations that help you level up in every aspect of life. Now, Chris, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Thank you, Hala, for having me.

• 3:18Hala Taha?

  I'm excited for this conversation. We talk a lot about mental health on the podcast, but you're really bringing a new perspective to the table. And you've basically spent your whole career trying to answer this one question, which is, how does mental illness happen? Like, what is the cause of mental illness? And after all your research and all your time studying that, what did you come up with?

• 3:40Speaker 01

  So, you know, what's long been known is that there are a kind of myriad different causes of mental illness, and they often fall into three different buckets: biological, psychological, and social. And so we have this theory, the bio-psychosocial theory of mental illness, that there are lots of different things that can happen. And those include things like neurotransmitters, genetics, hormones, inflammation, sleep, drugs, and alcohol, but also psychological and social things like trauma, stress, adverse childhood experiences, those types of things. And, but precisely how they all fit together?

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Has perplexed people for millennia. And what I believe, based on the research I've done, is that we can actually begin to connect all of those things through what we call metabolism. And that actually metabolic dysfunction or dysregulation can actually help us understand what causes mental illness. So it doesn't replace the bio-psycho-social. It integrates the bio-psycho-social. It puts it together once and for all.

• 4:56Hala Taha?

  And I know that like traditional psychiatry really focuses, especially when it comes to like depression, on this like chemical imbalance theory, a lack of serotonin. What's the difference between, or do you feel like that's still accurate? Because you were saying like, you know, your theory kind of integrates with everything. Do you feel like that's accurate at all? Or do you feel like metabolism is really the key to all of that?

• 5:19Speaker 01

  I do think metabolism is key. So for people who don't know, the serotonin like hypothesis of depression largely is derived from the observation that medications like Prozac or Zoloft or Paxil, which all kind of inhibit the uptake of serotonin. So they, in other words, they increase the availability of serotonin in a synapse. That those can work for depression. And there's no doubt, they really can work. And as a psychiatrist for over 30 years, I have seen them work time and again in different patients.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  And so the theory, that was really just a serendipitous observation, that these medications seem to help depression. And so the assumption was, well, patients with depression must not have enough serotonin. That it's really as simple as that. And but in fact, we have decades of neuroscience research, looking at serotonin levels in depressed people's brains. And it turns out, they don't have lower levels of serotonin in their brains. So we actually have really robust, strong evidence that people with depression do not, in fact, have a serotonin imbalance. Now, so that still begs the question, though, then why would these medicines work?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  And I actually believe that that understanding the science of metabolism, and more specifically mitochondria, can actually help us understand why they would work. So serotonin is actually really important to brain metabolism, and more specifically to mitochondrial function. And when you understand that, you can understand that it's not necessarily an imbalance of serotonin, and yet boosting serotonin for some people can be a really powerful treatment.

• 7:17Hala Taha?

  Now, I definitely want to get into like, what is metabolism? What is the role of the mitochondria? But first, like, something that you said really piqued my interest, because you said that, basically, this this medicine, these antidepressants, they were used for other disease. And it was just like a side effect that they noticed that people were getting happier. And then they just kind of leaned into that. What is the problem with doing that in medicine? Because there's other instances of that. There's certain medicine where they realize it makes your eyelashes grow, and now everybody uses it for their eyelashes. And there's so many instances of like, side effects turning into something that people use, which I just think is like a really strange way to go about prescribing medication.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, that's actually more of the rule than the exception in the field of medicine. You know, and this goes back to like, the 1800s and before. It like, it goes back to, you know, really ancient medicine. You know, ancient healers would find herbs.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  That had medicinal properties and they would grind these herbs or process them or dry them or do other things and give patients with certain symptoms or conditions, these herbs and sometimes these herbs actually really did work and they really can treat things like heart failure. The people had no clue how or why they work. They just knew, oh, here's a plant. If we grind it up in a certain way and give it to people with these different conditions, it can be helpful. I mean, ancient Chinese medicine is all based on that. It's based on different things, like even acupuncture. There are theories about why if we place the needles in these locations, do we see

• 9:05Speaker 01

  symptom reduction, whereas we place the needles in other locations, it doesn't seem to work as well. So that's really the way most of medicine actually has developed is serendipitous observations that if we do, if we give this medicine or if we give this plant or this substance to people, it can be helpful. It can reduce symptoms, even though we had no clue how or why it worked. Like, we were using opioids, like heroin and other opiates for pain relief for, again, centuries without really understanding how or why it works.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  So same too in the mental health field, as you mentioned. Like, the first antidepressant was actually a tuberculosis treatment and the people in the tuberculosis wards were giving these people this treatment, but noticing that some of them had had pre-existing depression and all of a sudden, they were happier. And they're like, wow, I wonder if this would help those patients over on that psych ward and maybe it would help them too. And sure enough, they did. They didn't know how or why they worked. The assumption wasn't that people with depression also had tuberculosis. The assumption was that this tuberculosis medicine is somehow doing something, like even some of the hair loss medications that men take, that was serendipitous.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  They were blood pressure medicines initially and then, oh, wow, men are growing hair. Let's use it as a hair loss kind of method instead.

• 10:44Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, it is unsettling because you would think that in 2026, we have a lot more science and rigor. But unfortunately, and we're getting there. We're definitely getting there. And I don't want to discount all of the progress that we've had in neuroscience and biological sciences and healthcare. And we are getting there to the point where if we understand, you know, certain receptors play a role in a disease, we can design medications to target those receptors and get the effects we want. You know, people are modulating the immune system in complex ways to help cure cancer sometimes. So medical progress is phenomenal,

• 11:28Speaker 01

  but still the bulk of medicine is based on these serendipitous findings.

• 11:35Hala Taha?

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• 12:19Hala Taha?

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• 12:33Hala Taha?

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• 13:12Hala Taha?

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• 13:41Hala Taha?

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• 14:22Hala Taha?

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• 15:07Hala Taha?

  Like, we always see these stats of, you know, whether it's 30% of adults have depression or whatever it is, there's all these stats always about how bad mental health is. Can you set the stage in terms of how big of a problem this is? And then also, like, is this getting worse? Or are we just diagnosing it now because it's something that we actually look at?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, both really important questions. The latest broad-scale epidemiological data that we have across the world suggests that in any given year, about 1 billion people on the planet will be diagnosed with a mental disorder. That represents about 13% of the world's population. In Western countries like the United States, the rates are higher and have been higher for decades. And it's about 20% of people in any given year will be diagnosed with a mental disorder. The lifetime statistics are much higher.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  So in the United States and other Western countries, about 1 in 2 people, 50% of all people, will meet criteria for a mental illness at some point or another during their life. Now, sometimes, the cause of these mental health conditions is really obvious. It's, you know, a man who's married for 25 years gets a divorce, loses custody of his children, loses like all of his livelihood and everything.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  It's obvious why he would develop major depression. And it would definitely last probably more than two weeks. And so he would end up meeting criteria for a mental illness, major depression. And he might get prescribed medications. He might be going to his primary care doc and that person would prescribe him an antidepressant or sleeping medicine or other things. So sometimes the cause of the mental illness is really clear and apparent and obvious. It's not some complex problem or issue to understand. Whereas other people have very complicated brain conditions, whether they're neurodevelopmental

• 17:24Speaker 01

  like autism or ADHD, whether it's bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or the person who gets severe crippling depression for no reason, for no reason at all. And everything else under the sun. So, you know, mental disorders include things like alcoholism, anorexia nervosa, bulimia.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  It includes things like dementia, Alzheimer's disease and others. So there's a broad, broad range of mental disorders. And the overwhelming preponderance of evidence strongly suggests the rates are increasing across the board, across a wide range of diagnoses. Now, there is debate and disagreement about that. Some will argue, as you suggested, that we're just better at recognizing it. All these celebrities are coming out, talking about their struggle with mental illness. And that's empowering and encouraging people to talk about it. No doubt that that is all that's true. And that does affect the statistics somewhat.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  But that is not at all the entire explanation. I mean, rates of autism in the last 25 years have more than actually now quintupled. I used to have to say quadrupled, but now it's quintupled. And yes, we're better at diagnosing it and recognizing it, but the rates are also legitimately increasing.

• 18:54Hala Taha?

  Talk to us about the correlation between physical health, like people becoming more obese and having diabetes with an increase in mental health diagnosis.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's a great question and very much aligned with a lot of my research. So. Everybody knows, in case you've been living under a rock, obesity and diabetes are skyrocketing, skyrocketing in prevalence. Seventy percent of United States adults are now overweight or obese. That is a black and white issue. It's not that we changed our definitions of obesity. It's not that people are screening more for obesity, so we're recognizing it more. It's obvious. You can just look at photos from people in the 1950s on the street and photos from people on the street today, and you will see it with your own eyes.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  And what I would argue is that is related to mental health, too. That at the same time that people are developing these metabolic disorders, so too will the rates of mental disorders increase or even skyrocket. And we have very strong data to support this. Most of that data is correlational, meaning, so for example, a large study of millions of people looked at, of those who have obesity, are they at increased risk for developing a subsequent mental illness? And the answer was overwhelmingly yes.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Anywhere from 50% more likely to 350% increased risk. And what were the diagnoses? Like, a lot of people might think, well, maybe depression because of fat shaming. Sure, yes, depression, fat shaming might play a role. But also anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, somatosphoric disorders, personality disorders were at dramatically increased risk. And that's after the person already had obesity. So what does that mean? It means that if a child is developing obesity...

• 21:14Speaker 01

  That child is at increased risk for having a mental illness in his or her future.

• 21:22Hala Taha?

  Wow. It just makes me think because there's so much like, um, you know, body positivity around being overweight. And this gives it another lens that like, there's more than just a vanity factor. It is actually impacting and can impact your mental health. And I think that's just something really interesting to realize that it's not just vanity. It's not just looking good in clothes. It actually can impact your mental health being overweight.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  I, I think that's a really important point and by no means am I here to fat shame anyone.

• 21:54Hala Taha?

  Of course.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  By no means am I here to make anybody feel bad about themselves or have lower self-esteem. But I think it is negligent for us to just assume that obesity is okay. And obesity is just, you know, it's just a way of being, it's a healthy choice. It's just another choice. It's another option. No, it is not. It is a serious, severe health condition that affects numerous parts of your body and your brain. And we should take that seriously and we should do everything we can to try to prevent and address obesity. To why? Not, not because I'm hyper about discipline and shaming people.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  But because I'm trying to improve people's lives and I, I don't want them to suffer. Like when people have, when people have a chronic mental illness, for some of them, it can be a living hell. It really can. And it's much more complicated than just fat shaming in societal norms. Yes, they play a role, but it's so much more than that. And, um, and if we're really going to improve human health and improve people's lives, we need to take this seriously.

• 23:09Hala Taha?

  Mm hmm. Something that was really surprising when I was reading your book is that, uh, when you have mental illness, it can actually shave off years of your life. You, you live a shorter life. Can you talk to us about that?

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've, we've long. That people with severe chronic mental illnesses like chronic depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, they lose anywhere from seven to 30 years of life, depending on what study you look at and what population. But a very large study published in one of the leading medical journals, not even psychiatry journals, but medical journals, found that it's almost across the board, all of the mental illnesses listed in DSM. So all of them are associated with premature mortality. On average, men are losing 10 years of life, women are losing seven years of life. What are they dying of? Everybody always immediately goes to suicide.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Oh, those mentally ill people must be killing themselves and that's why. Well, yes, it is true that people with mental illness are more likely to take their life. And if a 20-year-old commits suicide, that is going to skew the statistic down in terms of the average age of death. But that is not at all the primary cause of death. The primary cause of death in the mentally ill is the same that it is in everyone else. It's heart attacks and strokes, but it's occurring about 10 years earlier in life.

• 24:40Hala Taha?

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• 25:24Hala Taha?

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• 25:39Hala Taha?

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• 26:39Hala Taha?

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• 27:22Hala Taha?

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• 27:53Speaker 01

  So a lot of people have kind of a simplistic notion of metabolism. They think that, you know, the probably more common... Or the more popular kind of definition is it's burning calories. Because we think about it as it relates to our weight. And if you're burning a lot of calories, then you can have a quote unquote, fast metabolism. And these are the people who can eat anything they want, anything in sight, and they never gain any weight, and they must just be burning through it. And then there are people purportedly who have a slow metabolism and they're not burning calories and they can eat salads once a day and they're gaining five pounds a week because their metabolism

• 28:35Speaker 01

  is just so slow, no matter what they do, they can't lose weight. So burning calories is absolutely part of metabolism and is a critical part of metabolism. But metabolism is so much more than that. So I would offer this kind of relatively overview definition, which is metabolism is the process of taking food, water, oxygen, and turning it into energy or building blocks that are used to make cells or make hormones or make neurotransmitters or create bone or anything. So essentially, when we eat food, it gets turned into one of two things.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  It either gets turned into our actual body, different cells or cell parts, or it gets turned into energy that gets burned for fuel to keep us alive. And then metabolism also involves kind of the waste management process of that. Because if, when managing the waste products becomes dysregulated, that can back up metabolism, so to speak, and you can have a metabolic problem because you can't get rid of certain things. So it's that. In a way, metabolism is fundamental to the definition of living organisms.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  So for example, viruses cannot do metabolism on their own. And so most biological authorities will say viruses are not living organisms because they have to, they have to take over the metabolism machinery of a living organism. And so in that way, metabolism is huge, massive, and it impacts.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Essentially, every aspect of human health.

• 30:30Hala Taha?

  And so I know that an important part of metabolism is the mitochondria. And we all learned in science class that it's like the powerhouse of the cell, right? But you call it the motherboard of the cell. So talk to us about what the mitochondria does, how it's related to metabolism, and then how this all connects to mental health.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Like, when I describe metabolism as this overarching thing, fundamental to living organisms, and it's ridiculously complicated. There are thousands of different hormones and molecules and everything circulating around that contribute to metabolism. When people ask, well, what controls metabolism in the human body? It's actually not what most people would say. Like, a lot of people might say the brain controls metabolism. And it's like, well, yeah, the brain plays a role in it, but it doesn't actually control metabolism in every cell and organ and tissue and stuff. And so the real answer, based on 2026 science, the real answer, or the most likely answer,

• 31:34Speaker 01

  is that mitochondria are actually regulating and controlling metabolism throughout the body. And although they are in specific cells, like, so as you said, they are the powerhouse of the cell. And what does that mean? For those of you who want the refresher from your seventh grade biology class, what does powerhouse mean? It means that they are taking your food and oxygen and turning it into ATP, and that's kind of the energy currency of the cell. And so that's the powerhouse function. They're taking food and oxygen and converting it or transforming it into energy. And there's no doubt mitochondria do that,

• 32:17Speaker 01

  and that is critical to living organisms. It's critical to human health. But cutting-edge research over the last 25 years has actually completely shattered that simplistic definition. Mitochondria are so much more than that. They play countless roles in the function of cells. And so, related to mental health, some of the things that they do that are gonna start to connect the dots, connect these bio-psychosocial dots for us, is that mitochondria actually play a role in neurotransmitter synthesis and release and regulation.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  And so, if you buy into the argument, oh, like schizophrenia is due to an imbalance of dopamine or something, it still begs the question, well, what causes that imbalance in the first place? And increasingly, the science, the neuroscience, is pointing at mitochondrial dysfunction or dysregulation as the cause of neurotransmitter imbalances. But mitochondria do so much more than that. They play a role in epigenetics, which is the expression of genes from the cell nucleus. They play a role in inflammation, turning it both on and off, and yet inflammation affects

• 33:43Speaker 01

  their function. They play a role in how hungry we are and how much energy we have. But here's the thing, trauma, social adversity, stress, impact their function as well. They, drugs and alcohol do, and hormones do. And actually, mitochondria control the first step in the synthesis of some key hormones that are known to play a powerful role in mental illness. And those include cortisol, estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone. And so, if somebody has dysregulation of those hormones, you have to implicate mitochondria in that dysregulation.

• 34:29Hala Taha?

  And so the title of your book that you put out a few years ago is called Brain Energy. And you kind of saw this as the red thread between like all mental illness, right? Like that everything was kind of interconnected when everybody thought that they were all from like different causes, basically. But you say all different types of mental illness, from ADHD to depression to schizophrenia to Alzheimer's, are all connected through this concept of brain energy. Can you distill that for us?

• 34:58Speaker 01

  We know that there are biological, psychological and social factors that play a role. And I'm here to say, yes, yes, yes, yes, we have decades of evidence to support that. But how are they connected? How exactly are they connected precisely in biology and physiology? Like, how can we understand it? Like, I think I deserve some credit for connecting some of these dots, but I certainly did not do a lot of this foundational research. So it's like hundreds, maybe thousands of brilliant scientists and biologists and others have been working on this for decades. And I think the hopeful thing is all of their work, once and for all, is finally starting

• 35:43Speaker 01

  to culminate in better understanding mitochondria, all of the different roles they play. And that, when you look at that science, it begins to help us connect the dots of the mental health field, this bio, psychosocial thing. And how does it all impact? The beautiful thing about it is that it, it kind of aligns with so many other things that we already know. People with mental illness are more likely to get physical illnesses. People with physical illnesses are more likely to get mental illnesses. It helps us understand how and why those are connected. And then maybe most importantly, it gives us

• 36:31Speaker 01

  A wide range of new treatment strategies that we might not be using right now to help people improve their, not just mental health, but also their physical health simultaneously.

• 36:43Hala Taha?

  Something that I thought was really fascinating is this fact that your brain actually uses a lot more energy than you'd think. I know that my mom, for the longest time, whenever I'd be studying, she's like, "Make sure you eat, because your brain takes up so much energy." And I'd be like, "What are you talking about? Like, my brain's not burning that much energy." But I think in your book, you mention that the brain makes up only 2% of body mass, but uses 20% of the body's energy. So, talk to us about why that's so important to understand when we're talking about mitochondria and energy and, you know, not having enough energy created through your mitochondria, leading to having mental illness. Or too much or too little, it goes both ways, actually.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  It does go both ways. And so, yeah, but no, it's a really important point, that the brain is, the brain is like an incredible, amazing, awe-inspiring organ. Like, it is really, truly incredible. And for those who believe in God, you just, you know, it's, only God could come up with something like the brain. It is incredible. But it is this incredible machine that does so many things for human life, human existence. And it is

• 38:06Speaker 01

  like a supercomputer. And as such, it does require a lot of energy to function. And that level of energy production and regulation of that energy really is very similar to, like, a complicated supercomputer. So for those who are familiar with complicated supercomputers, it's actually the flow of energy that, in part, is making that supercomputer run. And you can burn, fry circuits if you put too much energy through them, and if you're not putting enough energy through them. Then it's not going to work. Well, guess what? Same thing happens in the brain. If there's too much or too little energy flowing in the right place at the right time,

• 38:51Speaker 01

  you're going to get dysfunction in those brain circuits. And at its core, that is one relatively straightforward, easy way to understand kind of this theory is that energy dysregulation or metabolic dysregulation can help us understand dysregulation in the functions of the brain, the myriad functions of the brain. And when those functions become dysfunctional or don't operate properly, essentially that's what we call mental illness. Sometimes we call it a neurological illness when it's extreme and we can measure it like a seizure or something like that.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  But in the mental health category, there aren't necessarily objective measures that we've developed today in 2026. And so we rely on symptoms and patient reports. But when a patient says, I'm hearing something that's not there, we can assume that some brain networks are dysfunctional and brain energy metabolism can help us understand how and why those brain circuits can become dysfunctional.

• 40:06Hala Taha?

  So let's talk about like, we were just saying how energy, you can have either too much energy, too little energy happening with our mitochondria in our brain, which results into different mental illnesses. So talk to us about when there's too much energy happening and what happens in terms of like, what kind of mental illness? And then what are the environmental factors that play along with having too much energy going through your mitochondria?

• 40:33Speaker 01

  So it really, I mean, It starts to get complicated fast. I just want to say that.

• 40:38Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  For any of the neuroscientists listening, I fully understand this is really complicated. But I'm going to speak to a lay audience and try to make it sound simple. It's not simple.

• 40:49Hala Taha?

  And I'm sure my questions aren't that great because I'm not a neuroscientist. I'm like trying my best.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Your questions are phenomenal and they're really important questions. So, but the way to simplify it is too much energy sometimes can be represented by what's called hyper excitability or overactivity of a network. And so a couple of clear examples of that. So somebody who has an anxiety disorder, what's the definition of anxiety disorder? Somebody who gets anxious for no good reason. They can be sitting in their lazy boy recliner, watching a really nice show, not thinking about anything anxiety provoking, and then out of the blue have a panic attack. And how do we think about that?

• 41:35Speaker 01

  The way I think about that is that their anxiety circuits in their brain became hyper excitable. So they started firing when they shouldn't. And that is going to be associated with more energy flowing through those circuits. And but it results in hyperactivity of those brain circuits. Same thing can happen with OCD, but it can also happen with psychosis and with all sorts of other mental illnesses. One of the clearest examples of too much energy in the brain is for something called hypomania or mania, which is kind of one of the parts of bipolar disorder where people can get really

• 42:18Speaker 01

  hyper agitated, excited. Sometimes they feel euphoric, other times they just feel really irritable and nasty, but they are revved up. It's kind of the opposite of depression. They can feel great, they're going a mile a minute, they're talking a mile a minute, they might not even be sleeping because this energy metabolism is just like flowing through their brains. And we actually have a lot of evidence that their brains are overactive and energy metabolism is overactive.

• 42:51Hala Taha?

  That's so interesting. And so a lot of people think this is mostly genetic, right? When people have these types of disorders, people really think it's genetic. Are there environmental factors that cause the increase of energy and like your metabolism being too crazy that are leading to these things?

• 43:10Speaker 01

  100%. So again, so and this I'll bring back to just some common sense, obvious observations. Obesity is in fact a metabolic disorder.

• 43:23Hala Taha?

  Hmm.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Do genetics contribute to obesity? Yes, in some cases they do. But the primary cause of obesity is not genetics. Because 100 years ago, very few people had obesity. And we pretty much have the same genes that we had 100 years ago. And so there's something in our environment that is driving obesity. And it's not just gluttony and poor willpower and, oh, everybody just can't resist delicious food. Believe it or not, they had delicious food 100 years ago. And people, they, people didn't get obese. They had chocolate chip cookies. They had pumpkin pie and apple pie. They had delicious foods 100 years ago, but

• 44:09Speaker 01

  people were not becoming obese. And so what is it? And I would argue that it is dysregulation of metabolism, that there are things in ultra-processed foods, some of the chemicals and other things in ultra-processed foods, that probably are very harmful to our metabolism. But there are things like environmental toxins, microplastics and other things accumulating in the human body that are probably harmful to our metabolism. But there are psychological and social things. So, one of the clearest examples, to keep it focused on both mental and metabolic, is

• 44:49Speaker 01

  this concept of adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. We've long known, so this is, these are children who have parents with mental illness, parents in prison, parents who are criminals, parents who are divorced, abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, poverty, loneliness, trauma, all of these things, all of these things are adverse childhood experiences.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  And what we know is that people who have a lot of adverse childhood experiences, the more you have, the more likely you are to have a mental illness. Exactly what mental illness? Post-traumatic stress disorder, sure, but it's actually all of the mental illnesses. It's depression, anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia. It's also eating disorders and personality disorders and alcoholism and opioid addiction. And it's all of the mental disorders. But guess what? The very first studies of adverse childhood experiences, they actually weren't focused on mental health. They were focused on obesity. They were obesity studies.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  The researchers were trying to understand, why are some adults more likely to become obese than others? And they studied these adverse childhood experiences and saw strong correlations between the more adverse childhood experiences someone has, the more likely they are to be obese today, the more likely they are to have type 2 diabetes today, the more likely they are to have cardiovascular disease today, and the more likely they are to die early deaths. And so, we know that psychological and social factors impact mitochondrial function. They also impact mental health,

• 46:51Speaker 01

  and they also impact metabolic health. So I'm here to say, it's 2026. We have the science. We have more than enough science to connect these dots. So let's connect them and let's help improve human health.

• 47:08Hala Taha?

  Yeah, and the stuff that you're saying sounds scary, but it's actually really positive because now that we know this, we can do something about it. So I definitely want to talk about all the things that we can do to improve our mitochondrial health. But before we do that, I want to talk about I just want to get a few like basics down in terms of what happens to our brain when too little energy is being produced from our mitochondria. Like, what are the, what are the things that happen to our brain when that happens?

• 47:40Speaker 01

  A simplistic way to put it, so for the neuroscientists, I apologize.

• 47:45Hala Taha?

  I don't think we have many neuroscientists listening.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  A simple way, all of the neuroscience and, you know, entrepreneurs who are starting up their businesses, take this with a grain of salt, because I know it's more complex than this, but a simple way to think about it is really obvious and it's true. So although I'm simplifying it, it's very much true. If your brain doesn't have enough energy, it's not going to work right. It's really obvious and simple in that way. Do we have evidence that the brains of people with mental illness don't have enough energy? We do. We have an abundance of data, decades of neuroscience research, decades of spec scans and PET scans and functional MRI and all sorts of things.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  We also do have evidence that people with epilepsy, they don't have enough energy in their brains. People with Alzheimer's disease, they don't have enough energy. With Alzheimer's disease, the evidence is overwhelming and compelling, so much so that some people are now calling Alzheimer's disease type 3 diabetes, or diabetes of the brain, which means that their brains aren't able to use glucose effectively as an energy source. And so their brains become underactive, they don't have enough energy, and if your brain doesn't have enough energy slowly but surely, it starts to atrophy or shrink. And if left unchecked...

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Brain cells can begin to die. And that is actually what the process of Alzheimer's disease is, is brain tissue shrinking and potentially eventually dying off. And then people slowly but surely lose not just their memory, but all sorts of other brain functions, the ability to function in the world, the ability to walk, the ability to hold your bladder, like all of those things.

• 49:47Hala Taha?

  And now alcohol and marijuana, that is slowing down energy production in your brain, correct? Like there's certain environmental factors that we're doing that can increase the slowing down of energy being created in your brain. Is that correct?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  100%. Both of them are known to be toxic to mitochondrial function and health. Both of them are known to interfere with brain energy metabolism and ATP production. And both of them are known to, if you use too much of both of them, they both, both of them, either of them, can increase risk for not just mental illnesses, a broad range of mental illnesses, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, but also metabolic illnesses. People who use a lot of drugs and alcohol are often dying.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  And what are they dying? They're dying early deaths. And what do they usually die of? Heart attacks and strokes. They're not dying of anything that unusual. They're dying, sometimes they're dying of liver cirrhosis with alcoholism or other things. So yeah, sometimes it's a little different than everyone else. But the most common cause of death in people with substance use disorders is still cardiovascular disease, hands down. It's just happening much earlier in life.

• 51:18Hala Taha?

  One of the biggest like proof points for your theory of brain energy and how it impacts mental health is delirium and the fact that delirium exists. So talk to us about what delirium is and how it sort of proves your point in all of this.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  So that was, you know, as I was, as I was doing this research and doing this work, I honestly was always kind of checking myself and saying, this can't possibly be true. It can't possibly be, it's really complicated, but in my mind, it was becoming so much clearer and more simple. And I was even kind of, I was very skeptical of my own kind of theory or hypothesis. And I was like, it can't be this simple. And so I actually was looking for opportunities to like, well, if it's really true, what, what would help me prove this? Like, let me take a far-fetched example, maybe even unrelated to what most people think

• 52:15Speaker 01

  of as mental illness, and see if this lines up, like, see if this hypothesis lines up. And delirium was one of the clear ones. And so what is delirium? Delirium can be, it's basically an acute change in mental status. And what does that mean? It means that somebody who is otherwise healthy or even unhealthy, all of a sudden has an abrupt change in their mental health. They start hallucinating, they get severely depressed, they get really agitated, they develop new onset OCD like overnight, like, and what are the symptoms of delirium? It's essentially anything that you can think of that's related to mental

• 52:58Speaker 01

  health. Anything related to mental health can happen with delirium, even shockingly, things like eating disorders, or substance use disorders, or other things. People who are delirious might start over drinking alcohol because they're just so out of it, they're so confused, they're so disoriented. And that's part of delirium as well, is people often are, at least intermittently, really confused. And you, you ask them, where are you right now? And they may not know. You ask them, what year is it? They may not know, or they might say, oh, it's 1978. And you're like, what? No, no, it's not. And it's like, oh, yeah, it's 1978. And you're like, okay, that's not a good sign. Something's wrong

• 53:43Speaker 01

  with your brain.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  And then if we look at, well, what exactly can cause delirium? That's where I believe we see at least support for the brain energy theory, which is anything that can disrupt or dysregulate metabolism can cause delirium. So a lack of oxygen, so what is oxygen primarily used for in the human body? It's primarily and abundantly used by mitochondria for metabolism or energy production. That is, that is why we have to breathe in and breathe out. And when we breathe out, what are we breathing out? We're breathing out carbon dioxide and where does that come from? That's a waste product of metabolism.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  So that's how, I mean, that's how foundational metabolism is to human health. And if you deprive people of oxygen, whether it's suffocation, whether it's asthma or pneumonia, whether it's, whether it's just being at a really high altitude and being vulnerable and sick, when you deprive people of oxygen, you can see them get delirious. And so you can see them all of a sudden begin to develop any or all of the signs or symptoms of mental illness. But then I was also looking at what else can make people delirious, like a broad

• 55:11Speaker 01

  range of medical conditions, toxins, medication overdoses, like all sorts of things can make people delirious. But in my mind, if you then look at all of those different things and kind of ask yourself the question, do they converge anywhere? Do all of these different things converge anywhere? I would argue, yes, they converge at the level of mitochondria and metabolism. And why is that? It's because metabolism is so important to human physiology. So it's not like it's this mysterious ironic thing. It's metabolism is the elephant in the room when it comes to human health. And so of course it's going to affect the elephant in the room. How could it not?

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Why wouldn't it? And but let's open our eyes to the elephant in the room and start paying more attention to the elephant in the room.

• 56:04Hala Taha?

  And we need to understand how we can make it the healthiest elephant in the room possible. So let's, let's move on to like solutions, like what we're supposed to do. So you had this really awesome case study. You treated a 33 year old patient who had schizophrenia named Tom. And he had hallucinations and delusions for 13 years. He tried 17 different medications. And you originally suggested that he go on a keto diet to lose weight. And, you know, he had a lot more happen to him. So talk to us about this case, what unlocked for you, what you learned, and what we can learn from it.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  So it's really interesting because this particular patient had, he'd been my patient for about eight years at that point. And he had tried so many traditional treatments. He was being treated at McLean Hospital on Harvard Medical School where I work, which is one of the top ranked psychiatric hospitals in the world. He had been in and out of the hospital, in and out of residential treatment programs and other things. So he was getting the best care possible. And even for people who want to say, Dr. Palmer, you suck, you're not a good doctor. He was getting treatment from other people. And even with the best

• 57:21Speaker 01

  of the best care, he was profoundly ill and just tormented by his symptoms. And so when I prescribed the ketogenic diet, within a couple of weeks, he's, he was not only losing weight, but he was, I was noticing like this dramatic antidepressant effect in him. And he was just making better eye contact and smiling more and talking more. And I was initially like, a little bit surprised. I'm like, what's gotten into you? Like, why are you so happy all of a sudden? Like, what's going on? And it wasn't just that he was happy about losing weight. It was, it was like profound. And he was like, talking about

• 58:04Speaker 01

  all sorts of things that he had never really talked about. The thing that really upended my career and really changed the trajectory of my career was, it was about two months in, so it didn't happen overnight. But about two months in, he actually started telling me that my hallucinations are going away. My delusions are going away. He was like, you know, Dr. Palmer, how I think there are all these families torturing me and targeting me. And they have technology that can control my thoughts and all that stuff. And initially, I was like, oh, yeah, we've talked about that a million times. Are we going to talk about that again? And then he was like, I, I actually, now that I'm saying it, I don't think it's true. And maybe it never was.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  And maybe like, everybody's been trying to tell me I've had schizophrenia all along. And maybe my schizophrenia is going away.

• 58:58Hala Taha?

  Hmm.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  That man went on to lose now over 160 pounds and has kept it off to this day 10 years later. That man was able to move out of his father's home, live independently for a while, like start doing things that he had not been able to do. And it honestly, it was truly just mind blowing for me initially. And but it, I knew that I couldn't ignore it. Even though I was initially in disbelief myself, I was like, this can't be happening.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  What the hell, what the hell is this? But I knew I couldn't ignore it and that I somehow had kind of a moral or ethical obligation to try to understand it as best I could. And ultimately, that's what led to me doing the work that I do today and have been doing for over 10 years. And it's ultimately what, what led to me developing this theory.

• 1:00:07Hala Taha?

  And so what actually happened when you put him on the keto diet? Why is low carb, um, why is the keto diet so amazing for mental health and not only just losing weight?

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  You know, so the easiest place to start with is unbeknownst to most people who've heard of the keto diet for weight loss, or a dangerous fad diet, or the American Heart Association hates this diet, and you're all going to die of a heart attack.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Unbeknownst to all of those people, the ketogenic diet is actually a 100-year-old evidence-based treatment for epilepsy. It was not developed as a weight loss diet. It was actually developed to stop seizures by a neurologist. And it is now an evidence-based treatment for epilepsy. It can stop seizures even when medications fail to work. And why is that important? It's really important because we use epilepsy treatments every day in psychiatry in tens of millions of people. Most of them are pills. But medications that are developed to stop seizures

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  commonly work for conditions like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, or depression, or anxiety, or eating disorders, or all sorts of things. And we actually know a tremendous amount about the science of how the ketogenic diet does stop seizures. It changes neurotransmitters, reduces brain inflammation, like does all sorts of things. Central to my thesis, it improves mitochondrial health as well. So it improves metabolic health, mitochondrial health. And is any of that relevant? So all of that is relevant to epilepsy. So if you ask the question, well, is any of that relevant to mental illness? It turns out, all of it is relevant to mental illness.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  And again, we have decades of science to prove that. And so even that story, I was able to connect a lot of scientific dots. And I think that's why, you know, even I was able to get it published in prominent journals like schizophrenia research. Initially, I really was worried. Nobody's going to take this seriously. They're not going to publish this. They're not, people are going to laugh at me. I might get fired from my job. Like, people are going to think I'm crazy. And so I went into it knowing that, knowing that everybody's going to be skeptical about this. Nobody's going to take it seriously. And the only chance I have of getting them to take it seriously

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  is I have to understand the science. I have to understand why they should take this seriously. And do we have enough science? And I'm so grateful to all of the hundreds or thousands of researchers who have been doing this work tirelessly for the last century, because they put together this evidence base that I could tap into and use to advance this work. So it was really, they created the puzzle pieces, and I looked at those pieces of the puzzle and began to put them together in a coherent way. So, but I would have never been able to do it without all of their work.

• 1:03:31Hala Taha?

  So with keto, just so we can understand it, like, let's try to make this as actionable as possible for our listeners, our entrepreneurs, our high achievers listening in. They obviously want better physical health. They definitely want better mental health. They don't want to be burned out. They want to be able to focus. A lot of entrepreneurs have ADHD, that's for sure. How can we leverage this knowledge of knowing that the keto diet can also improve our mitochondrial health? And like, what are some things that we can do to start aligning closer to the keto diet? Where it's not a diet, where it's like more of a lifestyle?

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it can be. So I would say, the first thing for any of your listeners who are wondering, could any of this apply to me personally? The first thing I would ask them to do is just assess their overall mental health and metabolic health. Like, do they have a mental health or a metabolic health problem? If they don't, then I would say, please, keep doing what you're doing. And like, you're living the dream, and good for you. And I really don't care what it is. If you're a vegan, if you're a vegetarian, if you're eating meat all day, like, I don't care what you're doing. It's clearly working well for you, and just keep doing it.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  But to everybody else, and that's about 93% of your listeners, to everybody else, 93% of Americans right now have at least one biomarker of poor metabolic health.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  So that is, and there are only five basic biomarkers we're talking about. So that is abdominal obesity, high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, insulin resistance, and high blood pressure. Those are the five things. And 93% of Americans have one or more of those in the abnormal, unhealthy territory. So if you are one of those people and/or you also have mental health symptoms, I think everything we're talking about is highly relevant to you. And, and so the reason I bring up those biomarkers is because those can be helpful to help people

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  understand, am I making progress? And so if you are overweight or obese, the simplest way to start this would not necessarily ketogenic diet, I would never stand in the way because it's a very good weight loss tool for a lot of people. So if you are open to doing ketogenic diet, go for it. But even if you're not, you can use other weight loss strategies to improve your health. You could start exercising more. So I would really rest strongly on the pillars of lifestyle medicine. So that's healthy diet nutrition, good sleep, avoiding harmful substances, having good relationships,

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  stress reduction practices. I forget if I said exercise. Exercise, I think, is the last one. So six pillars of lifestyle medicine. And I would say, try to optimize those. Try to optimize your diet. Try to optimize those other things. And how do you know if you're succeeding? If you're succeeding, if you're doing the right things, because I know you're getting conflicting advice. If you go on social media, you're going to get all sorts of conflicting advice about what's the right diet? What's the right exercise program? Marijuana, it's good for you. No, it's bad for you. Alcohol, make sure you drink two drinks a day. No, don't drink anything. I get it. It's so confusing. What are we supposed to be doing? How do you know if you're doing the right thing? Your health is going to be improving.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Your mental health is going to be improving. Your physical health is going to be improving. Your metabolic health is going to be improving. And if it's not, don't say woe is me. Don't say you're just getting older and you have slow metabolism. Don't make excuses, they're lame excuses. Find out what you need to do. And sometimes it's not just, you know, do it harder, be more disciplined. Sometimes you're just not following the right plan. And so, you know, if you're in that situation, then maybe move on from do it yourself. Cause a lot of this, people can do themselves. So please, by all means, do it yourself.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  And if it works, great, you've accomplished your goal. But if it doesn't work, please understand there's a whole kind of army of healthcare professionals waiting to help you. Your primary care physician, health and wellness coaches, fitness trainers, so many dieticians, nutritionists, so many people want to help you optimize your health. So get help, get support, get better advice, get better recommendations until you find the things that work for you.

• 1:08:32Hala Taha?

  Now, uh, let's, let's move on to like more of like entrepreneurship in general. So a lot of entrepreneurs, they wear, uh, some of their neurodivergence as like a badge of honor, like, like they believe like ADHD is a superpower, which, which can be like, I feel like I have a bit of ADHD and it kind of really helps me in certain instances of my career. And even like where like sometimes autism is worn with the badge of honor, especially if like you're on a, you know, a spectrum where you can be productive, right? So what would you say to them? Would you say is that an energy imbalance that we need to improve? Or like, what would you say to somebody that is like proud of their ADHD?

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  You know, even those two examples, and they're great examples. And for anybody who's not really familiar with like the autism and entrepreneurship.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  Some of the, actually, the wealthiest people in the world are probably on the spectrum. Some of them have openly disclosed that. Bill Gates has openly disclosed that. Elon Musk has openly disclosed that. And there are many others. So some of the most brilliant people on the planet are on the spectrum. And, um, and in some ways, that's not surprising because we've long known that a select group of people with autism do have these kind of extraordinary cognitive abilities.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  And if they can capitalize on them and use them for good, um, then it's, it's nothing short of amazing what they are able to accomplish. And I would never want to stand in the way of an Elon Musk or a Bill Gates or someone else who's on a warpath to change the world and improve the world economy and our lives and technology and everything else. Like, get out of their way and let them do their thing. Why not? But at the same time, people who are on the autism spectrum, including those individuals, often suffer.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  Even Elon Musk talks about his horrible childhood and a lot of the social adversity he experienced. He's had trouble maintaining relationships with wives. And does that matter? Yeah, it probably does matter. And does it matter to him? It probably does matter to him. And so I do think, and I know he has self-medicated with substances and other things, and he actively talks about it, and sometimes he goes on talk shows and actively uses right there, right on the talk show, so to leave no doubt.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  And so even for somebody extraordinarily successful, extraordinarily brilliant, extraordinarily wealthy and powerful, they can still suffer. And do I think that these strategies can be helpful for them? Yes, no doubt. Like, to answer your basic question, does brain energy metabolism apply to ADHD and autism? 100% unequivocal, yes. The mitochondrial theory of autism was actually first proposed in 1985, 40 years ago. And so we've actually long known, and we have an abundance of scientific research,

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  linking brain energy metabolism or mitochondrial function with both ADHD and autism spectrum. So does that mean that if somebody sends me a person with profound autism, can I cure them of their autism? No, no, I can't. Because autism and ADHD on some levels are neurodevelopmental. And neurodevelopment is happening and then it sometimes becomes fixed. So we have neurodevelopmental windows or periods of time during which people need to acquire certain skills

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  and certain brain regions and brain cells and synaptic connections and other things need to happen. And if they don't happen kind of quote unquote neurotypically, or if they don't happen neurotypically, then they can result in neurodivergence or neurodiversity. And sometimes those changes may not be reversible. And that person is gonna have some of those traits long term. However, some of those things are still ongoing. And some of those things are due to a brain energy metabolism dysregulation.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  And we can actively treat those symptoms and help reduce suffering and improve function in people. There's no doubt about it. I have a lot of patients who are on the spectrum. And these strategies can be extraordinarily powerful for at least some of them.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  I never say all because I can't cure everybody, or I can't dramatically improve the lives of everyone, because not every treatment is going to work for every person. And so sometimes it starts getting complicated. And we need to think about what treatment are we going to use? Are we going to use a medication, a dietary intervention, exercise, sleep, substance use treatment? Like, what are we going to do? And so it can get complicated fast. Nonetheless, there is no doubt in my mind, these strategies that I've outlined in Brain Energy can apply to people with a broad range of neurodevelopmental conditions, psychiatric conditions, neurodegenerative conditions.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  And I do think they can really change lives and improve lives.

• 1:14:32Hala Taha?

  What would you say to the listener right now who's on antidepressants? They're, you know, working with a provider who's prescribed them to them, never talked to them about this brain energy theory. What would you tell them to do?

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  I think the first thing I would just recognize, kind of like we talked about, that I do believe serotonin, for example, that's a big mechanism of action of some antidepressants, not all of them. That there's no doubt in my mind, it does play a role in energy metabolism and mitochondrial function. So I would say to that listener, if you're taking an antidepressant and it has changed your life for the better, and you're so, you feel so much better on it than off it, by all means, please keep taking it. If you're not having any side effects, congratulations. So if it has robustly worked for you, and it's continuing to work for you, and you're not really having side effects,

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  I would say the easiest solution is just keep taking it. However, 90% of people taking antidepressants, that's not the case. So 90% of people taking antidepressants, it's kind of sort of working, but not really. It has side effects. I'm gaining weight. I have sexual dysfunction. I can't, I'm not really interested in sex anymore. It's slowing me down. I feel numb. I don't feel emotions like I used to. I don't feel like myself. So if you're having any of those side effects, or it didn't really fully work for your symptoms, I would strongly encourage you first and foremost

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  just to get educated. So it could be read the book. It could be watch this, listen to this podcast and learn more about this and the strategies that we're doing. But there are so many free resources available, even my book, you can get it at a lot of libraries. So don't buy it, just go. If you don't want to, I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm just trying to help you. If you don't want to buy it, go to the library and get a copy for two weeks and read it. So there are lots of free things you can do to learn and get educated. But it's really about that is your baseline. Like, understand what we're doing, understand what your goals are, kind of understand the different aspects that you need to work on.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  So that person on an antidepressant, are they also overweight? Do they have diabetes? Are they prediabetic? Are they overeating comfort foods? Are they drinking too much? Are they smoking marijuana every night to relax? Do they sleep okay? Are they exercising at all? And depending on your answers to those questions, I'm going to prescribe different interventions. And the interventions are obvious. It's not rocket science. You don't have to be an entrepreneur. You don't have to be a neuroscientist or a psychiatrist or even an entrepreneur to understand this. You just need to, like, the solutions are obvious based on the questions I ask. And if those things apply to you,

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  then you can think about, well, which one do I want to try first? And then what am I going to do next? And one thing at a time. Some other people like to dive in and just do it all at once. I don't care. It really doesn't matter to me. Just do something, like try to improve your health. Because I do want to say, I just, I just know that there are literally hundreds of millions of people on this planet.

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  Who are living suboptimal lives because they do not have optimal mental and metabolic health. And it means that they feel brain fogged, unmotivated, uninterested in sex.

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  Those are the less concerning ones, all the way to I'm tormented by these voices. I'm tormented by my chronic depression and suicidality. I'm tormented by my OCD symptoms. I can't take it anymore.

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  And I really honestly believe that this field, this science, this research, these treatment strategies offer new opportunities of hope and healing to all of these people.

• 1:19:09Hala Taha?

  If you could distill down like three to five things that our listeners can do today to optimize their brain energy and their mental health, what would they be? I know you mentioned like, you know, exercise and things, but like, what are more like specific things that we can do or things that we can replace? Like that, you know, that common things that people typically do that we can do differently?

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  So the first one that I am going to list, I know it's cliche and whatever, but you've got to optimize your diet because if you are eating really kind of harmful, inflammatory, high glycemic foods every day throughout the day, it's going to be very challenging for you to do much more. So at a minimum, just what would I recommend? If you're eating a lot of ultra-processed foods, takeout, you know, junk food, try to eat more whole, real foods. Try to cook some meals at home from scratch. Make a piece of salmon, you know.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Steam some vegetables, uh, uh, cook a steak, like make some eggs in the morning instead of the breakfast cereal, whatever. Um, so optimize your diet. The second thing I would probably recommend is optimize your sleep. One third of Americans aren't getting enough sleep. You need seven, eight hours of restful sleep every night. The probably the, the best bio hack I have for sleep is go to bed earlier than you're currently going to bed.

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  And why? Because I'm gonna guess you're probably tired before you go to bed. And why do I say that? Because you're couch surfing Netflix or you're on your phone scrolling social media. And why are you doing that? Because you're burned out, you're tired, you're exhausted from a long day, you're stressed. You're trying to get all the stressful projects in your mind, out of your mind. And guess what? If you fall asleep, they'll all be out of your mind. And that's your easy escape. So go to bed early. The beautiful thing, if you really go to bed super early, the beautiful thing is you might be able to start getting an adequate amount of sleep and waking up without an alarm.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  And I have to say, that is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, is to be able to wake up without an alarm. And why do I say without an alarm? Cause an alarm by definition is disrupting how much sleep you need. Your body clearly needed more sleep. That's why it was still sleeping and you are disrupting that. So if you can let yourself get more sleep, that would be great. I, the, the third thing I would say probably is reduce harmful substance use. So if you're over drinking, over using marijuana, if you are vaping, if you're smoking, um, please reduce those behaviors or stop doing those things.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  And, um, fourth thing probably would be add in some exercise. Um, I would actually put them in this order, like diet, number one, sleep, number two, harmful substance use reduction, number three, and, and then. Throw in some exercise and the exercise could start with this simple. If you're really not doing much of anything, go for a walk around the block at the end of the day. Just, you know, maybe eat your dinner because you're going to try to get to bed early. So eat your dinner right when you get home and then go for a little walk, like a little 15 minute, 30 minute walk.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  If you have a partner, take your partner with you and that will build your relationship with your partner. You might just talk, chat with each other about how did your day go, honey? How was my day? What are you worried about? What are you stressed about? And that could go, that could be a huge life-changing, game-changing kind of routine that you could build into your day. And then you come home and you unwind and then you try to get to bed early.

• 1:23:29Hala Taha?

  I love that advice. Good, good, concrete advice. Okay, last question to you. I want to respect your time. What is the opportunity for entrepreneurs who might want to get into this space or support people with their mental health?

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  I think there are countless opportunities to entrepreneurs. So as you mentioned, it can start with your own personal health. Optimize your personal health. If you optimize your brain function, you're probably going to optimize your performance at work, your business strategies, your productivity, all of it. So if you optimize your health, you may very well optimize your revenue streams and profit margins. Number two, look at doing this in your, in your employees because if you can optimize their health, they will be more productive, they will be more resilient, they will be

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  less likely to call in sick, they will be, have great ideas, they'll have greater motivation, cognitive function. Trust me, an employee whose brain is running on all cylinders is going to be much more productive than your burned out, fried employee after lunch who's surfing the internet whenever nobody's looking. And so that can be a way. And then for those who are really interested in the mental health or fitness or metabolic health space. There are countless business opportunities just to kind of capitalize on this

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  science, all the way to biotech companies. I've spoken with many pharmaceutical and biotech companies who are extraordinarily interested in this space and the science and developing new products, new medications, new supplements, new things that can be used to help improve people's mental and metabolic health. So that could be a billion dollar product that you end up helping to develop. But if you're in the technology space, there are needs for AI assistance with how do we do this? How do we use all of this information, put

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  it together? There are apps that could empower individuals to improve their mental and metabolic health. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. You could think about incorporating this into gyms. You could think about incorporating this into restaurants. I'm really hard pressed to think of any one business in which this doesn't, one way or another, somehow apply. And so for those of you who are really interested in it, want to dig into this science, want to think about creative solutions, again, there's a massive market opportunity. The

• 1:26:22Speaker 01

  world's health is abysmal right now. There's so much opportunity to capitalize on that and make money and in the process, help other human beings. So like win-win.

• 1:26:35Hala Taha?

  I totally agree. Chris, this was such an awesome interview. I end my show with one question I ask all of my guests. What would you say your secret to profiting in life is? And this can go beyond financial. So what is your secret of success?

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  You know, I think the most important thing for me, research bears this out, is relationships. So cultivating and paying attention to other human beings. And you know, as a healer physician, I'm particularly motivated to just help other human beings when they're down and out. But it's truly just amazing how often those human beings then will step up for you when you need it. And will reciprocate and even just the gratitude that they can express just, you know, fills my heart and keeps me going.

• 1:27:34Hala Taha?

  I was talking to somebody recently who said, if you ever need to decide how to spend your money or your time, always choose relationships. And that's stuck with me. Chris, this was an awesome interview. Thank you so much for your time. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  You could just go to chrispalmermd.com. That's the easiest place. chrispalmermd.com.

• 1:27:56Hala Taha?

  Amazing. We'll stick that link in the show notes. Chris, thank you again for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:28:04Hala Taha?

  Yeah, fam, this was such a fascinating conversation with Dr. Chris Palmer. And I think one of the biggest shifts from today's episode is realizing that mental health and physical health are not separate. Your brain is a physical organ and it also runs on energy. And when your metabolism, sleep, nutrition, stress, or substance use are out of balance, your brain feels it too. One thing that really stood out to me was Dr. Chris's explanation that the brain is only 2% of our body weight, yet it uses 20% of our body's energy. That means burnout, brain fog, anxiety, lack of focus, and even emotional instability aren't always just personality traits or mindset problems. Sometimes your brain is underfueled,

• 1:28:45Hala Taha?

  overstimulated, inflamed, or simply exhausted. And I think that's incredibly empowering because it means there are practical things that we can do to improve the way that we think, feel, and perform. First, you got to start treating your lifestyle like it's part of your mental health strategy. Protect your sleep, move your body consistently, and cut back on ultra-processed foods, alcohol, and habits that drain your energy. Second, pay attention to your metabolic health. Now, not 10 years from now. Dr. Chris talked about how obesity, insulin resistance, and poor metabolic markers are strongly linked to future mental health challenges. Your health is not just about how you look. It affects your focus, resilience, mood, and longevity. And finally, don't accept feeling terrible as your baseline. One of the most inspiring moments in this episode was hearing

• 1:29:30Hala Taha?

  about a patient with severe schizophrenia who transformed his life after improving his metabolic health. That story is a reminder that the brain can change, heal, and recover more than most people realize, and he did this all through a keto diet. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Chris Palmer, then spread the word and help others listen, learn, and profit as well. And if you did enjoy this show and you want to thank us, then drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox, wherever you listen to the show. Nothing helps us reach more people better than a good review from you. If you prefer to watch your podcasts as videos, you can find us on YouTube or Spotify Video. Just look up Young and Profiting and you'll find all of our video episodes there.

• 1:30:14Hala Taha?

  You can also find me on Instagram at YapWithHala or LinkedIn by searching my name, Hala Taha. And finally, a huge thank you to my Yap team. You guys are all legends. This is your host, Hala Taha, AKA The Podcast Princess, signing off.