Patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder tend to see their conditions ease after four months on the ketogenic (“keto”) diet, a small pilot study finds. While no one is saying the diet should replace standard medications, the researchers believe it could provide additional help for some. “It’s very promising and very encouraging that you can take back control of your illness in some way, aside from the usual standard of care,” said study first author Dr. Shebani Sethi. She’s an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. The findings were published March 27 in the journal Psychiatric Research. Sethi said she first noticed there might be a connection between the keto diet and psychiatric health when she was working as a student in a clinic focused on obesity and weight loss. Many people with psychiatric conditions gain excess weight due to medication side effects. Sethi was helping to treat one such patient, who had schizophrenia. The patient’s auditory hallucinations (“hearing voices” can be a common symptom of schizophrenia) quieted down after being on the keto diet, she said. A search of the literature turned up little regarding using the diet to counter schizophrenia, but there was evidence it could ease epileptic seizures. Apparently the diet did so “by reducing the excitability of neurons in the brain,” Sethi explained in a Stanford news…  read on >  read on >

The seeds of high blood pressure in adulthood might be sown in youth, a new study suggests. Children and teenagers with excess weight were more likely to have high blood pressure in middle age, researchers report. In fact, there’s a linear relationship between adult high blood pressure and childhood overweight and obesity, researchers found. The heavier a child is, or the more pounds they put on during puberty, the more likely they are to have high blood pressure as an adult, results show. “Our results suggest that preventing overweight and obesity beginning in childhood matters when it comes to achieving a healthy blood pressure in later life,” said lead researcher Lina Lilja, a doctoral student with the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 1.3 billion adults 30 to 79 have high blood pressure, increasing their risk of strokes, heart attacks and kidney disease. High body-mass index in adults is strongly tied to elevated blood pressure, but it’s not clear whether excess weight in childhood contributes to this risk. To learn more, researcher analyzed data on nearly 1,700 Swedish people born between 1948 and 1968.  For these people, BMI readings were taken at age 7 to 8 and again at 18 to 20. Researchers compared this to blood pressure readings, systolic and diastolic, taken among the group at ages 50…  read on >  read on >

Federal regulators are taking a second stab at banning the controversial use of electroshock devices to manage the behavior of patients with intellectual and developmental disorders. The devices deliver electric shocks to a patient’s skin, in an attempt to stop them from harming themselves or lashing out physically at others, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in its Monday announcement. These devices — called electrical stimulation devices or ESDs — now are in use at just one U.S. facility, the Judge Rotenberg Education Center in Canton, Mass., the FDA said. “We estimate around 50 individuals currently have a treatment plan that includes the use, or potential use, of” these devices, the FDA statement said. A special United Nations report in 2013 concluded that the Rotenberg Center’s use of the shock devices on students constitutes a violation of the U.N. convention against torture. The FDA previously attempted to ban the use of the devices in 2020, but a federal court ruled that the agency didn’t have the authority to enact its proposed ban. “Since ESDs were first marketed more than 20 years ago, we have gained a better understanding of the danger these devices present to public health,” Dr. William Maisel, director of the Office of Product Evaluation and Quality in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a news release…  read on >  read on >

Most folks know they’d be healthier if they ate more plant-based foods, but only a quarter are willing to follow through and do it, a new study shows. Surveys reveal that Americans’ beliefs about eating more plants for health are often at odds with their daily dietary choices, researchers say. “U.S. consumers have favorable perceptions of foods and beverages that support human and environmental health, but that’s not translating into what they’re purchasing and consuming,” said lead researcher Katherine Consavage Stanley, a doctoral student in human nutrition, foods and exercise at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. For the study, researchers looked at data from more than a decade of nationwide surveys gathered between 2012 and 2022 by the International Food Information Council, analyzing more than 1,000 participants’ responses. Across all the years, 73% of Americans said plant proteins were healthy, compared to 39% who said animal proteins were healthy. The percentage of Americans who follow a plant-rich dietary pattern more than doubled during the decade studied, rising from 12% to nearly 26%. At the same time, however, the percentage of people eating more red meat also rose, from 13% to 19%. Generation Z (born 1997-2012) and Millennials (1981-1996) were more likely to follow a plant-rich diet than Generation X (born 1965-1980) or Baby Boomers (1946-1964), results show. But about 25% of Generation Z and Millennials also…  read on >  read on >