Fat adapting and mood

(Henny ) #1

Hello everyone. So ive been ketogenic now for 2 weeks and the weight is coming off…dont feel hungry anymore.Its now becoming quite easy however Ive noticed my mood is all over the place. I am normally optimistic and upbeat but for the past week or so I have found that I quickly lose my temper and i can quite emotional. I am wondering if this is because my body is becoming fat adapted/insulin blood glucose levels etc etc. If its this is there anything I can do to help me along or do I have to ride it out (and how long before it gets easier). Or am I experiencing something else! Thanks for your answers. :):blush:

(Bob M) #2

Other than ensuring you’re getting salt and other minerals, probably not a lot. You have to transition into burning fat and using ketones, and who knows what’s going on with hormones? We never discuss hormones, but there are many of them, and they have to be affected too.

And I hate to bring up the biome, as people will now be bringing up resistant starch, but even your biome is changing. What does that mean in terms of mental health? Who knows?

There is some evidence for ketones and low carb and corresponding improvement in mental health, and this woman has a lot of it:

Anything she writes is great.

So, one would hope that you’ll resolve these issues to your betterment.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #3

Short answer: maybe.

Longer answer: as @ctviggen notes, many things start to happen when you begin eating keto and all at the same time. The good news is that it’s all working towards transforming your metabolism and cells/organs for the better. The not so good news is for some folks the process takes a long time, progress can seem slow and unpleasant stuff can happen occasionally. Unless there’s something obvious, you have no idea of what and to what extent you’ve been damaged by eating SAD for years or decades. Which means you also have no idea of exactly what’s going on and how long it’s going to take to fix. β-hydroxybutyrate works wonders in your brain and the more of it the better. Rest assured that in ketosis, gluconeogenesis will synthesize all the glucose you need - so don’t make the mistake of eating it on the pretense doing so will help. It won’t. Best wishes.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #4

One possibility is that, for whatever reason, your food intake contains less tryptophan than it used to. You might want to look at your diet and increase the proportion of tryptophan-rich foods you are eating.

Tryptophan is the precursor to serotonin, which is important to mood regulation. Unfortunately, serotonin cannot cross the blood-brain barrier, so the brain must make its serotonin from whatever tryptophan manages to make it into the brain. And the problem with this is that serotonin is used everywhere else in the body, as well, so the tryptophan in our food has a less than stellar chance of making it all the way to the brain without being grabbed for making serotonin elsewhere. And since it is an essential amino acid, we have to eat it; the body cannot manufacture it.