Evolutionary Association, Chapter 3: Mental Health Crises
We’re looking at current associations, and at treating mental health problems as a metabolic problem. Sounds far-fetched? It’s actually being researched and trialled right now, and for good reason. What I’ve seen so far sounds very promising.
The Dietary Changes
The Composition of Fats
We’re looking again at the same dietary shift as in the previous two chapters: the absolute amount of dietary fat has fallen sharply since the arrival of the dietary guidelines in the 1980s, while its composition has shifted - in particular, the Fatty acids with multiple double bonds in the molecule — chemically more reactive than saturated fatty acids. Typically (but not exclusively) plant oils. Omega-3 and omega-6 fall into this category. → more share has risen sharply.
Seed oils have been used more and more in human nutrition since the end of the 19th century - before that, only a few oils were common, and those were very restricted geographically. Among them olive oil, which resembles a fruit juice more than a seed oil. The earlier staple fats were of animal origin, and with the arrival of seed oils the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 PUFA has shifted dramatically in favour of omega-6.
Macronutrient Balance
Along with the dietary guidelines came a veritable fat phobia: “low fat” was the watchword, and even today many dietary guidelines recommend drawing your main fuel from carbohydrates - typically more than 50% of calorie intake. (What that does to your insulin level is easy to watch next door in the simulator.)
Logical: if fat is restricted, the energy has to come from somewhere else. Since protein is, on the one hand, expensive and, on the other, not something you can over-consume as radically as would be needed to replace the fat, the only remaining choice is carbohydrates. And once you factor in the solid, documented case of corruption(1) that framed sugar and carbohydrates as harmless while portraying fat and cholesterol as the problem, the shift in energy source follows automatically.
The Phenomenon
There’s an almost epidemic spread of mental health problems - unfortunately it’s hard to capture statistically, because the criteria have kept changing over the past decades, and society’s view of mental illness has shifted massively too: from the institutionalised “asylums” of the mid-20th century to today’s outpatient, partly medication-based treatments. Nonetheless there are some diagnoses - not least, for example, the inpatient psychiatric cases in Germany, which I’ll draw on as an example.
For Germany this data only exists since a 2003 change to the coding scheme - earlier data don’t compare well. But since this series is really about associations, I don’t want to lean too hard on these numbers, and will instead describe qualitative observations.
The Biochemical Association
In this case I have two fundamentally different associations to offer - one to the PUFAs and one to the carbohydrates. And it turns out: as different as the two are, they point in the same direction.
PUFA, Omega-3 and Omega-6
With seed oils, the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids has shifted massively in favour of omega-6.
Omega-6 fats help the body trigger inflammation. They’re important for that (and Essential nutrients are those that the body cannot synthesise itself and must obtain through food – vitamins, essential amino acids, and fatty acids.), but not to the degree in which they occur in the current diet.
Omega-3 fats help the body rein inflammation back in. Compared with omega-6 fats they’re massively under-represented in today’s diet - and it’s this imbalance we’ll be looking at in particular here.
Another aspect: the especially popular seed oils, rich in PUFA, are reactive - at every unsaturated position in the fatty-acid molecule they can oxidise fairly easily. Warmth (especially heat, e.g. while cooking), long storage, UV light (clear bottles, stored by the window) all aid the oxidation process. The result is an oil that turns rancid very easily. To say nothing of other reactions that can even produce trans fats which weren’t present in the original oil at all.
On this aspect in particular you can find a number of studies that examined the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids and manipulated it by giving omega-3. So here we’re dealing with rare intervention studies in nutritional science, not just observations and food-frequency questionnaires:
A 2002 study (2) examined supplementation at Aylesbury young offenders' prison and found (placebo-controlled) that supplementing with additional nutrients, among them omega-3 fats, led to a drop of about 26% in disciplinary offences and about 37% in violent offences.
The results were replicated in the Netherlands in 2010 (3).
Attentive readers will have noticed that I wrote “additional nutrients” above - that is: not only omega-3. A 2024 meta-analysis(4) does make the connection plausible, though. It also shows that, across countries, fish/omega-3 consumption correlates negatively with the murder rate - although, again, only associatively and with various contributing factors.
Carbohydrates
Metabolic Mind has collected, and publishes, a range of reports, research and case studies on the stabilisation, improvement and remission of many mental illnesses through a Metabolic state in which the body burns fat rather than glucose for fuel. Characterised by a measurable level of ketone bodies in the blood. → more diet - and is driving the medicine forward in this field. Particularly interesting are the cases in which disorders already diagnosed as (medication-)treatment-resistant could be stabilised, markedly improved or brought into remission through a simple change of diet.
The gradual discovery of more and more diagnoses that appear to be metabolically caused is reminiscent of the rediscovery of treating epileptic disorders with a ketogenic diet, as documented by the Charlie Foundation. It has since broadened its focus considerably, and was for that reason already one of the facts we looked at in an earlier article.
Conclusion
More and more diagnoses are turning out to be (at least in part) diet-related, or their treatment can be supported by a suitable diet.
That further narrows the already limited target audience for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ernährung - German Nutritional Society, a largely government funded NGO, designated as appointed authority on nutritional matters dietary guidelines - “healthy people” - and gives those affected a means of taking their own fate in hand, outside of prescription medication but “technically within” the guidelines(5).
There’s no reason to assume that diet is a cure-all, or that you’ll hit on the “correct” way of eating straight away. After all, it runs counter to every guideline - often contradicting them fundamentally. But more and more self-help groups, as well as professional support, are available and can help with such self-experiments.
And anyone who can also secure the support of their family is, in any case, off to a good start.
Why leave such a promising option on the table? You just have to know about it first - and that’s what butterbei.de is here to do.
