#ketogenic-diet

#ketogenic-diet

There are also clear downsides to the diet. Ketones are acidic, and if they build up too much in the blood, they can be toxic, causing ketoacidosis. This is a particular concern for people with type 1 diabetes and for people with chronic alcohol abuse. For everyone else, there's a list of common side effects, including nausea, vomiting, constipation, diarrhea, bad breath, headache, fatigue, and dizziness. Ketogenic diets are also linked to high cholesterol and kidney stones.

The ketogenic diet (KD) is unique in improving symptoms for many conditions, from epilepsy to addiction, according to a recent JAMA Psychiatry article. It's a high-fat, very-low-carbohydrate nutritional therapy that shifts the body's from glucose dependence to ketone production as the primary fuel source. Increasing evidence implicates metabolic dysfunction, neuroinflammation, and neurotransmitter imbalance in psychiatric and addictive disorders-domains directly influenced by ketosis.

Lockwood, who is forty-three, has close-cropped hair, expressive hands, and the rapid-fire, matter-of-fact confidence of someone who speaks even faster than she thinks. The playwright Heidi Schreck, who helped to adapt Lockwood's life story for television, told me, "The first thing that always comes to mind, when I think of Tricia, is that self-portrait of Hildegard von Bingen"-the twelfth-century German abbess and mystic,