A fascinating review came out of Nature that scoured over 22 weight-loss studies with over 4,000 participants (from over a dozen countries).

But here’s the kicker:

They looked at the control groups in all these studies. The groups that did not get the treatment or intervention (or if they did it was standard care).

What kind of results did they get?

Turns out, they lose on average 0.41kg (or .9 pounds).

Now that might not be something to write Grandma about but that is impressive given that a huge percentage of the population struggle to lose any weight (and ends up packing on more each year).

So why did they get any results?

The researchers chalk up the following two reasons:
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• Trial Effect: This where just by participating in a study, you reap benefits. This is believed to be due to greater adherence… lifestyle medication… and greater interaction with health professionals through the process.
• Hawthorne Effect: This is a well-researched phenomenon that happens when participants believe they are being observed, they tend to modify their behavior.

Moral of the study:

It’s a reminder to take action.

Even if you don’t have the pur-fect plan (like these control groups), keep moving. Keep seeing what works and adjusting your approach because through your repeated efforts you are bound to get some results and eventually find your way to a methodology that works extremely well.

But it takes getting starting no matter how imperfect the first step is. And maybe instead of putting our full faith on a particular weight-loss program we need to believe in ourselves and our ability to figure it out.

Onward,

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Psychiatrist Dr. Albert Danan led this study at the University of Toulouse with patients suffering from chronic mental illness and in many cases also type-2 diabetes, hypertension and obesity.

Dr. Danan hatched the idea for the study after noticing a family member significantly improve in autism behaviors and seizures after trying keto.

His study involved 31 subjects with schizophrenia, bipolar or major depression who were admitted to a facility and put on a keto diet along with standard care. In this case, the nutrition program involved 20g of carbs max each day (based on previous research by Duke University).

The results:

• All patients who followed the diet for 2 weeks or more reported improvement in psychosis and depression symptoms. 43% of subjects accomplished clinical remission and 64% were released from the hospital (on less medication).
• They also had significant improvements in metabolic health (based on triglycerides, blood sugar, blood pressure and body weight).
• All subjects lost weight except one, and half lost more than 5% of their bodyweight.

According to Dr. Danan, he’s never seen improvements like these in such a short time:
“Introducing nutritional measures, particularly the ketogenic diet, helped me considerably to improve the results of therapy… I observed real improvements in their psychiatric symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, and mood instability.”

What’s the takeaway?

Those who love keto will cheer it on and those who hate it will try to pick it apart.
No doubt this is a small study. And this wasn’t a controlled trial.

So much more research on this front needs to be done (And studies like this can reveal glimmers of where to continue searching for answers).

However, what’s interesting about this study is the food-mood connection.

This is something that is gaining more and more traction. What you eat impacts your mood. And if you’ve been following gut health research, you’ve seen just how much gut health affects mood.

Unfortunately, many people are still operating off the food = fuel mentality.

But food is much more than just fuel, and studies like this are shedding light that what we eat can in fact affect our emotions and mental health, which has a huge effect on our life.

Food for thought (no pun intended).

Onward,

Kelan Ern

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