Essentials: Diet & Nutrition for Mental Health | Dr. Chris Palmer

August 27, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Dr. Chris Palmer, a Harvard psychiatrist, began his career treating patients with the most intractable mental illnesses—people who had already cycled through dozens of medications and years of therapy. Then, based on a personal experience that had nothing to do with psychiatry, he started asking patients to try a radical dietary intervention. The results, including a man with schizoaffective disorder who stopped hearing voices after eight years, forced Palmer to reconsider the biological basis of mental illness itself. In this conversation with Andrew Huberman, Palmer explains the mechanisms linking diet, metabolism, and brain function—and offers a clear-eyed view of what the evidence does and does not yet support.

The personal story that started it all

Palmer's journey into the relationship between nutrition and mental health began with his own body. As a medical resident at Harvard, he was diagnosed with metabolic syndrome—high blood pressure, terrible lipids, pre-diabetes—despite following the low-fat diet and exercise regimen his doctors recommended. Year after year his condition worsened, until his physician told him he would need three medications and that his genes were simply working against him. At 28, Palmer faced a future of heart attacks and declining health.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Introduction & Personal Origin Story** - Andrew Huberman introduces the topic of diet and mental health, and Dr. Chris Palmer begins by sharing his personal history with mental illness and metabolic syndrome.
2 (03:50) **The Atkins Diet Discovery** - Palmer, out of options, tried the Atkins diet and experienced a complete reversal of his metabolic syndrome in three months.
3 (05:32) **Applying the Diet to Patients** - As an attending physician treating treatment-resistant mental illness, Palmer began cautiously prescribing the Atkins diet to his patients.
4 (09:24) **The Schizoaffective Case That Changed Everything** - A 33-year-old man with schizoaffective disorder, daily auditory hallucinations, and paranoid delusions tried the ketogenic diet and experienced a near-complete remission of symptoms.
5 (12:21) **Ketone Levels & Patient Stratification** - Palmer discusses the specific blood ketone levels he targets for different conditions and emphasizes that not everyone needs a strict ketogenic diet.
6 (15:13) **The Ketogenic Diet's 100-Year History with Epilepsy** - The ketogenic diet was developed in 1921 by Dr. Russell Wilder at the Mayo Clinic specifically to treat epilepsy, not as a weight loss diet.
7 (19:24) **The Mechanisms: How Ketosis Affects the Brain** - Palmer explains the multiple ways the ketogenic diet alters brain function, including neurotransmitter levels, inflammation, and gene expression.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Andrew Huberman

Show Notes

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, my guest is Dr. Chris Palmer, MD, a board-certified psychiatrist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. We explain how nutrition and metabolism directly affect mental health, including the biological mechanisms underlying these effects. We also discuss how carbohydrate restriction, ketogenic diets and fasting can improve mood, energy, and, in some cases, treatment-resistant psychiatric conditions.

Thank you to our sponsors

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) Chris Palmer

(00:00:20) Personal Story, Nutrition & Mental Health

(00:05:28) Treatment-Resistant Mental Disorders & Low-Carbohydrate Diet

(00:07:32) Sponsor: Eight Sleep

(00:08:51) Ketogenic Diet & Schizophrenia Success Story

(00:12:20) Nutrition for Mental Disorders, Ketosis, Highly Processed Foods

(00:15:13) Epilepsy & Ketogenic Diet, Fasting; Mitochondrial Benefits