How Your Mitochondria Control Your Brain Energy – Chris Palmer, M.D. : 1012
The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance
Dave Asprey
4.6 • 7.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 January 2023
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
IN THIS EPISODE OF THE HUMAN UPGRADE™…Harvard psychiatrist, researcher and assistant professor Christopher Palmer, M.D., introduces a bold new premise about the root cause of mental illness based on decades of research.
Dr. Palmer integrated existing theories and research into one unifying theory—the brain energy theory of mental illness that’s rooted in your metabolism. Through his research, he initially pioneered using a medical ketogenic diet to treat psychiatric disorders. In this conversation, you’ll learn how he went even further to uncover the connection between mental health and metabolic disorders of the brain. That connection lies in mitochondrial dysfunction or dysregulation.
His new book, “Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More,” also explains the increased risk for mental disorders in all metabolic conditions, including diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, pain disorders, obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, and epilepsy.
“Once you see the big picture of metabolism and all of the things that influence metabolism, you actually can see novel ways to intervene,” Dr. Palmer says. “And you can also raise some red flags about some of our current treatments.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the human upgrade with Dave Asprey. |
| 0:06.3 | Formerly, Bulletproof Radio. |
| 0:11.9 | You're listening to the human upgrade with Dave Asprey. |
| 0:15.2 | Today, we're going to talk about energy in your brain based on a new book called Brain |
| 0:22.1 | Energy. |
| 0:23.4 | And I'm super excited about this because this is a very well researched and well-respected |
| 0:28.4 | book that talks about something you've learned on the show over time. |
| 0:34.1 | The amount of energy that your brain makes equals how you show up in the world and how |
| 0:38.2 | you feel. |
| 0:39.2 | But there's a big focus in this book on mental illness and how much mental illness |
| 0:44.2 | is a metabolic dysfunction in the brain. |
| 0:47.0 | So that's an excuse to talk with a really, really smart author who's drawing those connections. |
| 0:52.4 | So if you have a lot of anxiety, you have a lot of stress, or at least you think you have |
| 0:57.0 | a lot of stress, or any of the other attention problems, all the stuff that frankly that |
| 1:02.2 | I went through in my 20s, maybe it's not because you're a bad person and maybe it's not |
| 1:07.1 | because you're weak, maybe you just have a hard-to-perplum. |
| 1:09.4 | Wouldn't that be interesting? |
| 1:11.4 | And that's what we're going to talk about today. |
| 1:13.2 | And this is just very personal to me. |
| 1:15.6 | I've done a lot of work with Daniel Aiman, who was an early voice in the field. |
| 1:19.1 | I'm on his board of directors. |
| 1:20.3 | I've written a book about mitochondria in the brain. |
... |
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