BrainFirst
← All programs
Metabolic resetFree · 8 steps · 21 days · ~20 min each

Keto Psychiatry: Brain Metabolism & Mental Health

A structured way to test whether a metabolic approach shifts your mood and focus — and a way to tell whether it did.

Shape
8 steps, 21 days
Pace
A step every two to three days
Each step
~20 min + one action
Who it's for
Readers weighing a ketogenic approach for mental health, alongside their clinician rather than instead of them.

How each step works

  1. 01 · Learn

    The mechanism, in plain language — what's actually happening in the brain and why it matters.

  2. 02 · Action

    One concrete thing to do before the next step. Small enough to start today.

  3. 03 · Check-in

    Questions to answer honestly, so you know whether it worked for you and not just in the study.

The steps

  1. 01The Chemical Imbalance Story: How It BeganBy the end of this lesson you will understand where the "chemical imbalance" explanation of mental illness actually came from, why it became so persuasive, and what the evidence does and does not support — so that later lessons on brain energy make sense as an extension of the science rather than a rejection of it.
  2. 02Chronic Mental Illness in a Treated WorldBy the end of this lesson you will understand why diagnoses and prescriptions for common mental health conditions have risen sharply while population-level well-being has not improved in step, and you will be able to name the specific cognitive, clinical and systemic mechanisms that produce that paradox.
  3. 03The Brain as an Energy OrganBy the end of this lesson you will understand why the brain consumes a disproportionate share of the body's energy, and how the stability of that energy supply — not just neurotransmitter chemistry — shapes mood, attention and mental resilience.
  4. 04Insulin Resistance and the Inflamed BrainBy the end of this lesson you will understand how insulin resistance and low-grade inflammation can change the way the brain produces and uses energy, and why that shift shows up as low mood, flat motivation, and mental fog rather than as any obvious physical symptom.
  5. 05What Ketosis Actually Is: Brain Fuel ReimaginedBy the end of this lesson you will understand what nutritional ketosis actually is at the level of hormones, fuel and cell signaling — and why the brain's response to ketones is not the same thing as fat loss.
  6. 06From Epilepsy to Psychiatry: The Metabolic BridgeBy the end of this lesson you will understand why a dietary therapy developed a century ago for drug-resistant epilepsy is now being studied in psychiatry, and you will be able to describe the shared brain-energy mechanisms that link the two fields — along with the point at which the evidence stops.
  7. 07When to Use Metabolic Interventions in PsychiatryBy the end of this lesson you will understand the specific clinical and biological patterns that make a metabolic approach worth considering in mental health care — and, just as importantly, the situations in which it is not appropriate.
  8. 08From Symptom Control to System Repair in PsychiatryBy the end of this lesson you will understand why many psychiatric symptoms are increasingly read as signals of disturbed brain energy metabolism rather than simple chemical imbalances, and what it means in practice to shift from managing symptoms to repairing the systems that produce them.

Coming next

This program is the DO stage of a longer path — read the evidence, apply it, track what sticks. Your progress here is stored on this device, no account needed; the Brain First app will carry the same steps further.

How Brain First worksApp in the works