The keto diet protects young minds from early life trauma

A wide range of research has shown that if mothers experience stress during pregnancy, offspring can experience persistent, developmentally-related psychological conditions.

Now a group of Italian researchers have shown that biological changes caused by a ketogenic diet may help them escape the long-term effects of the stress they experience in the womb.

Pregnant mice were stressed in the last week before giving birth. Offspring were weaned 21 days after birth and assigned to a control diet or a ketogenic diet. After 42 days, the young animals were tested for a variety of stress-induced deficits, such as poor social communication or lack of interest in their surroundings (anhedonia). The animals that received the ketogenic diet showed some notable differences from the control group, such as showing longer grooming times and greater sociability. The researchers found that if fed a normal diet, 50% of mice born to stressed mothers developed stress-related problems later in life. However, in those mice fed the keto diet, only 22% of male offspring and 12% of female offspring developed these problems.

The ketogenic diet has been shown to lead to a variety of biological changes, such as enhancing mitochondrial efficiency and changing hormone balance.

According to lead researcher Dr. Alicia Marchesin (from the University of Milan):

“We discovered that feeding young mice a ketogenic diet – a diet high in fat and very low in carbohydrates – immediately after weaning almost completely protected them from the lasting effects of the stress they experienced before birth. The diet appeared to act as a shield for their developing brains, thus preventing social and motivational problems from ever taking root.”

This is important because it suggests a simple way to prevent the occurrence of mood and social disorders that often arise from childhood adversity. Instead of waiting until symptoms appear and then treating them with medications—many of which have side effects—we may one day benefit from the therapeutic properties of nutritional interventions early in life to prevent the development of a full-blown disease. Furthermore, we found that males and females benefited via different biological routes – males by reducing inflammation, females by enhancing antioxidant defenses – suggesting that we can personalize and optimize these nutritional interventions.

“If these findings translate to humans, we may be able to address the long-term burden of prenatal trauma simply by modifying what at-risk babies eat.”

She added,

“There are a few points to note. The animals on the ketogenic diet grew more slowly than the control group, so the reduction in calories may be related to subsequent mental health benefits. We see sex-specific differences that need to be better understood before we can apply this to humans.”

Commenting on this, Dr. Aniko Korosi, Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam, says:

“This work contributes well to the emerging field of nutritional psychiatry. The role of nutrition in modulating mental health is receiving attention and its potential is being appreciated more and more in this field. However, important questions remain in this field about which nutrients, when and for whom are effective in modulating mental health. The presented study interestingly shows that prenatal stress-induced risks of altered behavior can be modified using a ketogenic diet. Feed him after weaning. “It will be interesting to further explore what biological processes are involved in these beneficial effects and whether these effects are sex-specific.”

This is an independent comment, and Dr. Korosi was not involved in this work.