I think I may be putting my schizophrenia into remission

I feel like I have a brain for the first time in my life - my history with the ketogenic diet.

Note: this is not medical advice please talk to your doctor before you decide to taper with your medication

About 4 months ago I started my journey with the ketogenic diet to improve the symptoms resulting from suffering from schizophrenia since I was young. For my surprise my focus and clarity of mind improved, my energy levels throughout the day increased a lot and on top of that I lost 30kg (66 pounds). See Finding Hope After Decades of Struggle.

Encouraged by the results I started slowly tapering off my anti-psychotic medication (amisulpride) from 300mg to 50mg a day. I stopped taking my mood stabiliser (valproate sodium).

For 2 months I follow a standard ketogenic diet. Knowing the carnivore diet is also carbs restricted and decided to give it a try. I started having symptoms again and took a small dose of haldol to prevent relapse.

I reached out to the Metabolic Psychiatry community on reddit and plead for help. My wish was granted - it happens that I was not including enough fat in my diet. I started following a semi-carnivore 2g of fat per 1g of protein and restricted carbs. I got better only a few days of changing to the new diet.

Still I had mild symptoms at night that I had to cut taking a small amount of haldol at night so I was able to sleep. I started suspecting that amisulpride at a low dosage (50mg) had a more dopaminergic effect that was perturbing my sleep. I changed the dosage to the morning and immediately started sleeping better.

I had a feeling that low dosage was doing me more harm than good - I reduce it to 25mg and soon the mild symptoms reduced significantly.

Now I don’t need to struggle to focus anymore. I feel more creative, ideas come easily to mind comparing with past times where it was a struggle to be able to focus and work. I feel I finally have a brain for the first time of my life.

I’m starting to think that my periodic relapses were more due to the energy spent trying to focus on work everyday than intrinsic to my disorder see Tracking Symptom Patterns. I no longer need to concentrate hard to think, ideas and insights seem to just happen more often. Fluidity and flexibility of thinking are things I’m experiencing for the first time in my life.

If you or someone you know needs help with a mental illness I would suggest as a start by taking a look at the video on the Metabolic Mind Youtube Channel. Hopefully it will be the start of a beautiful journey.

Thank you for reading my post and Happy Holidays everyone!