Matt bazooki advocates for mental health through the ketogenic diet and shares his experiences on the bipolar cast podcast please Welcome Matt bazooki okay thanks for asking me to speak Dave um I'd also like to thank the Silverton for my run and roulette last night okay okay I'm working on my skills here we go bipolar Keto this is a story of how I cured my bipolar illness with keto more accurately maybe working on my metabolic Health in general but keto was really the the thing that made the whole recovery possible okay I have a timer good
this is me in college um I was at Cal at the time I was 19 everything was going well studying computer science electrical engineering tough course load good friends for turning I'm on the left there and I had some bad habits unfortunately so I had a lot of bad habits when I was 19 uh a lot of beer and marijuana a lot of nicotine and the fraternity as well as carbs I think I was on low carb but it was more of a college low carb which is beer beer and fat and then a lot
of chaos because it was a stressful School curriculum okay so when I was 19 uh in March this is the Leviathan from the Bible the bringer of chaos I went into a manic episode and bipolar disorder is characterized by periods of mania with my mom's filming me there with a lot of um with a lot of energy and very little sleep and periods of depression with lethargy and all that stuff I was um they took me to the py wward I was prescribed an antis psychotic and I thought this was a test of my spiritual
enlightenment and that if I took it I was not enlightened and so I went I finally went to the psych wward and I was psychotic and delusional I had slept in four or five days um psycho is a pretty scary place to be when you're in that kind of state so I was in the psych W for I'm trying to got to speedrun this deck a little bit um for 10 days that time or 2 weeks or something so from 2016 to 2018 so when I was 19 to 21 years old I had four involuntary
hospitalizations for Mania each time I was floridly manic floridly psychotic delusional I thought I was Plato reincarnated I thought I was receiving personal messages from spiritual gurus over YouTube it was really just like floridly psychotic um I was treated by 41 mental health professional and I went to eight treatment centers a bunch of bunch of Residential Treatment Centers and I was just super super sick this is some of my mom's tracking of my symptoms and you can see that this is just a disaster I mean Mania depression anger irritability uh just all kinds of terrible
symptoms and this is a little bit more specific look at some of the stuff my mom was tracking for me for all those years and you can see the medications it's just like in insane I mean I practi this is a heavy duty anti psychotic medication and I was taking lots of it um this is a recipe for metabolic dysfunction all of these meds in case you're wondering and of course I really like smoking cigarettes these are some of my favorite cigarettes I like the Camel Crush because you can press the button and then you
get the Menthol and I think there's something like people with bipolar smoking is almost a spiritual experience because there's a lot of I comorbidity if you call it smokers and schizophrenia and bipolar um these are some of the photos that were taken when I was manic I like these cuz you can really see the manic aesthetic with the photos which is kind of the um the the colors and the vibe and all this stuff um so yeah I was just really I mean I was sick in 2018 18 I had insight for the first time
and this is when I realized that something with my mood and my health was very very wrong and for two years I had been in and out of such horrible psychoses that I didn't I wasn't able to put the pieces together I was never really saying at all so I I had some insight and things were still very difficult but I knew something was really wrong and I had to figure it out and I was 21 at the time and so I started tracking everything I started tracking my mood all the meds I was taking
you can see I was taking benzos five times a day they put me on benzos as an antim manic um my sleep how much sleep I got for my AA ring which I still wear as well as my depression levels and everything was high and everything was challenging I was exercising row 16 there so I was doing some things well but life was just very very difficult uh we tried TMS which is this protocol where they put this shocky thing next to your head and zap you and you go like um it was really uncomfortable
we my dad got a camper and we we stayed in the camper next to the next to the hospital or whatever cuz I had to do this all day on and off I couldn't work I couldn't go to school full-time work was out of the question off the table my friends were doing internships and going to school and I was not I was going to treatment centers all over the country parents tried everything we had the resources to try everything and nothing helped me this it's funny this plethora of psychological therapies that didn't help me
at all like I would go to these treatment centers and they would feed me root beer and ice cream and do DBT with me seven groups a day for 50 minutes each group I mean it it's just ridiculous it's almost like a meme looking back at it like what did you expect was going to happen um um some things are good so exercise which I still do weight training I do meditation I do and then you know I do things differently now but as I was sick and nothing would work and then in March which
is now incidentally um in March the days are becoming longer at a very fast rate that's the second derivative for those of you who like math so the days are getting really really getting longer but very fast and I would go manic every March I had my first episode in March of 2016 and March was always challenging and I would have to up my medication dose to 20 Mig of Zyprexa which is this antis psychotic medication or more just to stay stable during March just to prevent myself from sleeping less and less and then going
into a manic episode and I would watch it meticulously every March and I was it was always a nerve-wracking um and I was prescrib benzo Adavan it took me 3 years to taper off Adavan we cross tapered to Valium we got a compound pharmacy to prescribe .1 millgram valum pills I was taking it five times a day tapering off slowly I had horrific withdrawal I had irritability I had rage I couldn't sleep I couldn't work I couldn't do anything I finally got off them in 2021 um this was really unfortunate this was very very challenging
for me okay so this is the picture in 2020 I was still taking volume I had quit drinking and I had quit drugs in June of that year I quit smoking I was exercising I was taking meds as prescribed I was doing therapy whatever all these things they want you to do and I was sick and I was very very sick and it was going to be a difficult life so things were going to be very challenging for me so this is the picture in 2020 okay now we're getting somewhere so my mom happened to
find Dr Chris Palmer's work in 2020 Dr Palmer agreed to treat me pro bono to help out Denise agreed to help with my nutrition she's in the back I think I saw her U Charlie foundation and on January 4th I went on a ketogenic diet I don't remember what the macro makeup was exactly except that I tracked my ketones and they were high you can see they were up in the top there 5 milles 5 milles 2.2 I mean they were really really high actually went into K keto acidosis at one point and got nauseous
and I had to work I had to adjust you know I keto flew a little bit these things like that but I really adhered to it for those first you know nine months strictly and I watched my symptoms go away I mean I watch [Applause] them it was wild I I think my mom and dad and I we couldn't even believe it I mean I could not believe it you know I mentioned March Madness that's a funny joke by the way um I I went through March on 5 milligrams which is 25% when I had
to take him previous years and I had no symptoms I had no symptoms it was crazy I couldn't even believe it and I was just doing keto and I was eating a lot of fat and I was eating protein and swimming and lifting weights and doing this stuff um I got my degree in music I was making money on Spotify I started working I mean the work I'm doing now as a project manager I couldn't imagine in Tech like is impossible you know this would have been out of the question when I was sick I
could barely even pick up the phone to make a call to go to the dentist and then follow up because I my executive functioning just didn't work I mean my brain didn't work um I've done this podcast with Ian who's doing research in Scotland on keto diet for bipolar we've talked to dozens of people who have reversed their symptoms their bipolar disorder symptoms using a ketogenic diet and then of course this is our family foundation so it's grown to a bunch of employees um it's the intersection of metabolic and mental health so we're funding clinical
trials for ketogenic therapy for mental illness and things are going really really well we're moving the needle very quickly which when you have something like this that works and everyone has that story of the you know their son not daughter nephew friend whatever it is who's had some something like this it's pretty common these days and when you have something like metabolic therapy that works so well for so many people it's kind of impossible not to for this not to pick up steam I was on the Today's Show like you guys can find that segment
if you want to recently it was pretty funny so we did a thing with Kate Snow she talked about keto and mental health and we filmed it in Florida I didn't put that in the slides but so this is like coming into the mainstream now metabolic Psychiatry uh um this is the basic protocol I mean it's more than keto obviously keto was the thing that without it I don't think this would have been possible but cardiovascular exercise and and weight training and then of course I get sunlight in the morning and wear my blue light
blockers which I really like um and I have like the eight sleep I'm pretty sleep sleep program is pretty good too and then medic medication and connection with people purpose all these good things that are good for metabolic Health in general and I try to just kick butt at the main so this which is I mean probably 95% of the recovery is doing these few basic things very very well and so I just try to do these oops I just try to do these very well um I went to Argentina to work remotely for a
month last year with my buddy um that's him second from the left that's me with this massive beard I had it was great we went to the symphony we did all this stuff we went to soccer games I mean something like this would have been out of the question for me and I stayed up till 2:30 every night which is interesting I had no symptoms so it's kind of wild it's almost like that this was really eye opening for me when I realized wow I'm it seems like I'm cured almost I still watch my sleep
I still track it I still have the ring but this was just miraculous and this is probably when I stopped really worrying or my paranoia lessoned I sto being paranoid that I was going to have another episode because was just stable throughout this trip and then um I can play chess again which is just great um brain is really really working well now and looks like I'm going to finish almost a little early my plans for the future is just to to keep doing what I'm doing and it's almost feels like I've been chucked into
this world of metabolic health because I'm like the kid who got better and then all of this philanthropy happened but I'm I'm happy to do it and it's such a good story and we have something like this that works so well I'm happy to give back wherever I can so thanks for listening everyone I appreciate [Applause] it
