Patient Experience Series
Key Takeaways

Carrie Brown shares her powerful story of how investigating the root cause of her mental health symptoms led her to a treatment that involved using a carefully controlled ketogenic diet and methylated B vitamins in managing her symptoms of Bipolar disorder
Every person’s illness experience is unique, and medicine is approaching towards personalization in treatment and management of symptoms

A Closer Look

Asking the “why”
Carrie Brown shares her powerful story of dealing with feelings of depression from a very young age into adulthood, and eventually being diagnosed with Bipolar disorder.

The many antidepressants Ms. Brown was prescribed had severely impacted her ability to sleep and caused her a heightened state of anxiety – coming to terms that she may just have to “live with it”.
However, this led to her becoming “suicidally depressed”, even with medication, the coping became very difficult and she was placed under mandatory psychiatric care.

After coming in contact with a new family doctor, Carrie was put under lamotrigine (an anti-seizure medication) which led her to feel waves of joy off and on. This fluctuation resulted in increasing her doses four times from what she had initially started with.

Carrie realized that she was in a cycle of medication and treatment, and relapse in symptoms, and that no one was asking the critical question “why”: “why does she have Bipolar? What caused it? Where did it come from?”

Carrie then decided to investigate this through a DNA test, and with the help of Dr. Ted Naiman discovered a new approach to coping with her symptoms.

Impact of Diet on Health

The new approach involved a ketogenic diet, which was initially made to help children who were suffering from seizures, as well as continuing on with lamotrigine.

The DNA test revealed that Carrie had a genetic mutation in the MTHFR gene, which prevented caused a deficiency in Vitamin B and impacted her neurotransmitter health.

Carrie started methylated B supplements as a result and found that, with the combination of lamotrigine and the 9-food keto diet, her health began to better over time.

She was slowly able to reduce her dosage of medication and focus mainly on the diet portion of the treatment.

She is now completely symptom-free and unmedicated for over 5 years!