Is Your Mental Health Struggle Actually a Metabolic Crisis? (A Guide for Neurodivergent Women)
Content Note: This post discusses severe mental health struggles and briefly mentions passive suicidal ideation. Please read with care.
The last few days have been absolute hell.
Why? Has a tragedy struck here in beautiful Cambodia? Have my foundations crumbled? No. It’s because I’ve been eating refined carbohydrates.
I bet you’re sitting there thinking, “Wait, what? Is she actually serious?”
And I get it. It sounds ridiculous. It sounds weird because we have been collectively duped. We’ve been led to believe that what we put in our mouths has very little to do with the storms in our minds. But the truth is, most of us are eating a diet that is actively hostile to our brains, and we are completely unaware of it.
I want to share this because my main aim is to let my fellow Neurodivergent women know that we do have power over our mental health. If you are struggling with burnout, anxiety, or brain fog right now, please know: things can be better.
The Accidental Magic of a Ketogenic Diet
Just to catch you up, I generally follow a ketogenic lifestyle, which means consuming mainly fat and protein, very little carbohydrates, and certainly no sugar or refined carbs.
I didn’t start this way of eating for my mind, though. About 18 months ago, I turned to keto purely for weight loss. I was 48, grappling with the aftermath of living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) for four years. I’d been unable to cook healthy meals or move my body, and the weight had piled onto an already overweight frame. I’ve always been weight-conscious, but at this age, I realised the implications went beyond vanity—this was about my future health and longevity.
So, I started eating the keto way. And yes, the weight dropped off. But something else happened—something far more glorious and unexpected.
My lifelong mental health challenges vanished.
And when I say vanished, I mean completely gone.
My History with Treatment-Resistant Depression and Anxiety
To give you the context of how miraculous this is, you need to know my history. I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression at 19, cycling through antidepressants throughout my 20s. By my 30s, I had developed a severe anxiety disorder, complete with panic attacks so crippling I couldn’t leave the house and had to leave my job as a Social Worker.
I eventually healed that acute phase—not through medication, but through abstaining from alcohol, engaging in therapy, spirituality, connecting with nature, and fundamentally changing my life.
But even though I wasn't "depressed" on paper anymore, something was still off. My energy was brittle. My interaction with the world felt fraught. As many of you know, I discovered I was Neurodivergent (AuDHD) in 2022, which explained a lot.
Yet, one massive, dark cloud remained. Every couple of months, like clockwork, I would be hit by an unbelievable, crushing sensation of utter worthlessness.
It was unbearable. I assumed it was rooted in difficult childhood experiences, so I did the work.
- Trauma Therapy
- Acupuncture & Reiki
- Psilocybin & Neural Pathway Therapy
- Meditation & Yoga
I tried everything. And while some techniques helped, that crushing disconnection from humanity would always return.
It feels very vulnerable to type this, so I hope you’ll treat this with care: When I was disabled by CFS, I started experiencing suicidal ideation.
If you’ve never experienced it, it’s not necessarily that you have a plan to harm yourself. It’s a passive, heavy feeling—a sense that the pain is so taxing, so relentless, that it would just be so much easier if you weren't here anymore.
The Metabolic Switch for Mental Health
So why am I telling you all this?
Because I want you to know clearly: my mental health has been the single biggest misery of my life. I hid it, numbed it, and sought a magic pill to cure it.
And yet, when I’m on a ketogenic diet—eating minimal carbs and absolutely no refined sugar—I do not have mental health problems.
At all. Nothing.
It felt like a miracle. No anxiety. No insecurity. No crushing worthlessness. Just waking up with energy, feeling happy and stable.
Naturally, I had to dive into the research. Why had I never heard that a different way of eating could silence the chaos in my mind?
Enter: Metabolic Psychiatry
That’s when I found the work of Dr. Georgia Ede and her groundbreaking book, Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind.
The first time I heard her ideas, I was angry. I thought, How dare you minimise people's trauma? How dare you imply it’s just food?
But she explained that even with a history of severe trauma, it is often our brain chemistry and neurobiology that dictate how we respond to that history. She argued that people with trauma can live peaceful, normal lives when their brain chemistry is supported by a metabolic therapy like the ketogenic diet. My lived experience proved that what she was saying was true.
She told the story of a man with Bipolar disorder who completely changed his life through diet. But—and this is the kicker—she noted that if he reverted to eating refined carbohydrates, even for a few hours, his brain would begin to dysfunction again, bringing back symptoms of Bipolar almost immediately.
I found this fascinating. And terrifying.
Mental Health Conditions Linked to Poor Metabolic Health
Honestly, it doesn’t stop there. The field of Metabolic Psychiatry is exploding. We aren’t just talking about a bit of brain fog here. We are looking at strong associations between metabolic dysfunction and:
- Anxiety & Panic Disorders
- Major Depression (especially treatment-resistant varieties)
- Bipolar Disorder
- Schizophrenia
- ADHD (Yes, really. My ‘problematic’ ADHD symptoms are significantly reduced on keto)
- Alzheimer’s & Dementia (now frequently called 'Type 3 Diabetes')
- PTSD & CPTSD
- OCD
- Eating Disorders (Anorexia, Bulimia, and Binge Eating Disorder)
- Addiction
It turns out that when our brains are starving for energy or inflamed by sugar, they manifest symptoms that we have been labelling as purely 'psychological' for decades.
Co-occurring Conditions in Neurodivergent Women
Specifically for us neurodivergent women, we seem to get the 'buy one, get five free' deal on health struggles. It’s rarely just the ADHD or the Autism. There is a massive overlap with inflammatory and hormonal conditions, including:
- PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) – where ‘PMS’ feels like a psychiatric emergency.
- PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome).
- Fibromyalgia & Chronic Pain.
- ME/CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome).
- IBS and gut issues.
- Migraines.
- Autoimmune conditions.
It’s all connected. The brain and the body are not separate entities, and metabolic dysfunction is often the thread tying all these painful knots together.
The Anatomy of an ADHD Meltdown (It's a Fuel Crisis)
If you’re not sure how exactly metabolic health plays into neurodivergence in real-time, let me give you one simple, concrete example: The Meltdown.
We tend to think of meltdowns as purely emotional events or the result of sensory overload. But it can actually be a fuel crisis.
Here is the mechanics of it:
- You eat the refined carbs—the toast, the pasta, the cake.
- Your blood sugar spikes high.
- Your body releases a flood of insulin to bring it down.
- For many of us, the body overcorrects and sends blood sugar crashing into the basement (Hypoglycemia).
When your brain is suddenly deprived of glucose (its primary fuel source on a standard diet), it panics. It perceives a life-threat. It pumps out adrenaline and cortisol—stress hormones—desperately trying to liberate stored energy.
The result? You are instantly thrown into a chemical state of fight or flight.
Your patience evaporates. Your sensory tolerance hits absolute zero. The "red mist" descends.
Looking back, I can now directly correlate some of the biggest, most explosive meltdowns of my life—the ones that left me drowning in shame—to these precise moments of metabolic instability. I wasn't just 'losing it' or failing to cope; my brain was starving and sounding the alarm.
The Canary in the Coal Mine: Perimenopause & Sensitivity
I realised that, like the gentleman in Dr. Ede's book, I am chemically sensitive.
Recently, I deviated from my diet. I ate refined carbohydrates. Why? Because I have to navigate hypothyroidism and the rollercoaster of perimenopause, where the body sometimes craves carbohydrates to help progesterone do its job.
Plus, as estrogen declines during perimenopause, our cells become more insulin resistant, meaning we lose our natural buffer against glucose spikes. This makes our brains wildly more sensitive to these sugar crashes than they ever were in our twenties.
I could have eaten a roasted sweet potato, but I didn’t. I wanted to eat freshly baked bread, stonebaked pizza, and blueberry cheesecake. Because I’m a human woman living in the world.
The result was quick. Within three days, I felt like shit. I couldn’t focus. My thoughts started to tangle. The insecurity returned. The mild anxiety. A shapeless feeling of an unknown threat lurking around the corner.
Do You Have to Be Strict Keto to Be Healthy?
I want to pause here and be really clear about something. You do not have to be on a strict ketogenic diet to be metabolically healthy.
I am highly sensitive—extreme. But not everyone is as sensitive as me. We are all bio-individual.
There are many doorways into metabolic health. It isn’t just about ketones. Huge, life-changing gains can be made simply by cutting down on refined sugar and processed beige food, without ever needing to count a single macro.
Furthermore, diet is only one piece of the puzzle. You can eat all the steak and avocados in the world, but if your nervous system is fried, your metabolic health will suffer. Nervous system regulation, emotional release work, somatic healing, and simply feeling safe in your body are just as critical to this equation.
I was not on a ketogenic diet when I healed my CFS. I healed by turning off the ‘Cell Danger Response’. Keto came after, and took my healing from basic (I can function) to elite (I can thrive).
A Message of Hope for Neurodivergent Women
I’m sharing this because I suspect that those of us with Neurodivergent brains are the canaries in the coal mine. We are more sensitive to everything—noise, medication, emotions, and food.
It is very possible that some of you are struggling right now, not because you are broken, but because your brain is inflamed. It might just be that reducing refined carbohydrates could flip a metabolic switch and give you your life back.
I have recently qualified as a Metabolic Health Coach because I believe this work is groundbreaking. I aim to be a leader in this (rather lonely and controversial) space and hope I can be a role model for what’s possible.
We are seeing the research now. Metabolic health is the root cause of almost every single modern disease. We have the power to change how we live and eat, and in doing so, we might just save our minds.
Ready to Investigate Your Own Metabolism?
If you resonated with this post—the fatigue, the meltdowns, the fog—and want to understand what is happening under the hood of your own brain, I can help.
I offer an Energy Detective Forensic Metabolic Assessment specifically designed for neurodivergent women. We identify your metabolic "Red Lights" (drains) and "Green Lights" (sparks) in a sensory-friendly, low-demand format.
