Expert: Tanya Zilberter, PhD - 10/24/2009

Question
Tanya, I've read you answer to Dennis at http://en.allexperts.com/q/Special-Diets-768/2009/10/brain-protecting-diet.htm and I went to your site and it seemed to me very revolutionary. Is this just me or you guys over there in Marseille are really up to something? For one thing, many families having an epileptic child or an Alzheimer loved ones can already try what you've found in the lab and it's already available OTC? Unbelievable!

Answer
In a way, yes, what was figured out may in a due time become a helpful mean to restore energy balance in a brain that for some reason lost this balance. For example, many neurodegenerative diseases do have metabolic crisis as a common feature.

I can only speculate, but it seems that we Western people overdo with the easy, carbohydrate-based metabolic pathway and doing that, blocked the alternative brain fuels, mostly ketone bodies, lactate and pyruvate. I'm working on this issue at my brainfuels.com

From this, I hope, one can draw at least two conclusions:

1. The ketogenic diet does work - but there's a hope that this stringent diet might be unnecessary in some cases if we supply the brain with, for example, pyruvate.

2. Pyruvate, though not a common OTC preparation as you put it, is easily available at GNS or online (for example, http://pyruvate.notlong.com ) in the US it costs about 10 dollars a month. It is rather well researched in human subjects with no side effects observed, and is used by bodybuilders for a long time though they aim to feed the muscle not brain.

TZ