Keto diet may help reduce alcohol cravings

Can a keto diet help people with alcohol addiction? A small study of drinkers suggests there might be something to it. Researchers looked at the brains of people with alcohol use disorder (AUD), and found the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signatures for alcohol cravings were reduced when participants were on a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet intervention—more so than those on a regular diet. Details were published in a preprint study made available by medRxiv. It has not yet been peer reviewed. Conducted by U.S. researchers, the paper stated there has been increasing evidence suggesting a ketogenic diet (KD) reduces alcohol withdrawal severity and alcohol craving in people with AUD by shifting ‘brain energetics’ from glucose to ketones. But here, fMRI was used to examine whether a ketogenic diet intervention would affect brain activity related to alcohol cravings in patients with AUD while undergoing alcohol detoxification treatment. A total of 33 adults with an AUD and at least a five-year history of heavy drinking were included; 10 women and 23 men. Of these, 19 were randomized to a ketogenic diet and 14 to a standard American diet for three weeks. They underwent inpatient alcohol detoxification treatment at the same time, and blood tests were used to confirm diet compliance. Once a week, participants underwent fMRI scans while performing an alcohol cue-reactivity paradigm. Brain responses to both food and alcohol cues were measured using the Neurobiological Craving Signature (NCS). Differences in craving signature patterns between the two groups were compared from alcohol, food and neutral cues. The patients also rated their alcohol craving on the Desire for Alcohol Questionnaire (DAQ). The fMRI scans revealed that the keto diet group had lower NCS responses compared to the regular diet control diet group throughout the study period. When compared to the controls, the keto diet group had lower “wanting” ratings of the alcohol cues presented in the alcohol-cue reactivity task, which did not correlate with NCS. “These findings provide novel insight into the effects of KD on neural signatures of alcohol craving,” the study said. The findings offer some evidence for a potential therapeutic benefit of a keto diet in reducing alcohol wanting, and neurobiological cravings for alcohol. “Our findings confirm our overall hypothesis that providing ketone bodies via a KD intervention during detoxification would attenuate the emergence of alcohol craving,” the researchers wrote.

Keto diet may help reduce alcohol cravings

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