In this week's episode of The Best Guest podcast we welcome The Brain Energy Reboot Expert, Moira Newiss.

We talk about:

• Ketogenic & Metabolic Mental Health
• Mitochondria, Brain Energy & Fatigue
• Autoimmune Conditions & the Carnivore Diet

About Moira Newiss

Moira Newiss is a BANT registered nutritional therapist, health coach and accredited ketogenic metabolic therapy expert who specialises in brain energy, one of the recently discovered root causes of many mental health problems.

Moira’s passion for metabolic mental health was sparked after a 20-year career as a senior NHS manager, managing hundreds of staff and multi-million-pound budgets. Following burnout, chronic fatigue and mental illness, she retrained at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition and became fascinated by the link between energy, mood, mental health and metabolic health. 

Moira works with individuals who have conditions including depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, who have often not found a resolution with medication or psychological support alone. Her personalised approach has helped hundreds to improve their symptoms, with some achieving full remission, that means reversal, of their condition.

A regular conference speaker, Moira co-authored the first mental health guidelines for nutritional therapists and published the case report ‘Remission of Schizophrenia Using a Carnivore Ketogenic Metabolic Therapy with Nutritional Therapy Practitioner Support’.

Moira is lucky to live on the beautiful west coast of Scotland where she has a large garden, grows her own fruit and vegetables and has a lovely flock of hens. She also loves adventure, regularly climbing mountains, bike packing and hiking in remote spots on short expeditions.

Key Takeaways

For some people, shifting from glucose to ketone fuel can rapidly improve brain fog, mood, and energy.

Common keto pitfalls include undereating fat and overeating protein

Sleep, morning light, reduced evening blue light, and gentle movement support brain energy and mood.

Short-term carnivore diet can be a powerful elimination protocol to calm inflammation, heal the gut and identify food triggers.

Dairy-free keto is doable - use coconut fats, olive oil, tallow/lard, fatty fish; check labels on “milks” for hidden carbs.

QuoteI had planned to do a hundred kilometre bike ride, and I remember crossing the finishing line thinking—and I was crying ’cause it was just an emotional thing—I just knew I cracked it. I just knew the energy was there. I’d cycled a hundred kilometres with no carbohydrates.Connect with Moira Newiss

Website: https://www.moiranewiss.co.uk/ 

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/moiranewiss 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moira-newiss/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@moiranewiss

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Transcript

Victoria Bennion: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome. I'm your host, Victoria

Bennion, and the founder of the best podcast guest booking agency. And you're

listening to the best guest, the podcast for business owners, creatives, and

entrepreneurs who want to harness the power of podcasts to grow their platforms

and increase their visibility.

We're here to support you on your journey, bringing you

actionable tips with each episode. Now let's begin.

Today I am joined by Moira Newiss, who is a BANT registered

nutritional therapist, health coach, and accredited ketogenic metabolic therapy

expert who specializes in brain energy, one of the recently discovered root

causes of many mental health problems. Good morning Moira. Welcome to the show.

Moira Newiss:

Morning, Victoria. Thank you for having me.

Victoria Bennion: How

are you today?

Moira Newiss: I'm

good. The sun's shining here, so Yeah, I'm happy and well

Victoria Bennion:

you're very lucky. We have solid rain.

Moira Newiss: I'm

quite lucky it's not always like this on the west coast of Scotland, but [00:01:00] it's lovely today.

Victoria Bennion: Oh,

that's very nice. What a lovely part the world to live in as well.

Moira Newiss: Yeah,

absolutely.

Victoria Bennion:

When did your passion for metabolic mental health begin?

Moira Newiss: It's

been a bit of a journey for me. So this was partly going back through my own

personal health journey when I struggled with mental health and chronic

fatigue. Having been through a period of burnout when I was an NHS senior

manager. And then along the way, I kind of, I didn't know anything about

metabolic mental health to begin with, but I had to find my own way to wellness

again.

I tried various things to start with including things like deep

breathing eating better, spending time in nature, lots of different things. And

I did get a bit better, but it wasn't really until I trialed a ketogenic diet,

when I was actually starting to retrain in nutritional therapy.

That it was just like a light bulb moment. Something just

seemed to work much better. My brain fog cleared and my brain fog had been

really severe. So, you know, and I was really [00:02:00]

struggling with my, mental health. You know, I thought my family would be

better off without me. It was quite a dark place at times.

And when I tried a ketogenic diet, I discovered the power of

ketones, really, which is what happens when you begin to eat a very high fat,

low carbohydrate diet? Your body makes ketone bodies as a fuel and they can

fuel your brain just as effectively as your body. That was really when I first

discovered what I would call metabolic medicine for mental health, and then

I've gone on to specialize, and train more and learn more about it.

I became fascinated really about, about metabolic health.

Victoria Bennion:

Wow, was it hard to switch over to a ketogenic diet?

Moira Newiss: It was

a little bit of a challenge to start with. You've got to to start with, I

wasn't testing my blood, so I was doing it just by calculating what I was

eating, like looking at the macro content of the diet. So how much

carbohydrates, how much fat I was eating. Originally it was a little bit of a

challenge, finding my way through that on my own.

And then afterwards I discovered that, you could do other

things. You could, [00:03:00] you had to take

more account of protein, which I hadn't really understood to begin with. So

really a ketogenic diet is the ratio of fat to carbohydrates and protein

combined. And there are different levels of ketogenic diet, so different

ratios.

So you could be looking. A one-to-one ratio, which would be one

gram of fat for every combined one gram of fat and protein. Or you could be

looking at higher ratio, like a two to one, which is often what we're using in

metabolic mental health. And you can test your blood ketones to get an idea of

where you are actually sitting, which is something I now regularly do with all

my clients.

So I've learned as I went, what would work, what wouldn't work?

And often one of the mistakes people do make is that either they're just not

eating enough fat, because a lot of us are brought up thinking fat's bad for

you. You are worried about things like, is it gonna cause cardiovascular

disease?

So that's a concern. So people often unre the fat when they

drop the carbs, and you don't really have enough energy if you do that because

carbs don't factor your fuels. But also sometimes people overeat protein and

that actually can [00:04:00] end up just

breaking down into glucose. So you're not really using fat as a fuel again.

So there's a few things that I've learned along the way as part

of that process.

Victoria Bennion:

That's really interesting. When you say tests, is that blood tests

Moira Newiss: so, it

is usually blood testing. So usually you get a keto monitor, which will do both

blood glucose and ketones. And it's just like, you know what a diabetic would

do, torick their finger. It takes seconds to do and you get immediate feedback

on where you are in terms of the level of ketones you're producing.

There are actually some companies now beginning to produce,

continuous ketone monitors, a bit like what you see type one diabetics wearing

on their arm, like it continuous glucose monitor. And that's really fascinating

'cause then you can track it for 24 hours and see what's happening. And I've

done that trialing it, going up mountains and things like that, which is

totally fascinating.

Yeah, so, so the technology's changing and we will be getting

probably combined continuous glucose and ketone monitors in it. It, I think

this year probably we know they're being worked on as the new technology.

Victoria Bennion:

Wow, that's fascinating. [00:05:00] How quickly

after changing your diet did you see a difference?

Moira Newiss:

Quickly. Yeah, as soon as I really got into what's called ketosis. So as soon

as I was making the ketones at a reasonable level I noticed the difference. The

challenge was to keep it going because. You know, it takes a while to become

what's called fully keto adapted. So I really wanted to trial that to see what

would happen.

So I decided I would do it for three months, and at the end of

the three month period, it was I think it was, I think I'd started maybe in JI

think it must have been mid-January sometime. And I was doing up to, into

April. And at the end of that I had planned to do a hundred kilometer bike

ride.

And I remember crossing the finishing line thinking and I was

crying 'cause it was just an emotional thing. I just knew I cracked it. I just

knew the energy was there. I'd cycled a hundred kilometers with no

carbohydrates. You know, something that many people think is impossible to do

because of what we've been taught in terms of like carbohydrates are needed.

People eat pasta before they race and things like [00:06:00] this. It's not true. Obviously you can run

on fat. And I just knew I was never going back. That was it. I'd kind of

cracked it. So, so I did kind of experiment a little bit on and off after that,

but I realized pretty quickly that I felt a lot better on a ketogenic diet.

So I've been pretty ketogenic now for six years or more, so

quite a long time.

Victoria Bennion:

What do you tend to eat for meals on a ketogenic diet?

Moira Newiss: I can

tell you what I had for breakfast this morning, which was I had some bacon and

some lummi cheese, and half an avocado, a tomato. And , you can have eggs and

things like that if it's a cooked breakfast, but sometimes I'll have things

like, homemade granola with, you know, high fat coconut yogurt and berries.

For lunch I'll often just have like ham and cheese and salad

and a bit of avocado or something with a bit of extra olive oil on it. Or

sometimes leftover dinner. That's another easy option for lunch. My husband

eats very similar to me. Actually. He has an omelet nearly every day. I'm not

quite as keen on omelets, but he'll do that for lunch.

, Last night for dinner we had chicken breasts [00:07:00] that were coated in ground almonds cooked

in butter and then finished off in the oven. And we had a leak and cream cheese

sort of sauce with it. So. Yeah, with a little bit of broccoli on the side.

Yeah. So that's the kind of stuff I'm eating and probably, like most families,

we, have set things that we have quite regularly.

And some of the rest of the family will add a little bit more

carbs in. But we are quite a low carb family in general. And the odd high fat

snacks like Brazil nuts or beef jerky, cheese, things like that would be my

go-to really. And maybe strawberries and cream.

Victoria Bennion:

Sounds very nice. So now you help people who are struggling with conditions

such as depression, anxiety, bipolar and schizophrenia who haven't found

resolutions with medications alone. Can you talk about how you work with people

and the results that you've seen?

Moira Newiss:

Absolutely. So I now specialize in the area of metabolic mental health. So it

is mostly those conditions you just talked about. So a few more mental health

conditions as well [00:08:00] sometimes. And

yeah, so what I'm doing they're usually coming to me because they know I'm a

ketogenic expert in this area.

So they're coming to me because they're really, you know, often

they've tried. A lot of different medications and psychological therapy and

some things might have worked a little bit, but for whatever reason, it's

either not worked or isn't working sufficiently or well enough for them to

really be getting enough relief.

So they're often not able to hold down the job they want to

hold down or have the kind of job they'd like to have or even work at all or

struggling with relationships, all sorts of things. Not operating as they'd

like to in society, I guess, in the way that they really feel is like optimal

for them.

So they want to come and try a keto gen diet, so I'm really

guiding them as to the best way to do it. So looking at what therapeutic level

of ketosis we're gonna get them into. And that's can be based on a number of

factors, the condition that they're presenting with what they've tried before,

what's worked for them, what hasn't, the medications are on this kind of thing.

So, and what I'm helping them do is work out [00:09:00] how to get to that level of ketosis, which

often people will come and they've tried a little bit sometimes themselves, but

they've not really managed to maximize it. They've not managed to get the

ketone levels up. And what we're trying to do is get them up so that they're

over a certain sort of threshold level on a continu continuous basis, to see

what effect it has.

And people get different effects. So not everybody has a

miracle overnight effect. Sometimes that does happen. Like, you know, as soon

as people get into close, sometimes people simply feel like the light switch

has been turned on again, and they, things clear. Often. It's a few, , a few

weeks of things slowly improving.

And sometimes it takes longer than that as well. , I try and

set expectations at the beginning that , it is not always gonna be that kind

of, some of the stories you hear about that, that , are the best stories, but

they're not always the ones that happen in real life.

Sometimes it takes a little bit longer and a bit more work, and

there are other metabolic strategies that you can kind of bring in. So exercise

would be an obvious one, for example. But also I'm a huge fan of optimizing the

24 hour body clock, the circadian rhythm. But that [00:10:00]

really is very linked or untrained to our metabolism.

So things like, making sure we're sleeping properly, that we're

getting light into our eyes in the morning that we're not being exposed to

bright blue light in the evening, for example. The, these kind of things go

very much hand in hand with the ketogenic diet to optimize things.

So, we're looking at a lifestyle approach, but it's focused on

the ketogenic diet. And you asked about some examples of, what's been achieved.

So I published a case report. Just a few weeks ago that was of complete

remission of schizophrenia in a young man. And he had been hospitalized

previously on several occasions, so it was a serious mental illness and he had

learned a little bit about the ketogenic diet over the preceding few years and

had experimented a little bit but hadn't been able to sustain it or get to a

kind of steady therapeutic level.

So, I worked with him and he got. Fantastic results. And you

know, I think there's a quote in the, in, in the case study that says, that he

would rather stay [00:11:00] eating the food

he's eating now than have to go back into , a mental health institution

effectively. So. And his was a very simple diet.

It was a carnivore style diet, so basically protein and fat. So

eating things like high fat beef mince. Because he was, he didn't have a lot of

money. He was in a slightly socially disadvantaged situation. So that's one

example. And I'm actually just in the process of publishing another case

report, which is a little bit of a different one.

It's a combination of physical and mental health symptoms being

resolved. It was somebody struggling with severe panic attacks, anxiety but

also menopausal symptoms, things like hot flashes and also severe gut. Reflux.

So it was a combination, and again, that was kind of more a carnivore style

approach which often is really effective for people who do have complicated

needs.

And that was a really nice success story again because

everything calmed down. And you know, she was somebody that was doing a lot of

meditation. It was part of her job. She actually said that she experienced a

calm mind for the first time [00:12:00] ever,

really. So it can be really powerful