William Sauve - My BIG Why

I learned the ketogenic diet in medical school, in the context of its utility as an intervention for intractable seizures. Of course I promptly forgot all about it just as soon as I began to pursue my specialty (psychiatry) and received the blinders that come with that.

 Fast forward to about four years ago, when my wife (an avid marathoner) asked me “what is this “keto diet” I keep hearing about” and about two weeks later we cleaned out the pantry and I began going completely down the nutrition rabbit hole. I’ve been a competitive athlete (rower) since I was 13, and certainly had an interest in nutrition from a performance perspective in that context, but now I’ve really admitted to myself there is no excuse for a physician to be agnostic about the care and feeding of the human body. I am thoroughly convinced that the ever worsening mental health crisis in the United States has its roots in the deteriorating quality of food in the last several decades (and this has been of course reinforced by the work of the great Dr. Palmer.)

 I’ve never been interested in the version of psychiatry that involves sitting behind a desk and writing prescriptions about every 11 minutes – my entire career I’ve spent my time working out in the field (even in combat!) or inpatient units where I preferred to do hands-on work and procedures/brain stimulation, helping very severely ill people get well – now that it is clear the very energy system of the brain (the mitochondria!) may very well be the biggest factor or even the universal root of psychiatric illness, that is clearly where I need to be working.

 And that is why I’m very excited to be on this team.