THE QUICK WEIGHT LOSS HIGH PROTEIN KETOGENIC DIET MIGHT HELP PREVENT SEIZURES : DIET AND DRUGS FOR SEIZURES

What are Ketones and What do they have to do with Diet and Seizures?

Dieting for weight loss is well known but diet for seizures? The high protein low carbohydrate diet has been around in one form or another it seems like for eons. Most recently as the Atkins Diet and before that the Stillman Diet. But it recently showed up on my radar when I read the wikipedia article on the KETOGENIC DIET.

How does a Ketogenic Diet Work?

I quote "The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet primarily used to treat difficult-to-control (refractory) epilepsy in children. The diet mimics aspects of starvation by forcing the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. Normally, the carbohydrates contained in food are converted into glucose, which is then transported around the body and is particularly important in fuelling brain function. However, if there is very little carbohydrate in the diet, the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies. The ketone bodies pass into the brain and replace glucose as an energy source. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the blood, a state known as ketosis, leads to a reduction in the frequency of epileptic seizures"






The state of ketosis is believed to be part of the mechanism that helps the high protein low carb diet work for weight loss and apparently it helps reduce seizures in some people. Needless to say, this is controversial. Ketosis especially in he long term may not be such a healthy state to be in.





"Developed in the 1920s, the ketogenic diet was widely used into the next decade, but its popularity waned with the introduction of effective anticonvulsant drugs. In the mid 1990s, Hollywood producer Jim Abrahams, whose son's severe epilepsy was effectively controlled by the diet, created the Charlie Foundation to promote it. Publicity included an appearance on NBC's Dateline programme and ...First Do No Harm (1997), a made-for-television film starring Meryl Streep. The foundation sponsored a multicentre research study, the results of which—announced in 1996—marked the beginning of renewed scientific interest in the diet.

Does the Ketogenic Diet Work?

According to the Wikipedia article " the diet is effective in half of the patients who try it, and very effective in one third of patients. In 2008, a randomized controlled trial showed a clear benefit for treating refractory epilepsy in children with the ketogenic diet. There is some evidence that adults with epilepsy may benefit from the diet, and that a less strict regime, such as a modified Atkins diet, is similarly effective. The ketogenic diet has also been proposed as a treatment for a number of neurological conditions other than epilepsy; as of 2008, research in this area has yet to produce sufficient positive data to warrant clinical use". It sounds worth asking your doctor about if the subject has not already been broached.

Origins of the High Protein Low Carbohydrate Diet

See also the Wikipedia article on Ketogenic Diet

Anyone still listening?

So, SA Doc is losing a bit of faith in this blog, not finding the time to feed her ghost writer with juicy medical tidbits. Is there anyone out there still reading this?

Time to pack in the towel on 2 years of awesome medical blogging and fun - or should we kick SA Doc in the ass and get some more stories?