Thursday 11 June 2009

Low Carb vs Epilepsy


As well as shifting body fat and improving your mood it seems that high fat diets are now being used to successfully treat epilepsy in children.

Yesterday I was watching ITV and they were interviewing a four year old boy who, 2 years previously, was having around 70 fits a day. He was not responding to any conventional drugs so he was put on a strictly high fat low carb diet for 2 years.

After 2 days his fits stopped and he is now completely clear of epilepsy and living a normal life. Whats more, he is now back on a normal diet and eating like a normal child.

Apparently, this form of treatment was regularly used to treat epilepsy right up until the 1920's. After that drugs were introduced and these were used instead.

No one is sure exactly how it works, but it has something to do with the brain using ketones instead of glucose!

Amazing huh?

4 comments:

  1. Yeah it's pretty incredible eh, I found out about this years ago on my last 'atkins' quest, at the library most the books on ketosis were about child epilepsy so I read a fair bit about it.

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  2. andy, just read through your blog. great stuff! i love it when individuals document their long-term stuff. keep us posted!

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  3. Interesting! I enjoy these nuggets you come up with, Andy.

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  4. I read about the Ketogenic Diet and had a patient who ALMOST was put on it. AMAZING. This was 10+ years ago. Too bad, they opted for anti-seizure medications instead.

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