http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583429,00.html
High-Fat Diet Cures Boy, 4, of Epilepsy
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
A 4-year-old epileptic Minnesota boy, who used to suffer more than 100 seizures a day, has been cured — thanks to an extremely high-fat diet, wcco.com reported.
Medication wasn't even touching Max Irvine's condition, and his parents watched hopelessly as their son's condition worsened.
But Dr. Elaine Wirrell, a pediatric neurologist at the Mayo Clinic, suggested Max try the Ketogenic diet, which is low in carbohydrates and very high in fats. Wirrell said research hints the high-fat diet stabilizes brain cells and alters neurotransmitters.
Max's meals consisted of butter and bacon; he was drinking Canola oil as a beverage, and to his parents' amazement, the diet worked.
"I just remember having tears, and thinking how can I be giving my child so much fat," said Kristine Irvine, Max's mother.
Wirrell said she monitors Max's cholesterol, but that kids on this diet do not typically have cholesterol or lipid problems. Today, Max is not taking any medication and he is not suffering any seizures.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aKu8BX_rK11E&refer=home
By Andrea Gerlin
May 3 (Bloomberg) -- A diet high in fat and low in carbohydrates and protein reduced seizures in children with epilepsy in the first clinical study to test the food regimen, U.K. scientists said.
Researchers at University College London analyzed results from 103 children between 2 and 16 years old who didn't respond to drugs and had at least seven epileptic fits a week. Patients on the diet had more than one-third fewer seizures after three months, while attacks increased by more than one-third in those who didn't change their diets, the scientists said in Lancet Neurology.
``We have shown that the diet has efficacy and should be included in the management of children who have drug-resistant epilepsy,'' Professor J. Helen Cross wrote in the article.
The high-fat, low-carbohydrate regimen has been widely followed for drug-resistant childhood epilepsy since it was originally reported to be effective in the 1920s. The U.K. researchers said their study is the first to test it as a treatment. The diet is believed to copy the body's response to starvation, in which the brain runs on chemicals known as ketone bodies rather sugars, though its mechanism isn't clear, the scientists wrote.
The study supports conducting more research to try to determine why the diet works, Max Wiznitzer of the Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland wrote in an accompanying comment.
The most frequently reported side effects were constipation, vomiting, lack of energy and hunger. The researchers didn't specify what foods were included in the study, saying only that it was based on three or four parts of fat to one part carbohydrate and protein.
The study was funded by HSA Charitable Trust, Smiths Charity, Scientific Hospital Supplies Ltd. and the Milk Development Council.
To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Gerlin in London at agerlin@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: May 2, 2008 19:00 EDT
http://www.webmd.com/epilepsy/ketogenic-diet-for-epilepsy
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080128113325.htm
On the Science Daily page, there were sidebar links to these articles:
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Diet Of Whipping Cream, Butter, Vegetable Oil Can Help Control Epileptic Seizures In Many Children (Apr. 8, 2009) — A new study has shown that the highly regimented ketogenic diet, a high-fat nutritional therapy used to limit seizures, requires long-term medical management and strong parental commitment to achieve ... > read more
1 comment:
Erik and I did the Atkins Diet back in about 2002. Erik subsequently did it a few more times for weight loss. I learned a lot from Dr. Atkin's book. We definitely went into ketosis for awhile and Erik did so several times, measuring the ketones in his urine with test strips. Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, PhD, founders of the Weston A Price Foundation (WAPF)say that the Atkins Diet is the second best diet regimen (at the time their book Eat Fat, Lose Fat was published). There are problems with it, but it is far better than the Standard American Diet (SAD).
I wonder if the benefits to epileptics are not so much the ketogenic aspect of the diet, but rather the myriad protective benefits of a Nourishing Traditions (NT) type diet. The NT Diet, and the many modifications so many families are incorporating to their family diets as a result of the growing in-depth discussion on the principles taught by the late Weston A. Price. The perhaps it is not the best practice to drink canola oil (as one of the children in the above articles did)--other sources of fats would be far more nutrient dense, non-GMO, organic, not highly refined, etc. Saturated fat, not the demon the American public has been led to believe, plus cod liver oil (Vitamins A+D and EFAs all in natural form), high minerals from a wide variety of seafood, organ meats, vegetables and all foods being carefully prepared to assist in digestion, plus the attention to the health of the GI tract--all work together to nourish each of the billions of cells in the body. Fallon and Enig got the discussion started and now the community is exploring all the ways in which to nourish a body, including carefully chosen supplements when necessary. Perhaps epileptic children could be given a diet far less restrictive and far more palatable and nourishing and have the same effects as the ketogenic diet. I hope some parents out there explore this option, too.
http://whatsracheleating.blogspot.com/2010/01/nutrient-basics-vit-d-fats-calcium.html
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