The diet that can treat epilepsy

[Al-khiyal]

The diet that can treat epilepsy

Giving drugs to children with epilepsy is often ineffective and can have terrible side-effects. But there is an alternative - a high-fat food plan that dramatically reduces seizures:

April 15, 2008 -- Emma Williams was told her son Matthew wouldn't make it to the age of 12 on account of his severe epilepsy, or if he did he would need to be placed in a care home. He was only six when Emma heard this from the doctors treating him at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH). But thanks to a specialised diet he is now a happy 14-year-old with a normal life expectancy. "Before the diet he was having a hundred seizures a week," says Emma. "I knew that every seizure longer than five minutes causes brain damage - sometimes his lasted for an hour. He was regressing, losing his speech and ability to walk. My child was slipping away and we were all powerless to stop it."

Matthew was one of the few to be placed on a medical trial at GOSH studying the effects of the Ketogenic diet in the treatment of childhood epilepsy. It is similar to the Atkins diet, in that it is high fat, with some protein and very low carb. This puts the body into a fat-burning state called ketosis, during which it produces chemical compounds called ketones, which stop the seizures. The diet had been used to treat epilepsy for many years but, with the arrival of epileptic drugs, it was sidelined. Now, thanks to this randomised control trial by paediatric neurologist Professor Helen Cross, it is undergoing a resurgence.

Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder characterised by recurrent seizures when the normal working of the brain is interrupted. It affects around 200,000 children in the UK, a third of whom will be resistant to medication. "There is no doubt that this diet works in a significant amount of children," says Cross. "If you fail with the first two drugs then the likelihood of any other drug succeeding is about 10%. In those cases parents should be offered the diet before proceeding with other medications. Our trial, where all the children had not responded to medication, showed that 50% got more than 50% improvement in seizures, which shows a significant benefit over drugs."

Families such as Matthew's live with the daily trauma of seizures, drop attacks (when a child loses muscle tone and falls to the floor) and absences (where they appear conscious but are not aware of anything around them). Epilim, benzodiazepines and Keppra are all commonly prescribed for epilepsy but, in Matthew's case, they did little to stop the seizures. According to Emma, the "benzos", a tranquiliser, left him like a drooling zombie and the Keppra made him violent and highly disruptive. "I was desperate. We were running out of options. I knew I might lose him for good. I'd asked our neurologist, when Matthew was two, if we could try the diet but was told it was too difficult to implement and they had no resources.

"Matthew was eight by the time he got to try the diet. His first MRI brain scan at two showed he had no brain damage and they couldn't detect where the epilepsy was coming from. When he had his second MRI scan, before going on the diet, it showed that his brain was badly scarred from the seizures, which caused further seizures as well as brain damage. It's due to the brain damage that Matthew now can't walk. If he had got the diet in the first place, I worked out he might have been spared over 24,000 seizures."

Within two weeks of being on the diet Matthew's seizures had reduced by 90%, and his behaviour had completely calmed down. "For the first time ever, aged eight, he said 'Mama'," recalls Emma. "It was the most amazing feeling. I now have what's left of my boy back."

Emma is not the only parent to have met with resistance when asking for the diet. According to Cross, this is more likely due to lack of dietetic resources than lack of confidence in the diet. "There is knowledge among paediatric neurologists that it works. The problem is, we don't have enough resources and we need to have dedicated dieticians to implement it. I have the resources to have 30 children on the diet at any one time but I've still got a huge waiting list."

Paula and Ian Yates from Bedfordshire found they had a fight on their hands when they wanted to put their son Harry on the diet. He had been diagnosed with a rare form of epilepsy at the age of three. At first he had a seizure every couple of weeks, but once he started on the medications, he had seizures daily. "It was as if the drugs made him worse," says Paula. "Every time they upped his dose his seizures became more severe. Harry was losing his speech and the ability to walk. Within a few months he was having up to 50 drop attacks a day, he'd knocked seven of his teeth out falling down and had black eyes and a lacerated chin.

"I was told by Harry's neurologist that he would never walk or talk, and that I couldn't expect anything from his life. But I had been told by other parents that after using the diet their children got better. One father contacted me through a support network for parents of children with this type of epilepsy and told me that his son had gone seizure-free and drug-free from this diet."

Harry's condition continued to deteriorate. He had up to 100 seizures a day and was either completely floppy or twitching constantly. Paula went back to the consultant, asked again for the diet, and this time refused to take no for an answer. "Within three weeks of being on the diet Harry was happier and became more verbal. Once he was weaned off the drugs we saw an even bigger improvement. His seizures are reduced by 80% and, contrary to his prognosis, he can walk, talk and, better still, play in the playground with the other kids.

[Bent_Bladi]

sub7anAllah... i believe that there's always a natural way to cure/treat an illness

KETONES ROCK!!

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R .. R

[Al-khiyal]

Low carb diet curbs epileptic fits in children

May 3, 2008 -- Giving children with epilepsy a special low carb diet reduces the number of seizures they experience by 75% compared with children on a normal diet, according to a study carried out at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Previous studies have suggested that the food regime, which is similar to the Atkins diet, is effective at curbing epilepsy but this is the first gold standard clinical trial to prove that it works.

"When she went on the diet within days she was just so much calmer," said Rachel Farrand of Redhill, Surrey, whose six-year-old daughter, Ella Strutton, was part of the trial. "It's just had a really big impact on her behaviour and her learning."

Ella developed epilepsy after contracting meningitis when she was one. She is now profoundly deaf, has severe learning difficulties and before taking part in the trial she was suffering up to 12 seizures a day. "It made it very hard for her to learn because she couldn't concentrate at all," said Farrand. "She was a complete and absolute whirlwind. She couldn't settle for anything even for a minute." After starting the diet she was seizure-free for six months and now no longer needs to take anti-epilepsy medication.

About one in 200 children are affected by epilepsy, which can often be controlled with regular drugs.

Professor Helen Cross at the Institute of Child Health at University College London and her colleagues recruited 145 children - including Ella - aged between two and 16 who all had severe epilepsy. Half were randomly assigned to a ketogenic diet, which involves eating no carbohydrate and no more than the minimum dietary requirement of protein. Fat is permitted. The other half ate a normal diet. Forty-two children were not included in the final analysis for a variety of reasons.

The team found that the number of seizures per day in the ketogenic diet group dropped to 62% of the level before the change, while the control group's seizures increased by 37%. Twenty-eight children in the diet group had a more than 50% reduction in their seizures compared with four in the control group. The results are reported in the journal Lancet Neurology. Cross said it was important to have confirmed that the ketogenic diet is effective by the gold standard scientific method. "At the present time it is a treatment that is really reserved for the really intractable. It's available in only a minimal number of centres," she said.

She added that parents should only consider trying the diet after consultation with a doctor and dietician. "Children are growing and need the right number of calories... so it does need to be monitored and calculated individually," she said.

As yet, scientists are unsure what changes occur with the diet, although it is possible that it prompts a physiological shift that affects the brain. "There's all sorts of theories from a basic science point of view that have been put forward, but we haven't got the exact reason why it works," said Cross.

The study is important because it is the first time the question of whether the diet works has been tackled using a randomised clinically controlled trial - widely acknowledged as the best method for assessing whether medical interventions are effective.