The Ketogenic Diet For Seizures – Will It Work?

My wife and I have been very lucky. As many of you know, our youngest child started experiencing seizure activity just after Christmas of 2009. We went through a great deal of searching, and met with two different doctors before getting a diagnosis of generalized idiopathic seizures. At that point, we started medication and began the watch and wait cycle.

This Sunday, he will have gone 13-weeks without a seizure.

The doctors tell us that a large percentage of patients respond to “first-line” medication, but when we agreed to start medication, it seemed as if everyone we talked to about the subject had negative experiences. But, other than some (rather dramatic) mood swings, he is tolerating the medication pretty well.

Having said that, we continue to educate ourselves about what is known about seizure activity. One thing of constant interest is how diet may relate to seizures.

The Ketogenic Diet For Seizures

Johns Hopkins Children’s Center recently completed a study on childhood seizures, where they found that the ketogenic diet gave dramatic improvements in intractable childhood seizures.

There is nothing new about the ketogenic diet. In discussing the subject with relatives, it sounds to me like it was the treatment of choice for children experiencing seizure activity before the advent of seizure medications.

The ketogenic diet is a high fat, high protein, low carbohydrate diet that has a lot in common with primal eating. A brief study of the theory suggests that forcing the body to produce energy by gluconeogenesis starts changes in brain chemistry that may “short circuit” some of the processes that lead to seizures.

If you’ve ever talked with someone who switched to low-carb eating, they often report having several days of “fuzzy” thought processes. Most researchers believe this is caused by those same metabolic changes, as the body begins producing glucose from fat, rather than carbohydrates.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins found that nearly 40% of the kids in the study who had intractable seizures (with medication) became seizure-free when placed on the ketogenic diet after just 20 months. After 9-months on the diet, nearly half of kids experienced 90% fewer seizures.

When our son started experiencing seizures, my wife and I talked seriously about trying to move him to a diet more akin to the ketogenic diet. We ultimately came to the conclusion that this would present substantial difficulties, due primarily to his personal tastes. Generally speaking, with the exception of milk, he pretty much refuses to eat many animal-based foods. So, we’ve tried to make smaller changes, like switching to higher fat versions of foods that he will eat.

We’ve been fortunate thus far going the route of medication. After nearly 13-weeks, we’re crossing our fingers, and feeling like this may be a solution, but if the seizure activity starts up again, we may have to revisit the possibility of more significant diet changes.