[WEB SITE] Eat to Beat Seizures: The high-fat ketogenic diet can help stop seizures in hard-to-beat epilepsy. Doctors and dietitians explain how it works and hoa it is implemented – Neurology Now

Luella Klein had her first seizure at 13 months and was prescribed antiseizure medication. But by the time she was two and a half, the drugs had stopped working and she had developed new symptoms, including a severely imbalanced gait.

During a visit to the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, Luella underwent a spinal tap to measure glucose levels in her cerebral spinal fluid. Based on the results, she was diagnosed with glucose transporter type 1 deficiency syndrome (Glut1 DS), a genetic metabolic disorder that occurs when glucose, a sugar in the blood, doesn’t reach the brain in levels high enough to be used for fuel. That lack of fuel disrupts brain growth and function and can cause a variety of symptoms, including seizures, movement disorders, speech problems, and developmental delays.

Luella’s doctors recommended that she be put on the ketogenic diet, a high-fat, low-carbohydrate regimen that is standard care for Glut1 DS because it provides an alternate source of fuel—fat—for the glucose-starved brain.

FATS FOR FUEL

Normally, the body converts the carbohydrates in food into glucose, which then becomes fuel for all parts of the body, including the brain. On the ketogenic diet, which restricts carbs and loads up the fat, a different mechanism kicks in: The liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies, chemicals that “can cross the blood-brain barrier and be used as fuel and may even be anticonvulsant,” explains Eric H. Kossoff, MD, a professor of neurology and pediatrics and medical director of the Ketogenic Diet Center at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD, and a member of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). When the body is actively breaking down fat into ketone bodies, which is measured by a simple urine test, a person is said to be “in ketosis.”

To initiate the diet, Luella was hospitalized for five days. Hospitalization makes it easier to determine when a patient is in ketosis and gives doctors an opportunity to educate parents and patients about the diet, says Dr. Kossoff. While there, Luella was fed meals that adhered to a strict three-to-one ratio of fat versus protein and carbohydrates. For example, a meal that contained 1 gram of carbohydrates and 2 grams of protein required 9 grams of fat.

“Within two days of being in ketosis, Luella’s balance, coordination, and walking had noticeably improved, and within a month of being on the diet, her seizures had ceased,” recalls Renee Klein, Luella’s mother.

Now five years old, Luella remains free of seizures thanks to her daily adherence to a high-fat diet that includes plenty of cream and butter.

HOW KETONES AFFECT SEIZURES

For years, doctors have observed that epileptic seizures, which are triggered by abnormal electrical discharges in the brain, often diminish when patients fast. Researchers have linked this phenomenon to ketonemia, a condition induced by fasting that occurs when the body produces ketones as the brain shifts from using sugar, its preferred source of energy, to using fat. That metabolic shift seems to disrupt the abnormal discharges in the brain…

Continue —> Eat to Beat Seizures: The high-fat ketogenic diet can help s… : Neurology Now

[WEB SITE] New Study Validates Ketogenic Diet for Epilepsy Treatment in Adults

New Study Validates Ketogenic Diet for Epilepsy Treatment in Adults

Epilepsy can be caused by a variety of different conditions including head trauma, infection, brain tumor, and stroke, but by and large most cases of epilepsy have no readily identifiable cause. Epilepsy affects some 2.3 million adults in America and close to half a million children. Further, about one in 26 people will be diagnosed with epilepsy at some point in their lives. It’s been estimated that there are approximately 150,000 new cases of epilepsy diagnosed in the United States each year and overall about $15.5 billion in medical costs as well as lost earnings and production are attributed to this disease.

The mainstay of treatment for epilepsy is pharmaceutical intervention. As I recently noted, more and more we are seeing surgical procedures being performed for those individuals who have not had a significant improvement with drugs. I indicated that at least some individuals are gluten sensitive and may benefit from a gluten-free diet which potentially could keep them from undergoing potentially life-threatening surgery as a treatment for their epilepsy.

But it is also important to understand that there’s another extremely effective dietary intervention that has proven itself quite useful in the treatment of epilepsy.

In 1920 a New York physician, Dr. Galen, reported at the American Medical Association convention that he had had significant success in treating epilepsy by initiating a program of fasting. At that time the only pharmaceutical interventions that were available included phenobarbital and bromides. Interestingly, the patient he treated was actually a young cousin who had aggressive seizures. On the second day of fasting the child’s epilepsy abated and did not return over the next two years of follow-up. Further studies appearing in 1923, 1926, 1928, all confirmed the effectiveness of fasting as an effective treatment for seizures.

Fasting is a way to produce a state of metabolism called ketosis. When a person is in ketosis, his or her body is utilizing fat as opposed to carbohydrate as a fuel, which, in this situation, becomes an alternative source of calories to power the brain.

Continue –> New Study Validates Ketogenic Diet for Epilepsy Treatment in Adults | David Perlmutter M.D..