What role can diet play in the treatment of epilepsy in children?
For children with certain types of epilepsy, the ketogenic diet can be totally life changing. The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, low-protein, low-carbohydrate diet. On this diet you your body burns ketone bodies as fuel, which are the breakdown products of fat, rather than glucose, which are the breakdown products of carbohydrates. Ketone bodies are a much more efficient fuel, so it’s theorized that the brain goes into a higher energy state and can resist having seizures. The diet can have adverse health consequences, so it needs to be carefully monitored by a registered dietitian, particularly someone who has had experience with the ketogenic diet. It is most useful in patients with myoclonic forms of epilepsy, meaning their epilepsy is characterized by these lightning-fast jerks. How is children’s quality of life affected by epilepsy? I think that we spend a lot of time focusing on the seizures, which are alarming to parents and physicians alike, but we inadvertently give short-shrift
