The ketogenic diet is a strictly controlled high-fat, low carbohydrate diet which was first developed at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland and the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota, in the 1920s to curb seizures in epilepsy patients before the advent of modern anti-convulsant medications. It requires exact and careful measurements of all food. The diet results in a condition called ketosis.
Ketosis occurs when the body burns the fat supplied by the diet when there is a limited supply of glucose to burn for energy (a similar state is induced by the Atkins Diet). Ketones, the products left after the fat is burned, build up in the body and inhibit seizures. Exactly how this occurs is still unknown.
In 1998, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Children's Centre carried out the first study to test the efficacy of the ketogenic diet.
They found that more than half of 150 children with epilepsy experienced a 50 per cent or greater reduction in the number of seizures. A quarter showed 90 per cent improvement. Commenting on the results at the time, Dr John M. Freeman, lead researcher and professor of paediatric neurology at the JHCC said: "Occasionally, children who have uncontrollable seizures go on the diet, remain seizure-free for two years, and stay that way even when they have stopped the diet, never having to take more medications. Something is healed. If we knew what and how it healed, then we might know what causes epilepsy."
In a follow-up study three years later, more than half of the children continued to experience at least a 50 per cent reduction in seizures three to six years after going back on a normal diet. "Also notable is that many of the children who had success after ending the diet were free of both anti-convulsant drugs and seizures," said Freeman. The follow-up study was published in the journal, Pediatrics in October 2001. Dr Freeman is one of the authors of The Ketogenic Diet - a treatment for epilepsy.
Dr Freeman cautions that the ketogenic diet should not be the first-line treatment for children with epilepsy nor should it be undertaken without medical and nutritional supervision. Patients are usually admitted to hospital for a number of days to start the diet. See also www.hopkinsmedicine.org