Epilepsy Diet for Children

The epilepsy or ketogenic diet for children is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet that can be successful in controlling seizures without medication. It requires supervision and monitoring by a physician and dietitian and can be challenging to maintain.

Epilepsy Symptoms and Diagnosis

• Epilepsy is a brain disorder involving repeated, spontaneous seizures. Risk factors include a family history of epilepsy, head injury or other brain damage. Seizures can range from petit mal--brief lapses in awareness--to tonic-clonic seizures, which cause violent muscle contractions and loss of consciousness. Diagnosis is usually made by electroencephalograph (EEG), head CT scans and MRIs.

Ketogenic Diet for Children

• The ketogenic diet, first used in the 1920s and 1930s to control seizures in children, is enjoying a resurgence in popularity as an alternative treatment for children with difficult-to-control epilepsy. Results of a study at Johns Hopkins, in which researchers studied the effects of the diet on 150 children with difficult-to-control epilepsy, helped to re-establish the diet as a feasible means to control seizures. In the study, published in the Pediatrics journal in 1998, researchers found that after three months, 83 percent of the children remained on the diet; over a third of them--34 percent--had a 90 percent decrease in seizures. After a year, 55 percent remained on the diet, with over a quarter of them--27 percent--experiencing a 90 percent drop in seizure frequency. Seven percent were seizure free. The ketogenic diet requires the child to ingest four times as many calories from fat--typically from butter, mayonnaise or cream--as from protein or carbohydrates. Limiting the amount of carbohydrates forces the body to burn fat for energy, and this dietetically induced state of fasting--also called ketosis-- suppresses seizures. Although it sounds similar to other high-protein diets, such as the Atkins diet, it is not a diet for you and your child to undertake without medical supervision. According to Dr. Solomon L. Moshe, director of clinical neurophysiology and child neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, the child's family must work closely with both a doctor and a dietitian for the diet to be effective and safe, Web MD
  reports.

Considerations

• If your child has difficult-to-control epilepsy--more than two seizures a week, in spite of appropriate medications-- and is older than 1, you may want to ask your doctor if he is a good candidate for the ketogenic diet. The results of the diet are encouraging, but you should be aware that it is challenging for both parent and child alike. Since the diet is carefully calibrated for each individual child, you will have to weigh and monitor everything he consumes, right down to the amount of carbohydrates in his toothpaste and be aware that the tiniest deviation--even cookie crumbs--can result in a seizure. You will also have to give supplementary vitamins and calcium as well. If your child is very young and hasn't developed strong tastes in food, this diet may be easier for him. You may worry about your child's cholesterol on this diet. While children on this diet do have higher cholesterol levels, the harm from high-fat diet takes years to accumulate; your child may only need to be on the ketogenic diet for a few years.
  If you are disciplined enough to measure and control food intake--as well as creative enough to help your child cope with such potential pitfalls as Halloween, birthdays, and playtime at friends' houses--the ketogenic diet just might be the right answer.

Precautions

• Never adjust or restrict your child's diet to mimic the ketogenic diet without direct supervision from a licensed physician. Follow all doctor's orders concerning both diet and prescription medicine for your child.