Every mom knows that life is a balancing act. You balance the time you have against all the things you have to get done. You balance your budget. Your health is no different, and when it gets out of balance, sometimes it’s hard to get it back to level. This is especially true of children with epilepsy.
There are medications out there for autism, epilepsy, ADHD, and other diseases and disorders. The problem with medications, however, is that they commonly throw other things out of whack. Epilepsy medication, for example, often causes nutritional deficits. Those very deficits, in turn, can help to cause seizures. Food allergies are also a common cause of seizures.
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On top of those concerns, there is also the balancing of other symptoms to keep in mind. Many children are multi symptomatic. It is not uncommon to have a child with epilepsy who also suffers from headaches, abdominal pain, and hyperactivity. Medications can treat one of these concerns, but negatively affect the others. It is very difficult to get everything under control at once, and parents and children alike have problems dealing with the cycles as one symptom is treated and others are aggravated.
Take, for example, the problems with constipation and epilepsy. There as been a noted correlation between the two, but it is unclear which instigates the other. There is evidence that stool-withholding can lead to epileptic-like seizures that are not actually epilepsy. There are also examples of seizures seemingly causing, or worsening, problems with bowel movements.
There Is a Solution to this Balancing Act for Your Child: Children’s Multivitamins!
An easy way to solve this circular cause and effect problem is by addressing nutrition for kids. The use of a ketogenic diet and nutritional supplements has shown marked improvement in the frequency of epileptic seizures in both children and adults. By choosing a multivitamin that corrects for the depletion of B vitamins, vitamin D & E, magnesium and calcium that many anti-convulsion medications create (and which, paradoxically, can worsen seizures), significant results were found in many case studies.
Although not as conclusively tested yet, making sure that diets had adequate amounts of antioxidants and omega 3 fatty acids was also helpful for epileptic children. Studies using omega 3 oil supplements showed strong evidence that it promoted vascular and heart health (a good thing to keep in mind when utilizing a ketogenic diet, which relies on fats) and even helps with depression and anxiety, both of which greatly affect children coping with epilepsy. There is also promising research that suggests it is helpful for ADHD and developmental coordination disorder.
When using supplements for children with epilepsy, it is important to choose a good multivitamin. Companies like Purity Products base their product lines on evidence based findings and scientific research, not just health store feel-good trends. Their website can be found at www.purityproducts.comand they can ship anywhere. As with any change in diet, however, be sure to work with your doctor first!
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