There has been a lot of talk lately about the ketogenic diet in relation to epilepsy, and you may be wondering what exactly it is and what all the hype is about. I know-as a mother of an epileptic child-I did. Of course, as mothers we are always looking for the magic cure to our child’s seizures and distress-that’s only natural. Below, I discuss the main findings I came across when researching this diet for children with epilepsy.
A lot has been said about high-fat, low carb diets in helping, not only overweight people lose weight quickly and develop muscle accordingly, but also for help in preventing or at least limiting epileptic seizures and fits in children with epilepsy.
The diet itself favors the ingestion of fatty foods, such as: cheese, butter, and other milk products over any consumption of breads, rice, pasta, and fruits and veggies. You can see why this may have caused controversy in medical circles regarding people who just wanted to treat these diets as another round of fad diets, but positive results have still proven otherwise for epileptic children.
How Does it Work?
Basically, our bodies produce what is called ketones in the process of getting rid of fats. In a ketogenic diet, our bodies use these fatty food fats-instead of sugars-to produce our bodies’ energy source. The diet encourages the body’s natural reponse to starvation, which begins by using the body’s glucose and glycogen stores. If the body believes itself to be starving, it will then move onto burning through the stored fat. In the case of this diet, the body cannot completely burn through the stored fats because there is not enough glucose, and the production of ketones are the result of this. The existence of ketones in the body-and more of them-has been proven to have a direct relation to the suppression of epileptic seizures in children.
The wonderful thing about the ketogenic diet or the “magic diet” as many moms of epileptic children have called it, is that it is so effective in suppressing seizures and fits so inherent to the epilepsy disease. Moreover, as more and more moms discover the positive effects of the diet-with the supervision of the family doctor of course- there is less use of anticonvulsant drugs so common for epilepsy sufferers. This means less medication, less chemicals, and for our children- less side effects.
Great Gifts for the “Keto” Mom in Your Life
The response to the positive results of this diet has been so that many kids suffering from epilepsy have found just the right way to thank their moms for starting them on these diets. Here’s a great site for personalized Ketogenic gifts, such as Ketogenic mugs, hero mugs, and moms are heroes gifts, click here!
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