The ketogenic diet. With the development of effective anticonvulsant drugs, the dietary treatment was dropped. But now neurologists at Johns Hopkins Hospital have refined a dietary treatment for severe epilepsy. After about 24 hours of fasting, the body depletes its reserves of glucose and starts to burn stored fat for energy. However, burning fat in […]
A rigid diet that appears to halt seizures in children whose attacks cannot be controlled by drugs has been hailed as a recent breakthrough. In reality, however, the diet dates to the early 1900s, when doctors devised a dietary treatment for epilepsy based on the ancient observation that seizures ceased during periods of prolonged fasting. […]
More than 1.5 million North Americans have some form of epilepsy, recurrent seizures triggered by abnormal electrical impulses in the brain. Some seizures are so mild and fleeting that they are barely noticeable; others last for several minutes, during which the person falls down and is seized by convulsive movements. The frequency of seizures also […]