The ketogenic diet is turning 100, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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The ketogenic diet, which relies on fats and proteins as energy sources and avoids carbohydrates, actually began 100 years ago as a means to control epilepsy in both adults and children and was also used for a host of other conditions. Eric Kossoff, a neurologist at Johns Hopkins and ketogenic diet expert, says after a lull in popularity, the diet is now more popular than ever.

Kossoff: It is no doubt more work than taking a medicine. Not to say all medicines are perfect, they all have side effects but it certainly is less of an imposing situation on a lifestyle to take a medication. The ketogenic diet, which is a high fat, low carbohydrate diet, no matter which version of the diet you do, requires supervision, it requires often a dietician involved, to help with weighing and measuring and calculating. It’s not easy.  :26

Kossoff says depending on which type of epilepsy one has, the ketogenic diet can actually control seizures virtually entirely, and can work in both children and adults. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.