The common condition epilepsy can be helped with a special diet, Elizabeth Tracey reports
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It’s the 100th anniversary of the so-called ‘ketogenic’ diet, which helps to control epilepsy in children and adults, and can even allow some of them to stop taking medications for the condition. Eric Kossoff, a neurologist and pediatric ketogenic diet expert at Johns Hopkins, describes what such a diet entails.
Kossoff: The diet is a 90+ percent fat diet. And in order to realistically be on a diet like that, most families really do need the guidance of a dietician in terms of measuring and calculating what to eat. Having a gram scale, weighing the foods is how we do the classic ketogenic diet, and there is a version called the modified Atkins diet which we created here at Hopkins, that even with that you’re still measuring carbohydrates per day using a book and keeping track. :32
Kossoff says if you would like to try the diet, don’t go it alone. Expert advice and monitoring is needed. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.