This is going to sound pretty geeky, but lately I’ve been enjoying reading articles regarding the ketogenic diet as a medical therapy for epilepsy. I’m an especially big fan of Dr. Kossoff’s work.
I thought it might be helpful to link to some of the research papers I’ve found particularly interesting.
Good overall recommendations for implementing the ketogenic diet as a medical therapy for epilepsy.
An interesting read showing that higher ketones are correlated with better seizure control, but only for the first month. After that, some of the seizure-free patients had no ketones or trace ketones while following the Modified Atkins Diet and still remained seizure free.
An interesting study perhaps suggesting that it’s better to be very strict in the beginning and decrease the ratio after several months if needed to tolerate the diet. Showed better overall efficacy for those that started at 4:1 and went down to 3:1 than for those starting at 3:1 and increased to 4:1.
Anecdotally, this is especially interesting to me because we were very strict with Reese from the start – we did about 3.75:1 with under 10g of net carbs per day for the first 2 weeks and then when to 4:1. No way to know for sure, but it makes me glad we didn’t start with a low ratio or on MAD and slowly work up.
Study showing steady ketones may be more important than we realized and also that the extent of ketosis was not always proportionately correlated with better seizure outcomes.
“Use of a Modified Atkins Diet in Intractable Childhood Epilepsy” by Hoon-Chul Kang, et al (2006)
Study suggesting that 80% the time, whatever results were achieved while on the diet will last even after weaning from the diet.
Study regarding the long term use of the ketogenic diet showing no increased cardiovascular risk.