A 160-person trial found that combining standard epilepsy therapy with a low-carbohydrate diet reduced seizures by more than 50% in a quarter of participants.
health
January 4, 2023
Low-carbohydrate diet helped reduce seizures in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy Elena Shashkina/Shutterstock
Combining a low-carbohydrate diet with common epilepsy medications can reduce seizures by 50% in people with drug-resistant epilepsy.
The use of low-carbohydrate diets to treat epilepsy began about a century ago, but fell out of favor with the development of antiepileptic drugs. However, nearly one-third of the approximately 50 million people with epilepsy worldwide do not respond to these drugs.
Manjari Tripathi of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and her colleagues had two or more seizures in a month despite using at least three anti-epileptic drugs in maximum doses. We recruited 160 people between the ages of 10 and 55. The researchers advised half of them to follow her modified Atkins diet, which included eating only 20 grams of carbohydrates a day. All participants continued on standard epilepsy medications. Caregivers used daily logs to track seizures and diet, and participants completed quality-of-life questionnaires before and after the study.
After 6 months, more than 26% of those on the low-carbohydrate diet experienced a 50% reduction in monthly seizures compared to the month before the study. The same was true for just 2.5% of him in the control group. The low-carbohydrate group also reported significantly improved quality of life on average compared to the control group.
A low-carb diet reduces seizures by inducing ketosis, in which the body burns fat as its primary fuel, says Tripathi. There are many potential mechanisms, she says, including electrical signaling between neurons.
Mackenzie Cervenka of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland says it’s encouraging to see that the modified Atkins diet can be an effective treatment. Ketogenic diets are often used, which require calculating the carb-to-fat ratio of all foods. “The Modified Atkins Diet is less rigorous in terms of preparation and monitoring,” she says.
Journal reference: neurologyDOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000206776
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