Low-carb diet reduces seizures for people with drug-resistant epilepsy

A trial of 160 individuals discovered that pairing normal epilepsy therapies with a low-carbohydrate weight-reduction plan diminished seizures by greater than 50 per cent in 1 / 4 of contributors

By Grace Wade

Pairing a low-carbohydrate weight-reduction plan with typical epilepsy drugs can scale back seizures in individuals with drug-resistant epilepsy by 50 per cent.

Using low-carb diets to deal with epilepsy started a few century in the past however fell out of favour as soon as anti-seizure drugs have been developed. However, almost a 3rd of the roughly 50 million individuals worldwide with epilepsy don’t reply to those medication.

Manjari Tripathi at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi and her colleagues recruited 160 individuals between 10 and 55 years previous who had greater than two seizures a month regardless of utilizing at the least three anti-seizure drugs at most doses. The researchers suggested half of them to observe a modified Atkins weight-reduction plan, which consists of consuming solely 20 grams of carbohydrates a day, drastically reducing down on the 275 grams really useful for grownup each day consumption underneath US dietary pointers. All contributors continued normal epilepsy medication. Caregivers tracked seizures and meals utilizing a each day log, and contributors accomplished a quality-of-life questionnaire earlier than and after the examine.

After six months, greater than 26 per cent of these on the low-carb weight-reduction plan noticed month-to-month seizures diminished by greater than 50 per cent in comparison with the month earlier than the trial. The similar was true for under 2.5 per cent of the management group. The low-carb group additionally reported considerably larger enhancements in high quality of life, on common, in comparison with the management group.

Low-carbohydrate diets scale back seizures by inducing ketosis, which is when the physique burns fats as its main gasoline, says Tripathi. There are many potential mechanisms for why this improves epilepsy together with modifications within the intestine microbiome, irritation and electrical signalling between neurons, she says.

Mackenzie Cervenka at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland says it’s encouraging to see that the modified Atkins weight-reduction plan will be an efficient remedy. Prior research to deal with epilepsy with weight-reduction plan usually use the ketogenic weight-reduction plan, which requires calculating the ratio of carbs to fat in all meals. “That can be a lot more time consuming,” says Cervenka, which means fewer individuals keep on with it. “The modified Atkins diet is less rigorous with regard to preparation and monitoring,” she says.

Journal reference: Neurology, DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000206776

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