Can a Ketosis Diet Help Cure Epilepsy?

The keto diet, sometimes also called the ketosis diet, is a special high-protein, sufficient-sugar, low-carb diet that also in a certain sense is used primarily to treat epilepsy in epileptic children. The diet forces your body to use fats instead of glucose or other sugars for its energy. This diet has also been shown to lessen the seizures and some have noted an even lessened amount of seizure activity after starting on this type of diet. The keto diet has been approved as a diet to reduce the risk of epileptic seizures in epilepsy patients by using some scientific data pointing to a possible correlation between ketones, also known as ketone bodies, and the onset of epilepsy (Kettering et al., 1997). The ketone diet has also been proposed by some as a treatment for epilepsy (Friedman and Polster, 2021), but further research is needed.

Fats that are good for a keto diet include: avocado, cottonseed oil, peanut oil, olive oil, safflower oil, canola oil, flax seed oil, sesame seed oil, sunflower oil and other fats. Nuts are another good source of fat and should be eaten in any portion size. Nuts are a good source of protein and healthy fats.

Foods that you want to avoid with this diet include foods that are high in fat and sugar because they cause ketosis, which in turn speeds up the symptoms of epilepsy. You want to eat plenty of vegetables, raw fruits and salads to keep your blood sugar levels even throughout the day and limit your consumption of high fat and high sugar foods. You may notice that you lose more weight on the ketosis diet than you would if you ate standard Western diet foods. In addition to eating fewer calories, you are also consuming fewer grams of fat and fewer grams of carbs.