It wasn’t until recently that we decided that our Ketogenic Diet was going to include the kids. This decision was brought forth in an effort to help gain some control over our son’s epilepsy. Much of the early research into ketones was done as a form of treatment for epilepsy at the Mayo Clinic. Fortunately research has progressed in recent years and the benefits of ketosis have been expanded to any level beyond what was once thought to be restricted to only those in “deep” ketosis.

Our first endeavor into the Ketogenic Diet for epilepsy lead us to working with a dietitian and neurologist who were looking at the Ketogenic Diet as one of our son’s medicines. This was great news! Even though it’s still debated as to exactly why ketones benefit epilepsy, it made perfect sense given how ketones are produced and cross over the blood-brain barrier. I’ll try to post links to some of the resources and research they pointed us to when I have it at my disposal.

Unfortunately our journey doesn’t end there. Due to our son’s condition, it looks like his epilepsy won’t be entirely treatable with just diet alone. So we’re looking into surgical options. But we fully intend on augmenting any treatment with a Ketogenic Diet due to the other numerous and growing benefits.

Flash forward to this past week. Part of exploring surgical options involved a week-long hospital stay where, as scary as it sounds, the doctors needed to see our boy have a clinical seizure. What did this involve?

• Stopping all prescriptions
• Sleep deprivation
• Lots of tests

All of this was done in an effort to determine the specific origin of our son’s seizures. However, one this that I don’t feel has been throughly explored with the new team is full-on, kicking him out of ketosis. They’ve given him sugar fluids and some juice and jello. But that seems counterintuitive to me if they should be treating Ketosis as a medication. That said, more than half the time he’s been here, they’ve had to make sure he’s NPO (essentially fasted) just in case they needed sedation. So, tomorrow, I’m going to suggest a full-on carbohydrate binge in an effort to help the doctors see what they need to see.