Ketogenic diet

We are going to start a diet that has been very successful with treating seizures that are uncontrolled, even with medications. We are waiting to schedule to learn hosw to do it. I got this information off of the Epilepsy Foundation website. http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org There are more resources and examples, but this is an idea of what to expect:

The ketogenic diet has special appeal to families because changing what a child eats seems like a more "natural" way of preventing seizures than taking pills.
But the diet is anything but natural. It is a highly unnatural choice of foods and it reverses the body's natural way of using food to gain energy. In fact, the ketogenic diet, like taking medications or having surgery, is a serious medical treatment.


It is not a "do it yourself" diet.

Trying to put a child on the diet without medical guidance puts a child at risk of serious consequences. Every step of the ketogenic diet process must be managed by an experienced treatment team, usually based at a specialized medical center.


Working with a Dietitian

When children (or adults) are treated with the ketogenic diet, the dietitian is a very important member of the medical treatment team. The dietitian works out how much of one type of food or another should be served together to make the diet work. He or she helps the family plan the child's meals, and works out how many calories the child needs for healthy growth.
Meal plans serve small amounts of fruits or vegetables (carbohydrates) and meat, fish or chicken (protein) with lots and lots of fat (such as cream, butter, eggs, or mayonnaise), and no sugar.

The following sample meal plans provide a general idea of the kinds of foods that are part of the diet.

Breakfast
Scrambled eggs with butter
Diluted cream
Orange juice

Lunch
Spaghetti squash with butter and Parmesan cheese
Lettuce leaf with mayonnaise
Orange diet soda mixed with whipped cream


Dinner
Hot dog slices with sugar-free catsup
Asparagus with butter
Chopped lettuce with mayonnaise
Sugar free vanilla cream Popsicle

These examples don't show the exact amounts of each food because those have to be worked out for each child by the dietitian. Each portion of food must be prepared very carefully by the parents, who often use a gram scale to weigh items exactly.

That's because a tiny mistake in weighing and measuring foods (or if a child finds and eats a few cookie crumbs, or puts anything containing sugar -- including medicines and toothpaste -- in her mouth), can break the diet's effects -- and cause a seizure.

The child is placed on a 24-hour fast and is closely watched to be sure he or she is handling the very real stress of not getting any food during that time.
Once the child begins burning fat for energy instead of glucose (a state called ketosis), the doctors gradually introduce the foods that are part of the diet in amounts that are right for that child.

When the child goes home, the parents continue to carry out the diet at home, weighing every item and making sure that the balance between fat and other nutritional elements is maintained. Doctors and dietitians follow children closely to make sure they're getting enough nutrition and are growing.

Parents of children on the diet use special paper strips to check the ketone level in the child's urine.

Ketones are the chemicals that the body produces when it burns fat. Parents also test urine weekly for blood, which could be an early sign of kidney stones, a possible side effect of the diet.