Research news on nutrition, environmental medicine and health
foodconsumer.org – Prenatal antibiotics linked to high risk of epilepsyMonday Oct 22, 2012 (foodconsumer.org) — A new study in Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology suggests that taking cystitis antibiotics during pregnancy increases risk of epilepsy in children. J. E. Miller of School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, CA and colleagues conducted the study …
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This pilot study by Christiansen, Rødbro, and Sjö was published in 1974 in the British Medical Journal. The frequency of epileptic seizures was observed in a controlled therapeutic trial on 23 epileptic inpatients before and after treatment with vitamin D2 or placebo in addition to anticonvulsant drugs. The number of seizures was reduced during treatment with vitamin D2 but not with placebo. The effect was unrelated to changes in serum …
Charlie is a son of the famous American film director Jim Abrahams. When Charlie was one year old, he had numerous daily seizures. No medication for epilepsy helped, and he had also had an unsuccessful brain surgery. But everything changed when he came to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was cured of his epilepsy by …
Continue reading “Charlie’s Story: The Ketogenic Diet and Epilepsy”
Leptin is a hormone that plays a key role in regulating energy intake and energy expenditure, including appetite and metabolism. “Leptin plays a role in modulating structure and synaptic communication in brain. Some studies on animal models reported that chronic leptin deficiency in mice raise susceptibility to seizure and leptin administeringin rodent seizure models suppresses …
Continue reading “Leptin as a New Approach for Treatment for Autism and Epilepsy”
– Zinc has been found to play a critical role in regulating communication between cells in the brain, possibly governing the formation of memories and controlling the occurrence of epileptic seizures. A collaborative project between Duke University Medical Center researchers and chemists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been able to watch zinc in …
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You might have heard the term “brain food” used to describe food that’s good for you. Doctors at Mayo Clinic say there really is a diet that benefits the brain. But this diet is not for everybody. It’s for kids who have epilepsy, and it’s based on extremely high fats and very few carbs. More …
The high-fat ketogenic diet can dramatically reduce or completely eliminate debilitating seizures in most children with infantile spasms, whose seizures persist despite medication, according to a Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study published in 2010 in the journal Epilepsia. Infantile spasms, also called West syndrome, is a stubborn form of epilepsy that often does not get better …
Continue reading “High-Fat Ketogenic Diet Effectively Treats Persistent Childhood Seizures”
This is a 1997 television film, directed by Jim Abrahams, about a boy whose severe epilepsy, unresponsive to medications with terrible side effects, is controlled by the ketogenic diet. Aspects of the story mirror Abrahams’ own experience with his son Charlie. When Lori Reimuller learns that her young son Robbie has epilepsy, she first trusts the judgment …
