Posts Tagged seizure

Seizure/Epilepsy – What to Eat and What Not

January 6, 2009 at 12:00 am · Filed under Seizure/Epilepsy ·Tagged , ,

From the previous article Avoiding Food-Trigger Seizure, we will look at what to eat and what not eat, for adults and children who have epileptic seizure. 

Let’s begin with a number of food types to avoid.

Foods that have high amount of glutamate and aspartate can lead to food reactons in patient with epileptic seizure.

1. Grains: Consume corn and rice that are low in glutamine, while avoiding wheat, barley and oats that are known to be rich in glutamine.

2. Dairy products: All cow milk products are rich in glutamine. Example are Parmesan, Monterey Jack, Mozzarella. Goat milk products are better.

3. Beans: Soy, navy, lentils are high in glumatic acid.

4. Seeds: Sunflower and pumpkins are high in glutamine, though less than that of wheat and dairy in comparison.

5. Peanuts: Cashews, pistachios and almonds are rich in glutamine.

6. All soy products: Except for tofu and tempeh.

7. Diet drinks and Foods that have aspartate, a result of containing sweetener like Nutrasweet or Equal.

8. Canned foods/soups: Most canned food/soups have MSG.

9. Meats: All meats are naturally rich in glutamine and aspartate – leading the band are rabbit and turkey, which is the highest. Try substituing with lambs, chickens and eggs.

Now we’ll look into what to eat/drink.

1. Drink plenty of water, especially distilled water that helps to remove toxin inside our human body.

2. Vegetables. Taste good when steamed or mildly cooked. Overcooking is fdefinitely a no-no.

3. Flesh foods like chickens, eggs and lamb.

4. Consume white or brown rice. Organic blue corn is good too.

5 Fruits? It is recommended becuase sometimes or most of the times the bodies of sick children and adults canno handle fruit acids and high level of sugar in them.

Reference:

1. Epilepsy and Seizures, Lawrence Wilson, MD

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Avoiding Food-Triggered Seizures

January 5, 2009 at 1:56 am · Filed under Seizure/Epilepsy ·Tagged ,

Suppose you or any of your child has a history of seizure, how are you going to do about it? How do you identify food that will trigger seizure?

1. Keep a comprehensive food diary. Write down everything that you eat and drink in a small diary booklet. Why? This is to help you to identify which food or drink that trigger seizure. Help your kid with history of seizure to do it. Ask your kid to be honest with you, even if it means he only have a small bite on chips or cookies, write them down. It may be quite tedious at the beginning, but you really need to have discipline in doing it for the sake of your own or your kid’s health.

2. Consult with a naturopathic physician. A naturopathic physician will identify what cause seizure in you. He prefers to use natural remedies such as herbs and foods rather than surgery or synthetic drug in seizure treatment.

3. Run blood test. A medical doctor or a physician will guide you in this area. They take some blood sample from you and run lab test to identify any reaction of your blood cells when exposed to certain type of food.

4. Skip certain food suspicious of triggering seizure. If avoiding consuming the food stop the seizure and symptoms, case close. Sometimes, it is not the food that you eat, but other non food item that you accidentantly swallow, like toothpaste or mouthwash.

5. Use supplement such as probiotics, quercertin and glutamine to improve your health if neccessary. Please consult your doctor.

Reference:

1. How to Avoid Food-triggered Seizures, buy eHow Health Editor

2. Naturopathic website

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Ketogenic Diet – Treatment to Epilepsy in Children?

January 3, 2009 at 2:32 am · Filed under Children, Seizure/Epilepsy ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

I would like to take this moment to express heartfelt condolence  to John Travolta who lost his 16-year-old son.

This blog entry is served as general information only, not meant to be taken as medical advice. Please consult your doctor before taking any action.

What is seizure?
Our brain contains billions of neutrons that communicate among themselves by sending and receiving electrical impulses. And when there’s something wrong or abnormal in the activity, it cause a sezisure.

Seizure in children alters their level of awareness, changes in behavior, and/or muscle contractions and movements. Usually, seizure only last a few seconds or minutes. However, if it occurs several times in the past, your children might have Epilepsy.

Why does it happen?  
Nobody knows why children suffer seizure, but they do rarely suffer long-term harmful side effect due to it. Most seizures can be controlled with medication, and the risk of seizures often declines as a child grows older. 

There are chances that fevers cause seizure in children. Poor diet and lack of water will result very low blood sugar and dehydration in the body. They too can trigger seizure.

What is the treatment?
The first step is always consult your doctor. The decision to treat a child who has recurrent seizures depends upon medical and seizure history – the type and number of seizures, setting in which seizures occurred, child’s age and family concerns. 

A complete physical examination is important. Doctor or medical practitioner will conduct a series of physical exams to evaluate a child with seizure.

An electroencephalogram or EEG for short, is a test to measure neutrons activity in your brain. The test is performed on a child with seizure to search for any abnrmoality in the brain wave. Any information gathered is crucial in determining where and why the seizure happens.

Antiepileptic drugs or AEDs is one of the medications that will be sued to prevent epilepsy. Healthcare provider usually considers the type of seizure or epilepsy that is suspected, as well as the properties of the various drugs that might be prescribed when choosing an AED. 

Ketogenic Diet is…?
Ketogenic Diet is a specially developed diet in 1920’s. It’s a diet that is extremely high in fat. A child with epilepsy is required to eat four times as many fat calories as calories from protein or carbohydrate. By reducing the number of carbohydrates a person eats, the body is forced to burn fat for energy.

Fasting too, has been a traditional seizure treatment for centuries, but it is not really neccesary for children.

Let’s kick start Ketogenic Diet then
No

There is certain considerations when you decide to start out ketogenic diet for your child with Epilepsy.  The first and foremost is to weight food precisely. Even a little lapse or misstep to trigger seizure. You might want to keep a close wath on your kid so that he/she follows the diet strictly.

Therefore, it is wise to consult doctor or dietician. According to Solomon L. Moshe, MD, Director of Clinical Neurophysiology and Child Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, “It’s very important that a family have a doctor and a dietician working with them on this diet; otherwise, it won’t work and it isn’t even safe.”  

Reference:

1. Epilepsy in Children: The Ketogenic Diet, WebMD

2. Patient information: Seizures in children, Angus Wilfong, MD

3. Patient information: Treatment of seizures in children, Angus Wilfong, MD

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