TOR’S STORY

My name is Tor, I live in the northern part of Norway and I am the father of a 17 year old girl. She has had epilepsy for over 9 years now.  She has tried most of the antiepileptic drugs available over the years, without noticing any major effect.

About 4 years ago, she got Vagus Nerve Stimulators (VNS). 4 times a year she had to get the settings updated on the VNS. It helped her in the beginning, but after a while the results seemed to decline. My daughter has multi-focus and was born with a brain malfunction.

In April 2006 we heard about good results with the Atkins diet. The whole family wanted to try and we bought most of the books about the Atkins diet. We got slowly down to 40-50 grams of carbohydrates per day.

In the middle of July, my daughter went into ketosis, with less than 10 grams of carbohydrates. She stayed in ketosis for about 14 days and we tested with strips (KETO-DIABUR-TEST 5000), she reached a level of 150 mg/dL. After that, she increased to 40-50 grams of carbohydrates per day and stayed there.

By the autumn, we could see the positive results of the diet, we believe that it has reduced her seizures by more than 50%, maybe even 60-70%.  She has less, shorter and not so severe seizures. We also have reduced one of the antiepileptic drugs, Frisium at 2/3.

In the beginning of December 2006, my daughter  had stayed in ketosis for 14 days. The rest of the family maintains a diet of 50-70 grams of carbohydrates per day.  We are planning on stopping the the VNS and coming of the Frisium completely.

The Atkins diet may not help everyone, but we are very satisfied. To succeed, I think the whole family should go on the diet (especially parents). Personally, we’ve had no problems staying on the diet.  We eat meat, fish and chicken, a variety of egg dishes and cheese etc. We have reduced the consumption of sugar to a minimum.

We take daily multivitamin- and mineral supplement, although we have never been advised on the importance of vitamin or mineral supplements by a medical professional. There are still many things we would like to try, like Calcium, Magnesium and GABA (gamma- aminobutyric acid) or the amino acid taurine. But we are getting no feedback concerning the effect these could have on our daughter’s health.

We also want to try music and to listen to Mozart’s K448 for two pianos in D major about 10 minutes every day.

I still believe that traditional medicine has its place but when it does not help we must look to other methods in order to reduce our children’s seizures.

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