A natural treatment for seizures and psychosis?

I caught an interview on the Diane Rehm Show last week on the topic of pediatric seizures and their treatment. This especially interested me because our daughter had seizures for a short period when she was around eight years old, severe enough to cause partial paralysis for up to thirty minutes. She had three different episodes in approximately 3-6 months, was evaluated by a pediatric neurologist, who could not find any abnormalities in her EEG. Thankfully, they never returned.

One of the guest experts on the show was asked about the use of ketogenic - very low carb, high fat - diets in the treatment of seizure disorder in children. The expert said they were used only as a last resort. Medication was always the first choice in treatment.

Below is information taken from the epilepsyfoundation.org:

The ketogenic diet, which is very high in fats and low in carbohydrates, was first developed almost 80 years ago. It makes the body burn fat for energy instead of glucose. When carefully monitored by a medical team familiar with its use, the diet helps two out of three children who are tried on it and may prevent seizures completely in one out of three. It is a strict diet, and takes a strong commitment from the whole family. The ketogenic diet is not a do-it-yourself diet. It is a serious form of treatment that, like other therapies for epilepsy, has some side effects that have to be watched for. More research is being done to learn about the underlying reasons for the diet's positive effect.

I've also been reading about the correlation between mental illness and depleted gut flora. Sounds weird, I know, but do a search on gut brain connection and you'll be astounded at what you find. I got to that point in my reading because of an interest in celiac disease/gluten sensitivity and its effects on general health.

A lot of patients on my floor are psychotic and have been on medications for many years. Read here how one patient responded to a low carb diet (from Nutrition and Metabolism, contributed by researchers at Duke University).

In this case study, the abrupt resolution of longstanding schizophrenic symptoms was observed after the initiation of a low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet used for weight loss. Previously, Dohan observed a decrease in hospital admissions for schizophrenia in countries that had limited bread consumption during World War II, which suggested a possible relationship between bread and schizophrenia [2]. Dohan and colleagues also observed that overt schizophrenia was rare in remote tribal areas of several South Pacific islands where grains were rare, as compared to similar populations which had a higher prevalence of overt schizophrenia and grain consumption [3]. Additionally, some researchers have previously noted an association between schizophrenia and celiac disease, an immune-mediated enteropathy that is triggered by the ingestion of gluten-containing grains [4].

The treatment of schizophrenia today is largely pharmacological, but we found several treatments previously used or studied related to nutritional factors. There have been several small controlled studies in which a gluten-free diet showed promise in ameliorating schizophrenic symptoms [4]. In one such study, approximately 10% of schizophrenic patients had improvement in their symptoms by elimination of dietary gluten [5]. Another uncontrolled pilot study using a ketogenic diet (which is typically also a gluten-free diet because the consumption of gluten-containing bread and starch is eliminated) also suggested symptomatic improvement among patients with schizophrenia [6]. This study was motivated by the observation that patients with schizophrenia tended to eat more carbohydrates immediately before a psychotic episode. Additionally, low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diets have a long history for the treatment of refractory pediatric epilepsy [7,8] and recently have been studied as a treatment for obesity and cardiometabolic risk reduction [9,10]. 

This is very interesting reading. Read the whole page, including the list of articles at the end. Makes you wonder how many people may be suffering because of wheat/grain sensitivities.