Yes epilepsy and diabetes are seen together. At least member one here has them, and a young lady I know of at home I know has them both. Both are type 1's.
High-fat ketogenic diet gives relief from seizures - Los Angeles Times High-fat ketogenic diet gives relief from seizures
The regimen is one of several diets that can provide relief from the symptoms of various illnesses when medication fails.
By Janet Cromley, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 12, 2008
LYDIA BECKET was only 1 year old when the seizures started -- wracking convulsions that came in waves, often several a day.
For the next two years, her parents tried one medication after another: Tegretol, phenobarbital and Topamax. The same drugs that bring relief to many children with epilepsy just made her sicker.
BeneficialInformation on ketogenic, Atkins diets
Then Lydia's medical team put her on a ketogenic -- or high-fat, low-carbohydrate -- diet. Within a week, she was seizure-free.
"I don't know where we would be if it wasn't for that diet," says her mother, Camilla Becket, who has chronicled the stories of several families coping with epilepsy in the film "Childhood Epilepsy: What You Need to Know."
The diet, which is more than 85 years old and has been extensively studied, made headlines earlier this month when British researchers presented the strongest evidence to date of its efficacy. In a randomized controlled study of 145 children ages 2 to 16 who had more than seven seizures a week and were unresponsive to medication, senior author Dr. J. Helen Cross of the Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London reported a 38% reduction in mean seizure frequency among the 54 children assigned to receive the ketogenic diet.
The control group experienced an increase in seizures, according to the report, which appeared in the online edition of Lancet Neurology.
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Using diet to control disease is nothing new. "For many conditions, we have come to accept special diets as routine parts of medicine," says Dr. George Christison, professor of psychiatry at Loma Linda University in Loma Linda.
Examples include diets low in simple carbohydrates (starches, sugars) for people with diabetes; low-fat diets high in fruits, vegetables and nuts for people with cardiovascular disease, phenylalanine-free diets for the genetic disorder phenylketonuria, low-sodium diets for hypertension and low-fat diets for gallstones. Some parents of children with autism spectrum disorders are putting their children on diets that eliminate foods with gluten and/or casein in the hopes that the diet may help, although the jury is still out on whether this diet is effective.
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