Saturday, March 10, 2012

Give me Diet over Medication for seizures any day!!!

Dante enjoying the start of the MAD diet
This past week was yet another transitional week for Dante.  We have been on a strict Modified Atkins Diet for his seizures for five weeks already, and the news are good!  Now let me set the stage for where we are at…

By the third week on the diet Dante seemed to be getting weaker.  He was slumping forward sometimes while sitting or remain like that after a “nod” seizure for a little bit.  This symptom reminded me very much of how he did while on Topamax (which we weaned him from a couple of months ago), so I started associating it with his Keppra, the only medication he’s on at this time.  Since the diet works like a medication, as it becomes more effective the seizure medications the child is on may actually become excessive. Last weekend I decided to test this out.  I reduced his nighttime Keppra dose very slightly, by 12% (from 5ml to 4.4ml).  The following two days we saw his seizures go down by more than 50%.