Epilepsy and Food

Re: Epilepsy and Food

Submitted by biernatsnva on Mon, 2009-08-24 - 17:06

Adrilu and others,

I have complex partial seizures w/ absence seizures as well. My neuro gave me Topamax when diagnosed 5 years ago. I have taken it ever since. I continued to have seizures about once a month even on the Topamax. A friend of mine told me that people with seizures should never take anything but Tylenol for pain, headaches, etc. My neuro never told me that. Also I stopped eating any wheat due to a diagnosis of Celiac Disease three years ago. I have a seizure maybe every 6 months now usually due to either food contamination or hormones. I definitely believe their is a correlation to what we ingest and seizures. By the way, I did decrease my Topamax by 100mg a day after omitting wheat from my diet so that was a plus! I now take 100mg bid. Plus I lost 20 pounds after taking wheat out of my diet!! Just a bonus! Just because we are given a pill for seizures does not mean we should not watch what we consume.

Re: Epilepsy and Food

Submitted by jc-32 on Thu, 2009-09-17 - 00:47

I'm in my early twenties and also on the same dosage of keppra and loving it! I was on another medication and I could only eat certain foods without vomiting. I have simple and complex partial seizures, Since the Keppra it's easier to eat but i still get squeemish over some foods. Its funny because the one thing I have always been able to eat since the Seizures started has been Chicken Nuggets from mcDonalds, and i hated them before. Everything else never stayed down.  I loved hamburgers and now i cant stand the after taste or how they make me feel. So I think there is a tie, because i also do better when i'm eating healthy. I have also noticed an increase in episodes before my period, actually thats how i can tell its about to start.

 I also echo the awesomeness of this website! Thanks Everyone!!!!

Re: Epilepsy and Food

Submitted by Astrosws20 on Sat, 2010-01-23 - 16:51

Very interesting topic and one I've looked up a lot and thought about in relation to my epilepsy a lot. I have a history of grand mal seizures and I take 3000 mg of Keppra a day and 1000 mg of Depakote a day and it is working very well for me but I think there's more to it than my meds. I am a believer that your diet and the food you eat effects every aspect of your life from energy, sleep, seizures or other disorders, the way you act and everything. I believe it's all linked somehow and I'm not even a big nutrionist or anything. I'm 24 and just eclipsed the 2 year mark from when I had my last seizure. Before that I usually had around 2 seizures a year and sometimes as many as 4 a year if you go back to my grade school days. Looking back the more my diet improved the fewer seizures I had and I try to stay away from greasy foods now because that was a problem back in high school. Wheat was definitely a problem and I think nuts might have been also. Looking back I used to eat lots of nuts because they are rather healthy and have a lot of protein but now I don't and I'm seizure free. Maybe coincidence maybe not. Now I eat predominantly chicken, meat, eggs and lots of rice. Chicken, eggs and rice I've read are known to be good for epilepsy. I've had maybe one aura in the past year and I highly contribute that to my diet. Water is also one of the best medicines. The more water you drink the healthier you're going to be in general.

I've asked my neurologist what I can eat to help but the answers I've gotta are always vague because for every study that says some food is good for you there's another study that says that it has no effect. That is a breakdown of my life and food intake with epilepsy. Below the break I wrote up something relevant about a friend of mine and his food adjustments to a life threatening disease.

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A friend of mine I met a few months ago who's in his early 50s is the poster child for how to eat in order to be healthy. At a young age he was diagnosed with a rare disease where his bones more or less deteriorate and obviously he was in big trouble and could die at a young age. He was basically told that there was little to nothing he could do but his parents refused to believe it. His parents took him to a doctor who said he could help. The doctor was very into natural healing and no medications and if my friend devoted himself to what this doctor said he'd get better. Him and his parents gave it a shot and he got better and is now the healthiest person I know. Plus he's in his 50s and looks like he's in his 30s. His son also got the disease but is fine because he follows the same diet his father does. This may sound crazy but the diet is basically eating as a hunter kind of like Indians and like they did a long time ago. He eats primarily lots of buffalo meat, berries, certain vegetables and a few other things. Nothing processed or unnatural. His diet is very strict, very limited and he absolutely cannot stray from it but he is much healthier than me and he's twice my age.

He's talked to doctors since and they are absolutely baffled as to how much it helped him and have actually wrote studies and things in medical journals about my friend. If you think about it and open your mind up it makes sense. Many diseases and disorders long ago were not as bad or severe as they are today, people lived much longer long ago and part of the reason is because of what we eat. Food is what makes our bodies go and function properly and if you eat certain foods it can be no different than taking medications and in some cases better if you devote yourself entirely. I know it's hard to believe but if I was able to give you a proper rundown as he did to me then you'd be convinced also. Food is the biggest factor when it comes to altering the way your body works. I haven't jumped on board because I am doing so well now and I don't want to disrupt or agitate my body to the point where I could have seizures in the initial stages of the transition. Sorry for the length I just thought I'd pass on what I have found.