Imagine treating childhood epilepsy with bacon, heavy cream and hot dogs. This may sound like an unlikely approach, but the extremely high-fat and low-carb ketogenic diet has been shockingly effective in treating kids with drug-resistant epilepsy. ABC News' senior health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser sat down with the director of pediatric epilepsy at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Elizabeth Thiele, to discuss this unusual approach to fighting epilepsy.
For more information on the ketogenic diet and pediatric epilepsy, watch 'World News With Diane Sawyer' Thursday at 6:30 p.m. ET on ABC
Dr. Richard Besser: So what is the ketogenic diet?
Dr.Elizabeth Thiele: The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, low carbohydrate diet, and it was developed in the 1920s after people noticed that when epileptics fasted, for various reasons, seizures would be markedly reduced.
Besser: So the ketogenic diet mimics what you'd see in someone who's fasting?
Thiele: Right. When this was noticed, this observation was made in the 1920s, people started thinking, "Gee, what happens when someone fasts?" And when a person fasts, your body starts breaking down your fat stores. Obviously, fasting is not great for a treatment for epilepsy or other conditions because it doesn't provide adequate nutrition, so the thought was, "Gee, how could we mimic starvation and trick our bodies into thinking we're starving by using fats as the main energy source?"
Besser: So this treatment is solely based on diet?
Thiele: This treatment is solely based on diet.
Besser: No medicines, nothing else?
Thiele: We do supplement vitamins, because with the high-fat, kids can become deficient in some vitamins -- so while on the diet, all children are supplemented with vitamins and also calcium.
Besser: So on this diet, some children, who are having dozens of seizures a day, will become seizure-free?
Thiele: We've had several children having hundreds of seizures per day become completely seizure-free, oftentimes within a few weeks.
Besser: So this is a treatment based solely on diet and vitamins?
Thiele: Absolutely. While on this treatment, hopefully, the children are taken off all of their medications if the diet successfully controls their seizures, and then they just continue on the diet for a period of time and supplement it with vitamins and calcium.
Besser: So on this you've seen children who've been having dozens of seizures a day become seizure-free?
Thiele: We've seen many children who are having hundred of seizures a day become seizure-free oftentimes within just a few weeks of being on the diet.
Besser: That's miraculous.
Thiele: It's miraculous. No, it's a miracle. And many children who go on this diet have already been on six or eight or 10 anti-convulsion medications without effective seizure control or with side effects that can't be tolerated. And they go on this diet and become seizure-free. About a third of children who go on this diet become completely seizure-free.
Besser: I would imagine for some of these families, they've completely given up hope that their child will be seizure-free.