This Halloween, a community rallied around one little boy in Brandon Farms who has been following a special diet to control his epilepsy.
Cavan Petura, aged 4 1/2, had his first seizure at 2 1/2, the same day that their family brought home his baby brother. He was diagnosed with generalized primary epilepsy at age 3 and his family tried, with little success, four different medications to control his 5-10 seizures per day. The family decided to try a diet called the Ketogenic Diet (Keto, for short) offered in a controlled setting at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), and is used as an option when a child is not responding to medication. The diet is a form of treatment created over 70 years ago to treat epilepsy and involves consuming 90% fat with only 10% of protein and carbohydrate. The high fat content tricks the brain into thinking the body is starving and this starvation period has been found to stop the seizures from happening. Typically, the treatment/diet period is about three years.
“One slight mishap can send him into seizure overload (kind of like Halloween!),” said Cavan’s mother Erin Petura. “Since being on the diet for two months, he has been seizure free.”
Source: http://mercerme.com/hoval-community-rallies-around-keto-kid-on-halloween-epilepsy-awareness-month/