High fat diet gives girl new life

From the BBC

A four-year-old Cornwall girl with a severe form of epilepsy is free from blackouts thanks to an 80% fat diet.

Sarah Laslett's diet includes cream, butter, nuts and eggs and is devised by Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital in London.

As Sarah burns off the fat her body produces ketones which protect the brain against seizures.

Sarah, from Morval near Looe, no longer suffers scores of blackouts and seizures every day.

The youngster has Myoclomic Astatic epilepsy, a rare, drug-resistant form of epilepsy that triggers scores of blackouts and seizures every day.

"Her exuberance is wonderful and she has been completely transformed"
--Teacher Sonia Barrett

The attacks started eight months ago and meant Sarah had to wear a helmet when she was playing.

Then her family found out about a trial at Great Ormond Street of the ketogenic diet.

The high fat, low carboydrate, low protein diet is so finely balanced it has to be carefully calculated by experts who are on hand for advice and support.

One of the key features is restrictions on high-sugar foods, breads, pasta, cereal and starchy vegetables.

Mealtimes are a well-practiced routine of measuring food to within a gramme.

Water regulated

For instance, breakfast could consist of 25 grammes of cream, mixed with water, 43 grammes of egg, mixed with another 25 grammes of cream and 15 grammes of butter, followed by 21 grammes of fruit.

Different types of fruit have different carbohydrate levels so that too has to be adjusted.

Sarah also drinks a carefully regulated 120 millilitres of water an hour, to keep her hydrated, but also to avoid constipation and kidney stones.

Teacher Sonia Barrett has been looking after her at school since she became ill last September.

It has been 24 days since Sarah's last blackout but she still wears a helmet to play outside - just in case the fits return.

*£25,000 raised*

Ms Barrett said: "Only four weeks ago she would just sit very still. There was no animation and she seemed very sleepy a lot of the time.

"Now she is full of life. Her exuberance is wonderful and she has been completely transformed."

Sarah's family has also raised £25,000 to continue a trial at the hospital for another year and help other children like Sarah.

Her mother Alex said: "It's brilliant because other children now hopefully will get the same chance that Sarah's had to do this diet.

"I couldn't believe how a diet could make such a dramatic difference but for Sarah, this has been a miracle."

Great Ormond Street is recruiting children with severe epilepsy for the trial, although patients will need a referral from their paediatric consultant.

Research Shows Low Fat Diet Makes People Moody!

Low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets worsen mood states in both humans and animals.

By Anthony Colpo, April 18, 2004.

In 1998, U.K. researchers reported the results of an experiment involving twenty healthy male and female volunteers. One group continued was placed on a 41% fat diet, while the other group consumed a 25% fat diet. After 4 weeks had passed, the groups were swapped around so that those originally on the low-fat diet were now consuming the high-fat diet, and vice-versa. Throughout the study, all meals were prepared by the university conducting the study and supplied to the participants. Both diets were specially designed to be as palatable and similar in taste as possible.

At the beginning and end of each diet period, every subject underwent a battery of psychological assessments, including various mood state questionnaires and an interview by a psychiatrist who was blinded to the participant's dietary status.

The study was tightly-controlled and adherence to the diets appears to have been high. HDL cholesterol levels declined during the low-fat period, a typical response on low-fat, high-carb diets, indicating that subjects ate the foods as supplied.

I feel fine, you #$%@!

What the researchers found was that, while ratings of anger-hostility slightly declined during the high-fat diet period, they significantly increased during the low-fat, high-carb diet period!

Tension-anxiety ratings declined during the high-fat period, but did not change during the four weeks of low-fat, high-carb eating.

Ratings of depression declined slightly during the high-fat period, but increased during the low-fat, high-carb period, mainly due to two of the low-fat subjects reporting significantly greater depression-dejection ratings.

As the researchers stated, the participants of this study were "a psychologically robust group who had never previously suffered from depression or anxiety, and who were not going through any 'stressful' events during the study." They further stated that "The alterations in mood observed in the present study may have been greater if subjects were feeling more stressed or were more susceptible to mental illness."

These observations raise some interesting questions. Could the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets that have been so heavily promoted over the last thirty years be at least partially responsible for increases in anti-social behavior witnessed during the same period?

That the answer could well be in the affirmative is supported by studies with our primate cousins...

Monkey business turns nasty on low-fat diet!

For 22 months, adult male monkeys were fed a "luxury" diet - (43% calories from fat, 0.34 mg cholesterol/Calorie of diet) or a "prudent" diet (30% calories from fat, 0.05 mg cholesterol/Calorie of diet).

Researchers observed that the low-fat diet monkeys were more irritable and initiated more aggression than the "luxury" diet animals. Hey, I'd be pretty damn ticked too if I had to follow a low-fat diet for almost 2-years!

The prudent diet resulted in lower total serum cholesterol levels. While our dopey health authorities automatically assume this is a good thing, the researchers noted: "These results are consistent with studies linking relatively low serum cholesterol concentrations to violent or antisocial behavior in psychiatric and criminal populations and could be relevant to understanding the significant increase in violence-related mortality observed among people assigned to cholesterol-lowering treatment in clinical trials."

If you don't want to end up a nasty old grump, then it might pay to regularly sink your teeth into a nice, fat, juicy steak!

C'mon, you know you want it...

References

Wells AS, et al. Alterations in mood after changing to a low-fat diet. British Journal of Nutrition, Jan, 1998; 79 (1): 23-30.

Kaplan JR, et al. The effects of fat and cholesterol on social behavior in monkeys. Psychosom Med. 1991 Nov-Dec; 53 (6): 634-642.

Source: The Omnivore