The Charlie Foundation To Help Cure Pediatric Epilepsy

It happened suddenly: Charlie Abrahams went from being an active, normal one-year old to being a very troubled toddler. He lost motor control, began experiencing violent seizures, and was diagnosed with Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy.

Luckily, his parents had access to the best medical care available; his father, Jim Abrahams, made comedies in Hollywood (Airplane!, Naked Gun). They could spend whatever it took to make Charlie well.

Flash forward a year: by the time he'd turned two, Charlie had been on five different medications and had multiple surgeries at a cost of more than $100,000. Yet nothing stopped the seizures: they happened almost constantly. Chances of his becoming learning disabled grew with each convulsion. His attacks were so extreme that his parents padded the walls of his room and had him wear a football helmet to protect himself.

Refusing to believe that nothing more could be done for his child, Jim hit the library to research the disease. There, he found something — the Ketogenic Diet, a strict diet regimen — that had been effective for some patients at the Mayo Clinic in the 1930s.

Charlie went to see a doctor at Johns Hopkins — the last place in the country which was prescribing the ketogenic diet — and his diet regime began. Soon he stopped having seizures.

And his parents founded the Charlie Foundation To Help Cure Pediatric Epilepsy. The foundation supports medical research and education around the ketogenic diet.

Doctors know how the diet works: high in fats and proteins, it eradicates sugar and carbohydrates, tricking the body into thinking it is starving and changing what the body traditionally metabolizes. Doctors knew that people who are starving do not have seizures. But no one knows exactly why this state makes seizures go away.

The Charlie Foundation's outreach to doctors has helped numerous families have access to this alternative treatment for pediatric epilepsy. The research it supports continues to elucidate the effectiveness and scope of the ketogenic diet.

Jim Abrahams returned to Hollywood to make the television movie ...First Do No Harm which stars Meryl Streep as a parent who fights to make her epileptic son well.

Today, Charlie is a healthy boy. Visit the Charlie Foundation Web site.

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