The Charlie Foundation To Help Cure Pediatric Epilepsy

Charlie Abrahams suddenly went from being an active, normal one-year old to 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.

By the time Charlie was two years old, he 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 him developing learning disabilities 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 the Ketogenic Diet, a strict diet regimen that had been effective for some patients at the Mayo Clinic in the 1930s.

Charlie saw a doctor at Johns Hopkins, the last place in the country that was prescribing the ketogenic diet and his diet regimen began. Soon his seizures stopped.

With a diet 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.

Charlie's parents founded the Charlie Foundation To Help Cure Pediatric Epilepsy to support medical research and education around the ketogenic diet.

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. The Charlie Foundation To Help Cure Pediatric Epilepsy, created in 1994, is an affiliate fund of the California Community Foundation. To learn more, visit the Charlie Foundation Web site.

Contributions to the California Community Foundation represent irrevocable gifts subject to the legal and fiduciary control of the foundation's board of directors.

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