This article is about a dietary therapy for epilepsy. For information on ketogenic diets as a lifestyle choice or for weight loss, see Very low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet. A test keto breakfast pizza is compared with a colour chart that indicates the degree of ketonuria.

Normally carbohydrates in food are converted into glucose, which is then transported around the body and is important in fueling brain function. The original therapeutic diet for paediatric epilepsy provides just enough protein for body growth and repair, and sufficient calories to maintain the correct weight for age and height. In 1994, Hollywood producer Jim Abrahams, whose son’s severe epilepsy was effectively controlled by the diet, created the Charlie Foundation for Ketogenic Therapies to further promote diet therapy. Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders after migraine and stroke, affecting around 50 million people worldwide. The ketogenic diet is a mainstream medical dietary therapy that was developed to reproduce the success and remove the limitations of the non-mainstream use of fasting to treat epilepsy. See image description page for full text.

Physicians of ancient Greece treated diseases, including epilepsy, by altering their patients’ diet. Its author argued against the prevailing view that epilepsy was supernatural in origin and cure, and proposed that dietary therapy had a rational and physical basis. In the same collection, the author of Epidemics describes the case of a man whose epilepsy is cured as quickly as it had appeared, through complete abstinence of food and drink. The first modern study of fasting as a treatment for epilepsy was in France in 1911. Twenty epilepsy patients of all ages were “detoxified” by consuming a low-calorie vegetarian diet, combined with periods of fasting and purging.