Seizures in babies

HDD

Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2012
Messages
2,075
A family friend's 1 yr old baby has had several seizures over the last 3-4 months. They have been to the ER, the children's hospital, and to local dr. There is nothing for them to do except administer medicine when they occur. I found the following while searching to see if Ray Peat had written anything about babies and seizures.


"A one-month-old infant presented with 100 seizures per day. His birth was traumatic. Born breech, he was delivered rapidly. His parents chose to try low-dose ultrasound on the back of his neck. There was no improvement after one month of treatment. A San Francisco physician administered homeopathics to no avail. Then small doses of Peat’s 10 percent natural progesterone in a base of natural vitamin E was administered topically on the infant’s belly daily.
Cranial-sacral therapy treatments were performed weekly. Arnica cream was rubbed on the back of the baby’s neck and a homeopathic formula called Rescue Remedy was given orally and added to the baby's bath water. After one week, seizures decreased from 100 to 12 daily. After the second week, the child had three to four seizures daily. After the third week, there were no more seizures. The baby was observed to be increasingly alert and conscious of his surroundings."
http://www.litalee.com/shopexd.asp?id=208


“Seizures can be caused by lack of glucose, lack of oxygen, vitamin B6 deficiency and magnesium deficiency. They are more likely to occur during the night, during puberty, premenstrually, during pregnancy, during the first year of life, and can be triggered by hyperventilation, running, strong emotions, or unusual sensory stimulation. Water retention and low sodium increase susceptibility to seizures. All recognized anti-seizure drugs are teratogenic, and women who are taking such drugs are told that pregnancy might kill them if they stop the drug, but that their babies will have a greatly increased risk of birth defects if they take the drugs during pregnancy. This is why a better understanding of epilepsy is very important.” (Peat, Ray, Ph.D., Ray Peat’s Newsletter, July 1997)

Any thoughts?
 

tara

Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2014
Messages
10,368
HDD said:
“Seizures can be caused by lack of glucose, lack of oxygen, vitamin B6 deficiency and magnesium deficiency....” (Peat, Ray, Ph.D., Ray Peat’s Newsletter, July 1997)

Any thoughts?

I have no direct experience of seizures, but when I read about them, I notice that there seem to be some similarities with my issue - migraines. I have a couple of thoughts. Some of these things they could reasonably easily and safely take measures to see if they can help.

Lack of oxygen: watch for mouth breathing, and if present, see if they can correct it. Was it Weston Price or one of his contemporaries who observed that Native American mothers always made sure their babies' mouths were closed after they finished feeding? There are other traditional practices from various cultures to protect babies from hyperventilation, but these seem to have been largely lost in recent generations in the west. I was anti-dummies when mine were babies, but I think they may have the advantage of encouraging nose breathing and therefore less hyperventilation.

Lack of glucose: a little honey or sucrose on the tongue might be enough to interrupt it. Cold fingers and toes might be a clue to this?

Could the incidents have been associated with either excessive cold or overheating?

Making sure there is some magnesium available - in diet eg via orange juice, and/or occasional epsom salts in the bath - I don't know if there would be any risks with this, so i guess it would be worth checking that.

Low grain, high fruit diet for minerals, fructose with the glucose, less PUFAs etc? A little liver weekly for minerals and vitamins?

I'm sure you've mentioned something to them about the problems with PUFAs? There is a bit in one or two of Peat's articles about PUFAs in the brain promoting swelling of brain tissue.

There are other stories of people getting reduced seizures with progest-e. I guess the transdermal belly route has the advantage of ease and non-invasiveness, but can accumulate progesterone under skin and release it into the system later, whether it is still wanted or not - I don't know if this is a big enough concern to wory about. Gums are quicker. I don't know if there are down-sides to progest-e wrt babies development, so I guess if it were me, I'd be more likely to want to try this if the immediate condition were quite severe. Girl or boy?

Good luck to them.
 

dd99

Member
Joined
Apr 26, 2014
Messages
434
That's terrible - I feel so sorry for them. There's nothing so heart wrenching as your child suffering and not being able to make it stop immediately.

My son's birth was extremely stressful and that had all sorts of knock on effects on feeding, sleeping, behaviour, etc. Our midwife recommended we go to a cranial osteopath. It really helped. She 'reshaped' his skull a bit and basically made sure his bones and muscles were relaxed and in place after the horrendous delivery. He improved with every session. It might not be related, but could be worthwhile for your friends to check it out.
 
OP
H

HDD

Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2012
Messages
2,075
tara said:
HDD said:
“Seizures can be caused by lack of glucose, lack of oxygen, vitamin B6 deficiency and magnesium deficiency....” (Peat, Ray, Ph.D., Ray Peat’s Newsletter, July 1997)

Any thoughts?

I have no direct experience of seizures, but when I read about them, I notice that there seem to be some similarities with my issue - migraines. I have a couple of thoughts. Some of these things they could reasonably easily and safely take measures to see if they can help.

Lack of oxygen: watch for mouth breathing, and if present, see if they can correct it. Was it Weston Price or one of his contemporaries who observed that Native American mothers always made sure their babies' mouths were closed after they finished feeding? There are other traditional practices from various cultures to protect babies from hyperventilation, but these seem to have been largely lost in recent generations in the west. I was anti-dummies when mine were babies, but I think they may have the advantage of encouraging nose breathing and therefore less hyperventilation.

Lack of glucose: a little honey or sucrose on the tongue might be enough to interrupt it. Cold fingers and toes might be a clue to this?

Could the incidents have been associated with either excessive cold or overheating?

Making sure there is some magnesium available - in diet eg via orange juice, and/or occasional epsom salts in the bath - I don't know if there would be any risks with this, so i guess it would be worth checking that.

Low grain, high fruit diet for minerals, fructose with the glucose, less PUFAs etc? A little liver weekly for minerals and vitamins?

I'm sure you've mentioned something to them about the problems with PUFAs? There is a bit in one or two of Peat's articles about PUFAs in the brain promoting swelling of brain tissue.

There are other stories of people getting reduced seizures with progest-e. I guess the transdermal belly route has the advantage of ease and non-invasiveness, but can accumulate progesterone under skin and release it into the system later, whether it is still wanted or not - I don't know if this is a big enough concern to wory about. Gums are quicker. I don't know if there are down-sides to progest-e wrt babies development, so I guess if it were me, I'd be more likely to want to try this if the immediate condition were quite severe. Girl or boy?

Good luck to them.

Thank you, Tara, for your thoughtful post. I don't have much interaction with her but my daughter does. The seizures are febrile, however, one occurred in a swimming pool (they think .. it was the first one and did not know it was a seizure at the time) I'm not sure if a drop in temperature can trigger one like a spike in temperature can. The doctors tell the mother (her name is Tara :) )it is common and she will grow out if it. My thoughts are that seizures from a fever aren't normal and there might be something she could change that could prevent them from occurring. I am going to send her a text to see if she is open to any of your suggestions. I know her baby loves avocados and maybe eats too much in one sitting? I'll search for the articles you referred to about pufa and brain swelling.
 
OP
H

HDD

Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2012
Messages
2,075
dd99 said:
That's terrible - I feel so sorry for them. There's nothing so heart wrenching as your child suffering and not being able to make it stop immediately.

My son's birth was extremely stressful and that had all sorts of knock on effects on feeding, sleeping, behaviour, etc. Our midwife recommended we go to a cranial osteopath. It really helped. She 'reshaped' his skull a bit and basically made sure his bones and muscles were relaxed and in place after the horrendous delivery. He improved with every session. It might not be related, but could be worthwhile for your friends to check it out.

I agree that seeing your child suffering is the worst. Especially, as you said, and not being able to do much to help them.

That is so great that your son was able to get such specialized help. If the mom is open to ideas, I will tell her about your experience. I don't want to burden her any more than she already is. My daughter says she is holding on to the hope that her daughter will grow out of it.
 

tara

Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2014
Messages
10,368
Sounds scary to have it happen in water.
Good that the dr thinks it's likely she'll grow out of it.
 

aguilaroja

Member
Joined
Jul 24, 2013
Messages
850
HDD said:
[My thoughts are that seizures from a fever aren't normal and there might be something she could change that could prevent them from occurring....

It could be that seizures in children with a fever is not optimal, but it is well recognized and happens in a few per cent of children:

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/febr ... izures.htm

The Dr. Peat newsletter you quoted from includes mention of low sodium, and the recent fashion has been to keep children's diets especially low in sodium. Adequate sodium itself tends to "spare" magnesium, boosting magnesium retention.

http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/ep ... rone.shtml
 

tara

Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2014
Messages
10,368
aguilaroja said:
The Dr. Peat newsletter you quoted from includes mention of low sodium, and the recent fashion has been to keep children's diets especially low in sodium.
I thought the reason for keeping babies' diets low in added salt was because their kidneys are not yet developed enough to effectively excrete a surplus, so that extra salt for babies could have more negative side-effects than for older children and adults?
If this is true, I wonder what age one could expect the kidneys to be relevantly mature?
I wonder whether babies sense their own need for salt, and whether salting to their taste would match salting to need?
I kept my kids diet fairly low in added salt for the first couple of years, then relaxed it gradually (don't know if this was good or not). Now they get to salt to taste, and one (the one I suspect has the weaker metabolism) likes quite a lot, while the other (healthier one) usually wants little or none.
 

Spokey

Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2014
Messages
321
A common cause of seizures in babies is they're given a lot of water and no sodium sources.

While too much salt is bad for babies particularly under 6 months, they do require some sodium for brain development and the chloride for stomach acid production. So it makes sense to me to give them small amounts of salt in the form of a light seasoning of home made food (prepackaged products obviously need to be checked they don't contain salt already). That's what we did with ours, and now he's running rings round us. Something of an own goal really.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom