Column rips Netflix film on ketogenic diet

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It explores the controversial ketogenic diet and its apparent potential to eradicate common chronic illnesses like autism.

It argues that the modern diet is to blame for such diseases and therefore, changing what you eat can cure illness.

The Magic Pill presents a number of examples to prove its case, including a young girl who suffers autism but experiences a miraculous improvement in her symptoms when she improves her eating habits.

Before she switched to the high-fat, low-carb diet, Abigail’s meals consisted entirely of processed chicken fingers, goldfish cracker biscuits and artificially flavoured apple.

After, her parents say her bowel movements improved and she was able to concentrate thanks to the more nutritious food she consumed.

Well, no s**t.

Healthy eating improves the way your body functions and the way you feel. No one is disputing that or saying it’s a bad thing, and anyone encouraging Australians – among the most obese in the world – to ditch bad habits should be praised.

Where I have a problem with the almost evangelical tone of this film is what happens next.

Abigail’s parents are so unquestionably impressed with the results that they decide to stop giving her medically prescribed and vital anti-seizure medication.

They do this without consulting their doctor – a trained specialist – and instead rely on the diet.

The Australian Medical Association has criticised the film, with the body’s president Michael Gannon declaring it “dangerous”.

“The idea that a high-fat diet can change a child’s behaviour in a month is just so patently ridiculous,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “And yet the reality is the parents of autistic children are so desperate they will reach for anything.”

The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that in medicine is used primarily to treat difficult-to-control (refractory) epilepsy in children. The diet forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. Normally, the carbohydrates contained in food are converted into glucose, which is then transported around the body and is particularly important in fueling brain-function. However, if there is little carbohydrate in the diet, the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies. The ketone bodies pass into the brain and replace glucose as an energy source. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the blood, a state known as ketosis, leads to a reduction in the frequency of epileptic seizures.Almost half of children, and young people, with epilepsy who have tried some form of this diet saw the number of seizures drop by at least half, and the effect persists even after discontinuing the diet.[2] There is some evidence that adults with epilepsy may benefit from the diet, and that a less strict regimen, such as a modified Atkins diet, is similarly effective. The most common adverse effect is constipation, affecting about 30% of patients—this was due to fluid restriction, which was once a feature of the diet, but this led to increased risk of kidney stones and is no longer considered beneficial.