What we do
BACKGROUND
Epilepsy affects 1% of ALL CHILDREN in the UK. 25% of those children do not respond to conventional medications and continue to suffer multiple seizures day in, day out.
Tragically this 25% also have a high association with disability, learning difficulties and behavioural problems, which have a major impact on their lives as well as those of their families, which obviously has a knock on effect as this children grow into adulthood.
WHAT ARE DIETARY TREATMENTS FOR EPILEPSY?
The Ketogenic Diet is a high fat diet designed to mimic starvation and it has been used for the treatment of epilepsy for over 80 years. It is a very strict diet and has to be medically managed.
It is not a ‘fad diet’ or an ‘alternative’ or ‘complimentary’ therapy.
Clinical trials conducted at Great Ormond Street Hospital have proven conclusively how effective the ketogenic Diet can be in controlling childhood epilepsies and this success has prompted a resurgence of interest in this area. This revived interest has led to other dietary treatments like “Low Glycemic Index Treatment” and “Modified Atkins Diet” also being used to effectively treat epilepsy in children and Adults.
Despite the overwhelming evidence as to the success of these dietary treatments, there is a significant lack of trained professionals in this area and as a result patients are still subject to very long waiting lists and ‘post code lotteries’. It is not fair that these patients cannot gain access to the treatment they need and this is where Matthew’s Friends comes in.
WHERE DOES YOUR MONEY GO?
Your money enables us to:
- Raise awareness of these diets as effective treatments for childhood epilepsy.
- Support, Educate & Train parents, carers, children and patients once on the diet, through our website, online forum, 24 hour helpline, and family conferences;
- Support, Educate & Train health professionals through the organisation of meetings, seminars and conferences in the UK and globally, with the aim of ensuring these diets are managed effectively;
- Provide Information to patients and families to allow them to make an informed choice of treatments available.
- Fund research into the efficacy of the diets so as clinical evidence is available to the sceptics, which will ultimately ensure these diets are made more widely available to all those who need them;
- Fund individual patients through the first 3-6 months of the diet in areas where it is not currently available.
(This will usually be enough time to tell whether the diet will prove effective in controlling their seizures)
THE FUTURE
We want to continue with all the work we are doing and we also want to expand our 'funding programme' so that more families don’t have to wait years to get the appropriate medical treatment for their child – watching them enduring more drug side effects, more seizures and more brain damage.
We want to set up a national training program for dietary treatments for epilepsy, and ultimately we aim to open a Matthews Friends Centre which will be the first "centre of excellence" of its kind, and will allow us to offer these treatments to many more patients. We cannot do any of this without your help…
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
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