By Catriona Rigney,Yasmin Vince
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Gemma Atkinson has revealed that her six year old daughter Mia has been diagnosed with epilepsy after suffering absence seizures.
Former Hollyoaks and Emmerdale actress Gemma has two children, Mia and son Thiago, two, with her Strictly Come Dancing pro fiance Gorka Marquez. Gemma explained on her Just As Well, The Women’s Health Podcast that daughter Mia was experiencing loss of awareness and zoning out and as a result, is now receiving treatment for epilepsy.
According to the NHS, Epilepsy is a condition that affects your brain and causes seizures (sometimes called fits). It cannot currently be cured, but treatment can often help manage it. One type of seizure is an absence seizure, where you lose awareness of what’s going on around you.
“My daughter is under treatment for epilepsy,” Gemma said in the podcast. “She has the absence seizures, she doesn’t fit or anything, it’s just a stare out and they’ve got so much better, a year in.”
Gemma added that she went down a research “rabbit hole” when she heard the diagnosis. “When I was told that I was like, ‘right I need to research, research, research’ and I went down a rabbit hole.”
A doctor recommended putting Mia on a keto diet. Gemma explained: “The keto diet was designed for patients with epilepsy because it re-wires their brain function. The doctor told me, ‘If you can get her on a keto diet, it could help with brain function’. The improvement that we’ve had, I mean we’re constantly monitoring but the last six months she’s had none, touch wood.”
Gemma also spoke about when the keto diet first started being used as treatment for epilepsy. She said it began in the 1930s, but that the doctor who found it worked lost all his notes in a fire, setting the research back.
“It was given to epilepsy patients back in the day, in the 1930s it was discovered and it really helped all of the symptoms and everything went down,” she said. “But then the doctor who discovered this, his hospital miraculously got burnt down, with all the research and everything.”
Gemma met her fiancé and the father of her children, Gorka, when she was on Strictly Come Dancing in 2017. The former actress was partnered with Aljaz Skorjanec and they got to the final, alongside Gorka and his partner Alexandra Burke. Since then, Gemma has appeared on the Strictly Christmas Special to dance with her partner.
The two got engaged in February 2021 but have revealed they want to wait until their son is older before tying the knot. They told the Express: “We’ve toyed about doing it in Spain, so his family can come, and we’ve even thought about doing it in a registry office or a hotel in Manchester, just the two of us, and then have a big party after.
“But I think now we want to wait until Thiago is a bit older, so maybe next year or the year after, as he’s only two. If he’s a bit older, he could be involved in it, which would be really nice.”
