Monday, January 18, 2010

What is epilepsy, how to control it through non medicinal methods?

Controlling seizures caused by epilepsy requires a daily commitment to following your treatment plan. If you are using antiepileptic medicine, you must take your medicine exactly as prescribed. Not following the treatment plan is one of the main reasons why medicines fail to control seizures.





Antiepileptic medicines will work only if the right medicine level is maintained in your body. Your doctor will set up a schedule of medicine dosages that maintains the proper medicine levels in your body. Missing one or more doses can throw the whole system off.





The same rule about following your treatment plan applies if you or your child is on a special ketogenic diet. The ketogenic diet can be hard to stick to but must be followed exactly.





In addition to following your treatment plan, try to identify and avoid things that may make you more likely to have a seizure, such as:





* Not getting enough sleep.


* Using drugs or alcohol.


* Being emotionally stressed.


* Skipping meals.





If you continue to have seizures despite treatment, keep a record of any seizures you have. Note the date, time of day, and any details about the seizure that you can remember. Your doctor can use information about your seizures to plan or adjust your medicine or other treatment. If you have not been diagnosed with epilepsy, a record of your seizures can help your doctor determine whether you might have epilepsy and what kinds of seizures you are having.





Epilepsy


Any of various neurological disorders characterized by sudden recurring attacks of motor, sensory, or psychic malfunction with or without loss of consciousness or convulsive seizures.What is epilepsy, how to control it through non medicinal methods?
What is epilepsy and how is it diagnosed?


Having a single seizure does not mean a person has epilepsy; diagnostic tests such as EEGs and brain scans are commonly used to determine whether the seizure was epilepsy-related.4





Broadly speaking, epilepsy is a disruption in normal neuron patterns. When the brain鈥檚 nerve cells signal abnormally, they can cause strange sensations and emotions as well as convulsions, seizures, spasms鈥攅ven loss of consciousness.4 Normal neuron activity can be disrupted by many things, including illness and abnormal brain development or brain damage.4





What causes epilepsy?


Epilepsy has no single cause. The electrical events that cause abnormal brain function are usually not identifiable鈥攖hey can be caused by head injuries, tumors, lack of oxygen during birth, lead poisoning, early brain development and brain infections such as meningitis or encephalitis. The severity of the damage, its location and duration also may be significant.5What is epilepsy, how to control it through non medicinal methods?
Good job, Amy.





Right now, there are no cures for epilepsy. I would love to hear about non-medicinal ways to control seizures since my daughter suffers from absence seizures, which are tiny seizures that occur hundreds of times a day. Without her medication, she would be zoning out so many times during the day, that she wouldn't be able to learn!

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