While most people have heard of Epilepsy or know someone with epilepsy, the average person is left with the impression that there is only one type of seizure or Epilepsy. Furthermore, most people think that all seizure disorders or occurrences are Epilepsy. Only a doctor can make an official diagnosis of Epilepsy.

It wasn't long ago, that a person having a seizure would be described as having a "fit." Even as late as the early to mid 70's people were institutionalized for seizure disorders such as epilepsy. Epilepsy treatments and medications have made some major breakthroughs since then.

Epilepsy Research

Epilepsy is a neurological condition that affects the nervous system. It is also known as a seizure disorder, because a person suffering from epilepsy has seizures. It is diagnosed when a person has two or more seizures that were not caused by some known medical condition such as alcohol withdrawal or extremely low blood sugar. There has been extensive research done on the causes and symptoms of epilepsy in order to formulate treatment methods.

In epilepsy patients, the normal working pattern of the neuron is disturbed. This makes the patients behave in a strange way. Sometimes, patients suffer from convulsions, muscle spasms and loss of consciousness, and the frequency of epileptic attacks may vary from one patient to another.

It is estimated that over two million people in the U.S have been diagnosed with epilepsy. In the majority of patients, epilepsy can be controlled with modern medicines and surgical techniques. However, about twenty percent of the patients experience seizures even after treatment. These cases are called "Intractable epilepsy."

Epileptic Types

Epilepsy is a neurological condition that affects the nervous system. There are many different types of epilepsy. Each epileptic syndrome is characterized by a specific set of symptoms. Epilepsy is known to be hereditary in some cases. Epilepsy is classified by symptoms or by the position in the brain where the symptoms originate. Some common types of epilepsy are absence epilepsy, psychomotor epilepsy, temporal lobe epilepsy, frontal lobe epilepsy, occipital lobe epilepsy and parietal lobe epilepsy. There are many other types of epilepsy, each with its own characteristic set of symptoms.

People suffering from absence epilepsy have repeated absence seizures that result in momentary lapses of consciousness. These seizures almost always begin in childhood or adolescence. This form of epilepsy tends to run in families, which suggests that it may be partially due to a defective gene or genes.

Temporal lobe epilepsy, or TLE, is a common epilepsy syndrome with partial seizures. TLE often begins in childhood. Research has shown that repeated TLE could cause certain brain structures to shrink over time. While it may take years of temporal lobe seizures for any significant brain damage to occur, it needs to be treated early and as effectively as possible.

Treatments

Gabapentin and Pregabalin both of which are anticonvulsants can be used for chronic pain (especially migraines and neuropathy). They include drugs with very different modes of action, but are also effective for sleeping problems, anxiety and depression.

They can also relieve fatigue, flu-like symptoms, cognitive dysfunction, neurological symptoms, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), bladder problems, restless legs, muscle tension and multiple chemical sensitivity. Their ability to tackle many symptoms at once has made them one of the most important drugs in the treatment of CFS/ME.

Because anticonvulsants work by different mechanisms, their side effects vary too - obviously these depend on the individual and some people do not get any side effects. The older ones can very rarely cause liver problems and other severe reactions. On the other hand, the newer ones are more prone to causing sedation.
Headaches, dizziness and vision impairment are common side effects. Some anticonvulsants can cause weight gain, but a few (topiramate, vigabatrin and zonisamide) may lead to weight loss.