tampareads |
Last Activity: 05-18-2010 08:37 AM
About Me
- About tampareads
- Seizure Background
- My wife and I are currently allowing a 33 year old friend stay with us who is prone toward seizures. When his parents first requested he stay with us in Ocala, FL he was having about one seizure every 7-10 days. At that time the doctors had him pumped up on Keppra - Depacote and a number of other medications for depression and lord knows what. The amount of pills he was ingesting was incredible to say the least and was doing nothing but keeping the doctors employed and putting smiles on the faces of stock holders. He then went back home and we encouraged his parents to take him off some of these drugs (including the amphetamines) after I located a number of peer review articles showing amphetamines increases the likelihood of seizures. After they weened him off the amphetamines and other meds he came down to live with us again after we moved to North Carolina. He has now gone 18 months without a seizure and is on a very low dose of Keppra. After doing some more research on the history of seizures I found a very interesting fact - The prevalence of seizures has doubled in the past 30 years (prevalence is the percentage of people that have the disorder at any given time). As most of you know, whenever the prevalence of an illness increases dramatically over a few decade period (like autism etc) the finger points dead center at some environmental factors rather than genetic. Sure genetics can predispose an individual but it is things in the environment that pull the trigger. What they are however, is where the detective work comes in. Anyone looking for one cause for seizures won't find it. If you look up the "Blood Brain Barrier" in Wikipedia you'll see that the latest research suggests that seizures can only occur when the blood brain barrier becomes compromised (weakened) thereby allowing glucose and other compounds into the brain cell network at levels much higher than normal. Since this seems to be the consensus of why seizures occur from a physiological rationale, the next question to ask is what causes the blood brain barrier to become weak in the first place. Another question to ask is what has changed in society over the past 30-40-50 years that wasn't there before? These are the questions that need to be answered, and when they are, the likelihood of seizures will diminish dramatically. Our 33 year old friend by the way went to see a neurologist at Duke University in Durham, NC about 3 months ago to have his annual EEG. For the past 25 years that he has had an EEG once a year. On every single occasion they have came back abnormal. However, his last EEG with us came out perfectly normal and shocked his parents and doctor. Coincidence? maybe - maybe not. We have worked our backsides off modifying his environment to take into account this new research on the Blood Brain Barrier. Did we find a cure? That remains to be seen - but one thing for sure, if we are correct that our unique interventions have increased the integrity of the blood brain barrier, thereby resulting in dramatically reduced seizures, then patients will find new hope from what has been in front of us all along. We'll keep you updated.
- Location
- Cocoa Beach, FL