Exploring the Gut-Brain Connection and Photosensitivity

Welcome to the Coping With Epilepsy Forums

Welcome to the Coping With Epilepsy forums - a peer support community for folks dealing (directly or indirectly) with seizure disorders. You can visit the forum page to see the list of forum nodes (categories/rooms) for topics.

Please have a look around and if you like what you see, please consider registering an account and joining the discussions. When you register an account and log in, you may enjoy additional benefits including no ads, access to members only (ie. private) forum nodes and more. Registering an account is free - you have nothing to lose!

Status
Not open for further replies.
kirsten, thanks so much for sharing that! Though I applaud this doctor (and just "liked" her facebook page) for addressing her constipation issue in this way (constipation predicts seizure, by the way), it's readily apparent she is not at all qualified to assess her microbial balance. And I'm sure she would agree. She's making very broad guesses about the data. Of course, she admits to "muddling" in the title.

Based on my limited knowledge, her constipation may stem from an imbalanced Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2180/9/123

She may be eating too much meat causing a rise in Bacteroides while lowering Firmicutes such as clostridia needed to make butyric acid.

She has a vibrio, gram-negative bacterial overgrowth where gram-negative overgrowth is associated with gut diseases such as ulcerative colitis which does cause seizure (all the major gut diseases list seizure as symptom):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22968374

Her mycoplasma overgrowth along with gram-negative overgrowth might be addressed with natural antimicrobials such as wild oregano oil. But she also needs to strengthen her innate immune system naturally (there are several ways to do this).

She hasn't shared the other pages of her Metametrix report which likely reveal co-occuring yeast overgrowth. The organic acid urine test may also reveal yeast overgrowth via measurement of D-arabinitol.

Her prevotella seems in a good range. This Bacteroides bacteria is associated with grain digestion while Bacteroides such as B. fragilis are associated with meat digestion. That's why I'd bet she eats a lot of meat and should consider adding foods high in resistant starch to raise Firmicutes. Many people are now experimenting with potato starch to raise Firmicutes responsible for short chain fatty acids such as butyrate.

But here's the rub: some people have the opposite imbalance, i.e., in autism, where a child may have too much butyrate causing damage. Then, with leaky gut, another short chain fatty acid, propionate, becomes neurotoxic. For them, the ketogenic diet works to raise Bacteroides sch as B. fragilis known helpful in autism (a large percentage of autistic children are also epileptic):
http://www.nature.com/news/bacterium-can-reverse-autism-like-behaviour-in-mice-1.14308

Looking at her Facebook page a few months after this blog, it appears she's on the right path, very much interested in butyric acid!! What a great inspiration she is . . . see her blog here about resistant starch:
http://thehomeschoolingdoctor.com/2013/12/10/butyrate-series-part-6/
 
Last edited:
The title certainly has the word 'muddling' in it but the article itself doesn't come across that way at all--there is a great difference between the 'muddling' of a scientist and the muddling of a layperson. It's highly specific and brings up some very valid points. Given her professional medical background, I'd also say that she's been particularly objective about the test. Generally speaking, Metametrix has found its way onto all the quackery lists I'm aware of, and she's given the test a fair, precise, and scientific overview.

What independent medical trials can you cite about constipation predicting seizures? I Googled around but found nothing.
 
Thanks for the conversation, kirsten. We'll agree to disagree about the blogger's extreme, though well-intentioned guesswork.

Gut origin of seizure is still barely on the map, including the excruciating problem of Infantile Spasm. Neurology treats the disorder from the neck up, so it's not at all surprising we can't find literature linking constipation with seizure. But it was certainly a very real association with my dog. I have no direct experience with it otherwise.

The idea that epilepsy is of gut origin is hardly new. Here's a document from 1916:
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=437159

A few others you may be interested in regarding abdominal epilepsy including TLE:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1856820/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7583284
http://www.ibsgroup.org/forums/topic/91387-temporal-lobe-seizure-and-irritable-bowel-syndrome/
 
Last edited:
On eyes and blue light:

The part of our eyes most sensitive to blue light is a pigment called melanopsin. Apparently, we don't need rods and cones to "see" as melanopsin connects our eyes to our brain's suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), how blind people maintain circadian rhythm and sleep at night. But they can still have problems. Maybe it's the melanopsin cells which rely on glutamate to relay signals to the brain to make melatonin. Melatonin also regulates manufacture of melanin in skin to give you a protective tan and maybe neuromelanin in the brain's dopamine neurons. Melanocyte-stimulating hormones (MSH) from the pituitary gland "stimulate the production and release of melanin (melanogenesis) by melanocytes in skin and hair." If you're a fiery redhead or don't tan well, your body isn't responding to MSH in blood. MSH increases during pregnancy. And what happens when the body has excess glutamate due to intracellular organism interference with the Krebs cycle where microbial transaminases, enzymes such as ALT, cause cells to kick out more endogenous glutamate? That's called immunoexcitotoxicity. Or what if you're enzyme deficient (glutamate dehydrogenase) such that glutamate cannot be deaminated to remove excess nitrogen, so ammonia builds and mitochondria are damaged by intracellular calcium? Neurodegeneration. All these things are catalyzed by vision when blue light hits melanopsin.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2013/618432/
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/07420528.2010.540685
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3877098/
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing....?cited-by=yes&legid=royprsb;280/1759/20122987
 
I think extreme, though well-intentioned guesswork is happening here, regarding constipation as a precursor to seizure. To be fair, in the early 1900s they were also performing trans-orbital lobotomies to cure depression on the basis that patients forgot their worries after doctors sawed through their brains without thought to which areas they were destroying. The medical practices of that era have no bearing on the evidence based medicine of today. Medical science has looked into factors influencing epilepsy other than what happens in the brain, as can be seen through various studies into issues such as the ketogenic diet, high doses of L carnitine and so forth. Unfortunately, your anecdotal experience with your dog is just that--one anecdotal bit of evidence about an animal, not a person. There is a good reason that animal trials are insufficient evidence for human response. Animals do not share our physiology precisely enough to be relied upon in medical matters. Regardless of how real your observation is, science demands a large series of double blind human trials before it makes a statement of such certainty as your own. I'm not trying to be combative. I'm just concerned about those who may be reading a bold statement such as yours unquestioningly. It would be more responsible to say simply that you have noticed that your dog is constipated before it has a seizure. That is all of the truth with nothing added.
 
Constipation is a fairly well-known seizure trigger. Diarrhea is also associated with seizure. There's plenty of discussion about that earlier in this thread.

I completely agree with you about formal studies. Where are the double-blind studies proving these things so that doctors can begin focusing on the gut in epilepsy?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8296557
http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/48/7/849.full
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...ionid=CB2DB7FAB4DC723BD543E277D22037F3.f01t02

There's a reason anticonvulsants are ineffective in such a large percentage of epileptics (over 50%?). They're missing the target.
 
I was referring to your statement about constipation being a precursor to seizure. These studies are about diarrhea; quite a different issue given the presence of fever, possible infection, and electrolyte imbalance. The latter can cause encepalopathy, which clearly could cause seizures, even in those without epilepsy.

If the efficacy of anticonvulsants was 50%, they wouldn't be on the market, since they would not have passed the FDA's barrage of requirements.
 
Last edited:
The point is gut origin of seizure, including photosensitivity, caused by intestinal microbial imbalance.

Here are a few papers about constipation and seizure. Thanks for inspiring research!
http://cpj.sagepub.com/content/37/3/201.extract
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8749.2005.tb01058.x/abstract
http://www.neurology.org/content/61/10/1454.short
http://journals.lww.com/pec-online/...acture,_constipation,_convulsion,_and.16.aspx

Relatedly, have you ever heard about urinary tract infection as cause of dementia?
 
Keith, these articles are about pediatric stool withholding where epilepsy is not present. My comments are related to your statement that constipation is a precursor to seizure in your epileptic dog, and which you then said was true for all who have epilepsy.
 
kirsten, I may have miscommunicated or you've misinterpreted. I've never in this entire thread meant to suggest that "all" epilepsy is caused by gut imbalances. I'm only shining a light on gut origin of seizure because it's obviously severely overlooked by modern medicine. Of course, there are many other causes of epilepsy including brain injury. Meanwhile, there are probably millions of epileptics who may be helped greatly by concentrating on the gut, not the brain.

This includes Infantile Spasm, babies born with an imbalanced gastrointestinal tract beginning in the womb while modern science still widely believes the fetal GI tract is sterile, a myth without a lick of evidence. And then we have the nerve to vaccinate newborns within 12 hours of birth without knowing anything about collateral damage to flora balance by vaccination. There are no comprehensive studies about collateral damage to flora balance by vaccination.

By definition, epilepsy is idiopathic, meaning unknown cause. If one knows the cause, i.e., constipation due to imbalanced flora, then it's no longer considered epilepsy.
 
Last edited:
The point I am trying to highlight is your statement that, "constipation predicts seizure, by the way." The reason I'm doing so is because there is a lot of fear among those of us with epilepsy. Having a seizure is traumatic, and fear of seizure is common, particularly in the early stages of diagnosis. I didn't want to leave the statement unchallenged in case other readers took it at face value and became fearful about something unnecessary.

Epilepsy isn't idiopathic by definition. I, for example, have focal epilepsy. They have very much traced what is causing my seizures, where the focus is and why it is there. That they know what the cause is does not mean it is no longer considered epilepsy. There is also cryptogenic, symptomatic, generalized, and partial epilepsy. Some patients do have idiopathic epilepsy, but it is believed that there is a strong genetic element in these cases.
 
Fair enough and thanks for the education. I certainly would never want to cause alarm or stress. But I firmly believe that if people, especially doctors, learned about the gut-brain-eye axis, many people suffering idiopathic epilepsy (and perhaps TLE and other forms of epilepsy) would be helped. Many neurologists still believe the brain controls the gut, never considering how the gut may control the brain . . . and eyes. It's a two-way street.

Was there something in particular making you curious about preictal GI symptoms? Have you experienced something like this quote?

"The most common aura is of vague gastric distress, ascending up into the chest"
http://www.meridianinstitute.com/abepilep.htm

By the way, I'm far from expert and just learning aloud here with intent to help.
 
Where in the brain the seizure is doesn't relate to the categories of epilepsy I gave you earlier. They are two different subsets. So, to clarify, I have focal temporal lobe epilepsy. It's focal because there is a focus. It's temporal lobe epilepsy because the focus is in the temporal lobe. It radiates into the occipital lobe in partial seizures and generalises in tonic clonic seizures. These categories refer to where the altered electrical activity happens and where they begin.

I came upon your posts because they were in the sunshine and seizures thread. I won't say I have a particular interest in GI symptoms. I was just curious enough to start looking into what you were saying.

The quotation you've offered comes from a doctor in the 1940s--not the best time for medicine. Today's trials rather point out that "The main [pre-ictal] symptoms reported are headache and dysphoria." http://clairepetitmengin.fr/AArticles versions finales/Epilepsy and Behavior.pdf

From these forums, you'd also find that most of us report auditory and visual disturbances, and strange smells.
 
That 2006 paper uses a word I was not associated with: epigastric.

The word is used three times in Table 2
Facilitating factors, prodromes, and auras

http://www.uofmmedicalcenter.org/healthlibrary/Article/116731EN

Also used once is the word "stomach":
She also described brief phenomena corresponding to the aura that generally occurred 30 seconds before the loss of consciousness:
There’s this headache: a circle in front of me down to the cervix, which presses in all around the head. Then a feel- ing of heat inside my body which rises from my stomach to my head.
Click to expand...

By the way, kirsten, you're brilliant; I love your writing. And I totally agree with what you've said about the 1940s, but feel the 1950s were even worse. Still, I always find nuggets of truth in old papers.
 
Last edited:
Yes, I picked up that word too and found out it refers to the anterior abdominal walls.

Thanks for the compliment. You are keeping my curiosity satisfied while I take time off work.
 
When I was looking for the meaning of epigastric I noticed that there were some definitions that contradicted others, so I tried to find out why. Lots of lay sites refer to general abdominal regions but when it's being spoken of in medical terms, it refers directly to the epigastrus, which is a specific area that doesn't include the organs themselves. I think the confusion comes in where people confuse the stomach with the abdomen.
 
OK, we're in deep now, thanks for the anatomy lesson. Perfunctory research reveals epigastric veins and arteries which I believe connect the organs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_epigastric_artery
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bjs.18004015920/abstract
http://www.ecco-jccjournal.org/article/S1873-9946(12)00301-7/abstract

Perhaps most pertinent (and I never say pertinent) to the discussion is how intimately associated the epigastric "system" is with the vagus nerve:
http://aan.sagepub.com/content/9/4/342.full

I've read the small intestine contains the most innervation of the entire body; we've talked about it earlier in this thread, I believe. This looks like quite a thesis:
http://www.tipharma.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Theses/PDF/Esmerij_van_der_Zanden_T1-215.pdf

With my dog, I thought a lot about intestinal irritation of nerves resulting in seizure due to infection. I had to be very careful about diet based on possibility of mechanical issues/irritants:
http://www.hindawi.com/isrn/gastroenterology/2013/630159/

When doctors wanted to do MRI and spinal tap, I ordered endoscopy and confirmed her problem which looked like pseudomembranous colitis (clostridium overgrowth), though the vets were unqualified to diagnose their own work and biopsies were inconclusive.
 
Last edited:
Keith said:
Perfunctory research reveals epigastric veins and arteries which I believe connect the organs:



Perhaps most pertinent (and I never say pertinent) to the discussion is how intimately associated the epigastric "system" is with the vagus nerve:
http://aan.sagepub.com/content/9/4/342.full
Click to expand...

The epigastric vein travels along the anterior abdominal wall. It doesn't connect to organs in the GI tract.

http://books.google.co.za/books?id=...ed=0CDIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=epigastric&f=false


Your source here refers to a poorly placed chest implant that was incorrectly but directly stimulating the actual vagas nerve. You're aware that the vagus nerve is between the chest and neck (the epigastric region)? I'm wondering how you find that this has anything to do with the actual epigastrus, or the GI tract?

As far as the vagus nerve contributing to the innervation of organs, that function is parasympathetic. Epilepsy can certainly cause parasympathetic problems with digestion and a number of other related problems such as blood pressure and temperature irregularities, but you've not proven the opposite: that digestion can cause problems with the parasympathetic nervous system, or, for that matter, seizures.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom