Questions about night seizures

[Pinkattitude]

Does anyone have more information about night seizures? I have gone through periods where I wake up and know I have had many seizures during the night - and I can feel that my sleep was awful. My husband confirms that he's seen me do the same arm/hand waving in my sleep as I do during a seizure during the day. I don't know what the trigger could be for having multiples seizures at night. Seems like everything should be fine and relaxed then.

 

[KaySara]

I have seizures during my sleep and I believe it is stress brings them on at night. Next day I feel so tired and miserable even though I would not have awoken the whole night.

 

[Bernard]

It was explained to me that the brain transitions through several different patterns when you sleep. For some people, the brain doesn't transition correctly or smoothly. This was an issue my wife had at one point that was corrected with EEG neurofeedback.

Another possibility is that sleep apnea is preventing you from getting proper sleep. Is your husband aware if you snore at all?

Stress is also a major seizure trigger for most people. If you are having stressful dreams, that might be a possibility? Don't know if it would help, but you might try sleeping with some "white noise" or pleasant background music and see if it helps keep you calm or stress free.

 

[MaryK]

Thanks Bernard. I too had a night seizure a few days ago. I woke up almost completely on my face with fist pushing upper lip, hurt/red for a few days after and could not even begin to function the next day.

 

[masterjen]

I have nocturnal seizures. I live alone and as far as I know they always wake me up at some point. If they were mild, I wake up in the AM feeling fine but if severe I have the typical post-seizure after-effects that take most of the day to recover from. Initially I was diagnosed with a nocturnal paroxysmal movement disorder, specifically nocturnal dystonia, by a general neurologist. Eventually I got in to see an epileptologist and various tests determined they were in fact seizures. So something you may want to investigate, or have your neurologist rule out for you, is a nocturnal paroxysmal movement disorder. They, too, can be triggered by stress and phase of sleep you are in. Apparently these nocturnal paroxysmal movement disorders can mimic frontal lobe seizures, and the two are sometimes not easy to distinguish.

 

[valeriedl]

This is kind of odd because my very first seizure was when I was asleep. It was a tonic clonic and I woke my boyfriend (at the time) up because the bed was shaking like crazy.

I don't think I've had one in my sleep since. My boyfriend that I was with then slept in the same bed after I was diagnosed with epilepsy and he never said anything about me having them, only when I was awake.

My husband and I did sleep in the same bed. Had to stop though because he snores too bad and I'm a bed hog, plus our sleep schedules are different. He never said anything about me having any type of seizure when I was asleep - unless being a bed hog counts as a seizure? I sleep in my own bed now so I don't know if I'm having them or not. But I don't think that I am.

I very rarely have tonic clonics now, maybe once or twice a year. But when I was first diagnosed I had to be put in a coma for a few weeks because they couldn't get the seizures to stop. Even from the start after I left the hospital they were only partials, except as I said the very few TC's I'd have a year.