What is Epilepsy?
What is Epilepsy?
Blog Article
Epilepsy is a brain disease where nerve cells don’t signal properly, which causes seizures. Seizures are uncontrolled bursts of electrical activities that change sensations, behaviors, awareness and muscle movements. Although epilepsy can’t be cured, many treatment options are available. Up to 70% of people with epilepsy can manage the disease with medications.
Epilepsy is a long-term (chronic) disease that causes repeated seizures due to abnormal electrical signals produced by damaged brain cells. A burst of uncontrolled electrical activity within brain cells causes a seizure. Seizures can include changes to your awareness, muscle control (your muscles may twitch or jerk), sensations, emotions and behavior. Epilepsy is also called a seizure disorder.
The cells in your brain send messages to and receive messages from all areas of your body. These messages are transmitted via a continuous electrical impulse that travels from cell to cell. Epilepsy disrupts this rhythmic electrical impulse pattern. Instead, there are bursts of electrical energy — like an unpredictable lightning storm — between cells in one or more areas of your brain. This electrical disruption causes changes in your awareness (including loss of consciousness), sensations, emotions and muscle movements.
Epilepsy (sometimes referred to as a seizure disorder) can have many different causes and seizure types. Epilepsy varies in severity and impact from person to person and can be accompanied by a range of co-existing conditions. Epilepsy is sometimes called “the epilepsies” because of the diversity of types and causes. Some people may have convulsions (muscles contract repeatedly) and lose consciousness. Others may simply stop what they are doing, have a brief lapse of awareness, and stare into space for a short period. Some people have seizures very infrequently, while other people may experience hundreds of seizures each day.
Anyone can develop epilepsy. It affects both men and women of all races, ethnic backgrounds, and ages.
Epilepsy has many possible causes, but about half of people living with epilepsy do not know the cause. In some cases, epilepsy is clearly linked to genetic factors, developmental brain abnormalities, infection, traumatic brain injury (TBI), stroke, brain tumors, or other identifiable problems. Anything that disturbs the normal pattern of nerve cell activity—from illness to brain damage to brain development problems—can lead to seizures.
Epilepsy may develop because of problems in the brain’s wiring, an imbalance of nerve signaling in the brain (in which some cells are unusually active or stop other brain cells from sending messages), or some combination of these factors. Sometimes, when the brain tries to repair itself after a head injury, stroke, or other problem, it can unintentionally create nerve connection issues that lead to seizures.
In some focal seizures, the person remains conscious during the seizure but may experience motor, sensory, or psychic feelings (for example, intense dejà vu or memories) or sensations. The person may experience sudden and unexplainable feelings of joy, anger, sadness, or nausea. He or she also may hear, smell, taste, see, or feel things that are not real and may have movements of just one part of the body, for example, just one hand.