Epilepsy – Prevention

Transcript

So there are some major triggers for seizures that everybody should be aware of. There are specifically, three big ones, actually. One: stress. Stress is the universal trigger for actually everything neurological frankly, but especially epilepsy. And it’s tough because stress is such an individual sort of problem, you know, what’s stressful to you might not be what’s exactly stressful to me. But stress as a general rule is an absolute trigger for seizures. So I recommend my patients find ways to sort of manage their stress, find techniques that work well for them. If it’s seeing a counselor to help work on relaxation techniques, do it, it’s important. Sleep deprivation, a big one. You know, my recommendation is that people try to get what is whatever is regular for them. If they don’t know, then shoot for about eight hours a night. Now, you know, I’ve got some lucky folks who, you know, lived on six hours of sleep a night and that’s what they need. Fine. Whatever works well for you, just get it on a regular basis and you want to have a relatively regular sleep cycle. You know, what is really hard on my epilepsy patients on someone who switches, you know, from night shifts, two days of the week, and then daytime, you know, the other days those switches for epilepsy patients is a really hard, and it can be a big trigger for seizures. And then last is alcohol use alcohol itself is it lowers your seizure threshold and then can provoke seizures. And so I recommend my epilepsy patients abstain from alcohol as much as possible.