** Life with epilepsy nr.2 - The Falling Sickness **

Last couple of weeks, I was thinking a lot about how people are aware of epilepsy, and after a bit of asking around, I came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be bad to write something about it. People know what epilepsy is, but most of them know just the basics, like the person starts to shake and some would react wrongly, for example, they thing putting something between the teeth and holding the person down would help, but that's just wrong.

So, I decided it's time to tell something about this disease. Educational or not, maybe will this help someday.

The Falling sickness

It has been around for thousands of years, but not so long ago, they actually started to understand it.
3000 years ago, the Babylonians already wrote about the symptoms and causes of epilepsy. They believed that seizures were caused by bad spirits attacking the person. Different spirits were thought to cause the different kinds of seizures. In the Ancient Greece the most of population believed that epilepsy was brought by the goddess Selene because you offended her. They were convinced, that if you've slept in her temple overnight, the god Asclepius would appear in your dreams and cure you. But then again, there was some smart thinking people to. For example Hippocrates. He believed that everything has a natural cause and that the diet, lifestyle and medicine is the right way to cure the sickness. Unfortunately it's still not curable, but maybe with time they will find something out.
In the Middle Ages believed that epilepsy came from demons, and was contagious by touching the person with it, but if this would happened, people would spit to get rid of the demon. Since they thought epilepsy was contagious, people with this disease would have to live alone. They were also lock in the mental hospital if the seizures were to strong.
With the time came other idea and some people started believed that people with epilepsy are prophets, because they should see the past, present and the future during the attacks. I’m not sure if that is true but because of my déjà vu every time before the attack, I will just say, maybe something is there. 😊

In America in the 1920's and in Germany in the time of the Hitler, people with epilepsy were not allowed to marry or to have children. They were given an operation to prevent them from ever having children.
The modern understanding of how the epilepsy work, was laid in the 19th century with the proposal by Hughlings Jackson (1873), a London neurologist, that seizures were the result of sudden brief electro-chemical discharges of energy in the brain.
During the 1920s, Hans Berger, a psychiatrist, has developed the human electroencephalograph (EEG "brainwaves"). This was an important acquisition for the study of epilepsy. "The EEG revealed the presence of the electrical discharges in the brain. It also showed different patterns of brainwave discharges associated with different seizure types." ( Hans Berger)
Over time, the understanding of epilepsy has become clearer. They have begun to develop medicines.

What is epilepsy
They still don't know the exact cause why epilepsy occurs, but with a lot of testing and so many modern devices, they understand this disease more and more.

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological diseases. It’s a chronic disorder and affect people of all ages. It is a disease in which, due to sudden abnormal activity of brain cells (neurons), seizures occur. That’s shown in different ways, depending on where the brain's brain activity has occurred. If an epileptic seizure occurs only once, this does not mean that person have epilepsy. I wasn't diagnosed with epilepsy until the third attack occurred.
The epilepsy is characterized by the fact that seizures are repeated.
Depending on the cause of the formation, epilepsy is first classified into those species in which the cause of the disease is unknown or suspected of a particular cause with the exception of heredity. That is idiopathic epilepsy. The second group is the one in which the cause of the disease is known. This type is called symptomatic epilepsy. Those can include head injury, brain damage at birth, brain infection, stroke, tumor, chronic consumption of medicines, alcohol, drugs... The next group (cryptogenic epilepsy) is the one in which we suspect on a specific cause, but we can't confirm it, jet.

We have different type of seizures

The epileptic seizures are very different, from a short interruption of attention and muscle spasms to the to severe cramps of certain parts of the body or the entire body and black out. Some patients may have less than one attack a year, others several times a day. So far, more than 30 different types of attacks have been described, which are very different from one another. Rhythmic shaking, muscle cramps, temporary memory loss, eye blinking, muscle tension, automatic behaviour (swallowing, senseless movements of the hands or even seemingly targeted activity) and loss of consciousness.

Epileptic seizures can be divided into two large groups.

• Focal seizures: in which is affected only a limited part of the brain
• Generalized seizures: the disorder captures most of the brain or all of the brain at the beginning of the attack

Epilepsy is mostly treated with anti-epileptic pills. The goal of treatment is to achieve a state without attacks and without adverse effects. Therefore, to achieve the condition that you will be able to live peacefully and without fear that the seizure will occur, while driving a car.

http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/epilepsy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epilepsy
https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/falling+sickness

Of course, here is also the alternative ways to soothe, or in many cases to stop the seizures. I'm discovering a lot of things, like CBD oil and cannabis resin, meditation, ketogenic diet and very important, I’m learning how to avoid everyday stress or how to control it.
I was trying to be without the pills and I started with alternative treatment, but the seizures repeated. I’m not quitting, I’m just taking the prescriptions pills too.

I need to say that meditation and yoga really helped to reduce my stress and lately I'm so much more relaxed. Stress is everywhere, I just need to learn how to live with it.

You can live a normal life and that’s important! ☺️☺️

How my attack start. When I get up in the morning, I have a strange feeling in my chest. It's not pain, it's more like an anxious feeling. Then my head starts to hurt, and the déjà vu starts to appear over time. A few minutes before the attacks, I look at the distance and I’m not reacting. Then I lose consciousness and start shaking all over the body. The attack lasts about a minute and repeats several times. In my case, you need to call first aid. I can’t remember stuff that happens few minutes or hours before or after the attack.

If you want to know how my seizures started, check here: https://steemit.com/health/@tinabrezpike/life-with-epilepsy-nr-2-how-it-all-started

Questions and comments are always welcome :)

I need to say it was educational for me too, so I hope it helped to understand this disease a little bit more. Till next time!❤️

with love, @tinabrezpike ❤️