Epilepsy: definition, causes and treatment

Of all the neurological diseases that can affect the human brain, few are as relevant as epilepsy.

It is a disorder that affects about 50 million people worldwide (according to WHO data), it is chronic and it is also one of the brain diseases that produces the highest number of deaths. On the other hand, after strokes and dementias, epilepsy is the most common brain disease.

This is why both since clinical psychology as from neurosciences and the psychiatry Much effort is being made to understand what epilepsy is and how it works.

What is epilepsy?

The term epilepsy is used to designate a disorder in which imbalances in the functioning of the brain cause the so-called epileptic seizures to appear. These seizures are episodes in which large groups of neurons begin to emit electrical discharges of anomalous way, causing the person to lose control of his actions and part or all of the consciousness.

Episodes of this type can last seconds or minutes, and appear unexpectedly regardless of the context in which the person is. Therefore,

what triggers these crises has more to do with the internal dynamics of the nervous system than with what happens around the person, although one thing cannot be totally separated from the other.

Seizures in epileptic seizures

In most cases, during epileptic seizures the person not only loses control over what he does, but also suffers seizures, that is, that many muscles in his body begin to contract and stretch at the same time and repeatedly, causing tremors.

However, even this is not a symptom that defines epilepsy in all its forms (because it can also occur without appearing seizures) nor does it have to do only with this disease, since it is possible to experience a seizure episode with seizures without having epilepsy.

To learn more about what happens in the brain when you experience seizures, you can read this article

Causes of this disorder

The causes of epilepsy are only known at a relatively superficial level., that is, they are only known to occur when a large number of neurons start firing signals at the same time and anomalously, although the details of the biochemical processes that trigger this type of processes.

That is why, more than knowing the reason for epileptic seizures, we know the as of them, which serves to describe them without going into detail. Among the factors that seem to be associated with the onset of epilepsy are:

• Brain tumors.
• Head injuries that leave sequelae.
• Cardiovascular accidents that damage parts of the brain.
• Congenital or genetic brain malformations.
• Meningitis or encephalitis.

These are, therefore, problems that affect an individual brain, and not contagious diseases, from which it follows that epilepsy cannot be contagious or contagious.

In addition, when considering what are the causes of epilepsy, it should be noted that individual differences play a very important role in epilepsy, as each brain is unique. Similarly, there is also great variability in the forms that epilepsy can take, a fact that leads to debate whether there will be, other than a disease called epilepsy, several types of epilepsy with little relationship between Yes.

How is epilepsy diagnosed?

Epilepsy is caused by an abnormal activation pattern of groups of neurons, and therefore to diagnose it you have to see, precisely, how the person's brain works in real time. To achieve this, specialists in the field of neurology will use technologies for reading the brain activity (such as encephalography or EEG) to see how certain parts of the brain are activated brain.

As even in the case of experiencing epilepsy, brain activity can be apparently normal at times when epileptic seizures do not occur, In many cases, it will be necessary to wear a device for a few days that will send signals about the neural activation patterns that it detects..

In addition to this, the health examination may include many other tests, such as lumbar puncture or blood and urine tests, depending on each case.

Possible treatments

As epilepsy is a neurological disease that affects all areas of a person's life, it is very common for the treatments used against it to be invasive. In addition to psychotherapeutic care, they are used to using treatments based on psychotropic drugs and other medicines.

On many occasions, after proving the efficacy of anticonvulsants, surgery may be recommended to isolate or destroy the area of ​​the brain from which it is trigger seizures, or to introduce a device called a vagus nerve stimulator (VNS) into the brain that reduces the frequency of occurrence of seizures crisis.

It should be borne in mind, however, that in many cases the seizures will never go away completely, and only the intensity and frequency of epileptic seizures can be reduced.