Epilepsy (illness falling): causes and treatment

In the world there are a huge number of diseases, some of them have been known to medicine for many centuries, such as a falling disease or, as it is called by physicians, epilepsy. This disease has long been of interest to scientists, they are working on creating a cure for it, but so far their efforts have not been crowned with success. But what is this disease, who is at risk?

Epilepsy: what is this disease

Fall epilepsy is a chronic form of the disease, which manifests itself in the form of seizures and seizures, repeated regularly and accompanied by loss of consciousness and personality changes. This pathology is an occasion to give a person a disability.

This disease is known for a long time, many medical treatises from Egyptian priests, Tibetan healers, Arab healers could find records that they had long observed the condition of patients with symptoms of epilepsy, but they could not cure such patients. According to statistics, 5 people are sick for 1000 people.

Causes of the disease

Falling disease is a very controversial pathology, especially if you look at the causes of it. Precisely, whether the disease is inherited, it is impossible, but in almost half of the patients, after the questioning, relatives with such symptoms of the disease were found in the family.

To provoke the onset of pathology, there are other reasons:

• Craniocerebral trauma;
• Pathologies caused by parasites and viruses, including meningitis;
• Failures in the blood circulation of the brain, and, as a consequence, oxygen starvation;
• A tumor of the brain.

Alas, but until now it is still impossible to specify the causes of convulsions in this or that patient. Every person who has such a diagnosis (falling sickness), the symptoms manifest themselves in different ways. In one patient, the attack can be severe and he needs help, while in others he can go unnoticed. But how to recognize the attack, what signs and symptoms should make the first aid?

Signs of epilepsy

You can determine seizures by several types:

• Partial or focal seizures. They manifest themselves in the form of failures in the sensory and motor functions, and this confirms that the focus of pathology is in the brain. The attack begins most often with the twitching of one part of the body: the legs, hands or corner of the mouth, and in just a few seconds this condition can spread all over the body, and the person loses consciousness.
• Complex partial seizures. They also start suddenly, but patients lose consciousness and contact with the outside world, do not control themselves and for a long time come to their senses without even realizing immediately what happened to them. They may have hallucinations, anxiety, they can dream of something that is not really there. But not all patients have very pronounced symptoms, the attack can take place in an easy form, and it can be noticed by slurred speech or wrong swallowing.
• Tonic-clonic seizures. They are very strong, affect the cortex of the brain. Disease falling in the form of this kind of attack begins with the fact that a person seems to freeze with an open mouth, eyes and stands like a graven image. Then the sharp contraction of the muscles of the breath begins, the jaws contract sharply, and the tongue bites, the patient does not control the urination. So tonic seizures appear, they last only 20 seconds, and then they are replaced by clonic ones, and cramps begin all over the body. But they last only a couple of minutes, and then the patient falls into a dream and, waking up, does not remember anything, only sometimes a tongue-tucked tongue can tell that there was an attack.
• Absence is a small fit, which lasts only a few seconds, it is not immediately possible to determine it, as the patient can notice the twitching of only some parts of the body.

Seizures occur in each patient, but what exactly they will be, will not be predicted in advance.

Who can face epilepsy?

It is impossible to say that epilepsy occurs in people who lead an incorrect lifestyle or do not follow their health. This disease is often found in someone you can not even think of, for example, the falling sickness of Hillary Clinton. Attacks she had a different form. Many doctors have been looking for a cure that will help her get rid of the pathology, but only slightly reduced the number of seizures and their intensity.

People with different levels of life and age are at risk:

• Patients in whom the brain is affected by various infections or vascular pathologies;
• People with abnormal brain development;
• If the family had patients with this diagnosis;
• Patients whose activities are associated with frequent brain trauma;
• Patients after 60 years, because they have weakened immunity and have problems with the vessels of the brain;
• Children under 12 years, because they often fall, injuring their head, are prone to infectious diseases, such as measles or chicken pox.

Epilepsy in children

Very often children after infectious diseases or serious injuries frighten parents with their bouts. If they were single, it is not yet a diagnosis, but when 3-4 attacks were seen with a certain periodicity, in this case you need to sound an alarm and urgently go to the doctor to confirm the diagnosis (falling sickness) or to refute it.

Child epilepsy is very different from the adult.

In newborns, tonic seizures are due to the predominant functioning of certain parts of the brain. But do not immediately sound the alarm, because they are very easy to be confused with motor activity.

Attacks in children under 5 years of age are manifested in the form of involuntary clasping of the hands to the chest, sharp straightening of the legs and tilt the body forward. It is noted that seizures occur more often in the morning after awakening and last only a couple of seconds. By the age of 6, seizures can stop or grow into a more serious form.

In 7-15 years, most often children develop clonic seizures. They lose consciousness, they are tormented by nightmares, frequent headaches, short-term loss of speech. But you do not need to make a diagnosis yourself, you have to undergo a check-up and determine exactly - a falling disease in a child or another disease.

Diagnosis of epilepsy

The diagnosis is made to the patient only in the event that 3-4 attacks were seen, except for this, it is necessary to exclude the presence of other pathologies that can cause such a condition.

Most often, teenagers and elderly people are affected by epilepsy. People of middle age are smaller, but they also have seizures. If you take a closer look, they are often the result of strokes or head injuries.

To make an accurate diagnosis, it is recommended to undergo a complete examination:

• laboratory research;
• MRI of the brain;
• CT of the brain;
• ECHO and other types of diagnostics, which will appoint a doctor.

Only after passing through all the studies the doctor can make an accurate diagnosis and prescribe medications that will help relieve seizures and make them less frequent.

Treatment of epilepsy

The beginning of treatment of a patient with a diagnosis of "falling sick" begins with the taking of medications. Treatment is long, the first course can be delayed for two years, and afterwards you will need to take medication regularly. More often complex treatment consists of reception of such medical products:

• Anticonvulsant - "Depakon", "Depaken" or "Depakot".
• Barbiturates - "Phenobarbital", "Primidon", these drugs recommend to patients with tonic-clonic seizures, but these are most often for children - "Ethosuximide", "Metsuximid."
• Clonazepam is recommended for myoclonic and atonic seizures.
• "Lamotrigine", "Gabapentin" - are recommended for children aged 2 years and older and in adults as a supplement to the main therapy with partial seizures.
• "Pregabalin" is an additional treatment for the onset of partial seizures in adults with epilepsy.
• "Zonisamide" is recommended as part of complex therapy for adults with partial seizures.

Basically, all patients tolerate treatment well and can take the same drugs for about 5-10 years. But you can combine therapy with the recipes of traditional medicine.

Epilepsy: treatment with folk methods

There are many folk recipes, effective for patients who are diagnosed with "falling sickness". Treatment with folk remedies should be lengthy, only in this case one can notice serious changes. There are many complex recipes for broths, where there are several types of herbs, and there are simple, but no less effective. So, it is recommended to apply such compositions on a daily basis, and the seizures become rare and non-intensive:

• Before each meal, you need to drink 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed onion juice.
• Three times a day you need to drink a tincture of valerian, children the number of drops corresponds to the age, and the adult 30-40 drops.
• Every morning on an empty stomach it is necessary to eat a kernel from an apricot kernel, their quantity should correspond to age of the patient. The course of admission is three months, after - the month of the break, and repeat the course.

But apart from treatment by popular methods, many also resort to the help of the church. If you talk with the priest, he will tell you that there is a prayer for a fall illness, with epilepsy it is read twice a day. Believers believe that only God can help them cure such a disease.

Plots for epilepsy

Conspiracy from a fall illness is also often used in the treatment of people, because relatives try to resort to any of the methods to help relieve suffering:

• You need to take bread crumb, make a ball out of it and roll it around the chest, hands and feet of a patient with epilepsy, then take this ball to the intersection and say: "Holy is the goodness, take the bread and salt, and forgive the servant of God (name)."
• Also using the crumb of bread, and rolling it all over the patient's body, say these words: "I roll out, pronounce and cross, enviable and joyful, with a violent head, with a ruddy face, bones, brains, liver, lungs, zealous Heart, with white hands, with quick feet pure words. "

Despite the fact that the most effective medicine that could cope with epilepsy does not exist, but there are a lot of drugs with which you can ease the patient's condition, improve the quality of his life, reduce the frequency of recurrence of attacks. Do not self-medicate and self-diagnose. Only an expert has the right to do this.