Good morning, everyone! Ever heard of epilepsy? You probably have. You have also most likely heard that it is contagious and so sharing cutleries, hugging and sitting close to epileptics puts you in the direct path of the problem, right? Wrong! Epilepsy is NOT contagious!!!

What is epilepsy? It is a problem of the nervous system where the cells of the brain ‘fire’ or behave abnormally leading to abnormal sensations, symptoms, behaviour and sometimes loss of consciousness. This is called a seizure but not every seizure is due to epilepsy. Seizures can occur in high fever (especially in children) and also due to dehydration. A seizure needs to have occured at least on two different occasions without provocation for epilepsy to be suspected.

Symptoms of epilepsy would depend on the type of epilepsy (yes, there are different types). So, the person may not lose consciousness at all but may have altered taste, smell etc, there may also be jerky movements of limbs, staring gaze etc.

What are the possible causes of epilepsy? It could be due to genetics (having a relation with epilepsy places one at a higher risk. Also some genes are more likely to be affected by the other risk factors of epilepsy leading to seizures), infections like meningitis, antenatal conditions like poor feeding and infection in the mother, Trauma the head like in head injuries and other brain conditions like stroke. Other risk factors are extremes of age (Early childhood and adults more than 60 years are more likely to have this. However, this is not a hard and fast rule as this has been observed across different age bands) and prior history of seizure in childhood.

Tomorrow, we will discuss triggers, treatment and how to cope with this.

Have a great day 😀