Question: how does epilepsy occur epilepsy and whats the treatment

Grace Kago answered on 28 May 2019:

Hey!

According to a presentation from the American Epilepsy Society, Epilepsy is “a tendency toward recurrent seizures unprovoked by any systemic or acute neurologic insults”. A definition of the word seizure is “a clinical manifestation of an abnormal and excessive synchronization of a population of cortical neurons”. So, to answer your question, at the molecular level, epilepsy occurs when someone has many repeated disruptions of the rhythmic pattern of signals that neurons use to transmit information to each other. Our brains are wonderfully complex and busy: in fact, the approximately 100 billion neurons that make up your brain are firing off 5-50 messages per second. So, you can imagine that when there is a disruption in their communication, there can be lots of issues.

As for the treatment, one has to first go to a neurorologist, which is the type of doctor that specializes in the brain and nervous system. This doctor will likely do a series of tests which include electroencephalogram, or EEG which measures the electrical activity in the persons brain. If they determine that the individual has epilepsy, depending on the specific individual, they can prescribe medication, or transplant devices that might help to normalize signals in the brain.There are also some doctors who prescribe a change in diet, and others yet, who might perform surgery. All these solutions are determined by the doctor, as each patient is different.