Epilepsy is contagious disease!

Epilepsy

Given the complexities of epilepsy as a medical condition, it is important to properly define it in order to establish a common understanding of the illness. 

 Epilepsy is contagious!

Today, the families of people who suffer from epilepsy have taken the effort to educate themselves about the condition; however, many in society who are not exposed to the condition remain ignorant about epilepsy and how to help out those who are suffering from it. Properly defining epilepsy will help eliminate this stigma so people with the condition can feel the support of the people around them and not get ridiculed for the illness that they are battling with.

In order to define epilepsy, let us first take a look at some common misconceptions about this illness:

· Epilepsy is contagious! This is a big misconception that causes people to shy away from people with epilepsy. This is absolutely not true.

· People suffering from epilepsy are not productive members of society. This is also not true. Many people with epilepsy are high functioning individuals with only occasional seizures that painfully remind them that the condition is still there. In fact, people who suffer from epilepsy are just as intelligent and talented as the rest of those who don't suffer from the condition making this a baseless assertion and a blatant misconception.

· Epilepsy can be considered a mental illness. This is also not true. Epilepsy is a physical condition with actual physical manifestations. It affects motor functions during the seizure. It does not impair an individual's psychology..

To define epilepsy, one has to take into account all the chronic neurological disorders that manifest as seizures. In most cases, the definition applies to seizures that recur and are not known to be triggered by an obvious factor. In most cases, a person is said to be suffering from epilepsy when there are no identifiable cause for the seizures even if suggestive factors may help explain the condition after a lengthy and thorough diagnostic evaluation.

Under an EEG or electrocardiogram, epilepsy will manifest as an excessive or abnormal brain wave activity which triggers involuntary muscle spasms known as seizures. Medical statistics indicate that more than 50 million people worldwide suffer from various forms of epilepsy and that a significant percentage of this number hails from the developing world where epilepsy treatment plans are not as developed and misconceptions remain pervasive.

Once diagnosed, epilepsies can be classified in a variety of ways and this also constitutes one of the more important thrusts when medicine seeks to define epilepsy. Anticonvulsants are very popular in this regard because there is now a high degree of correlation between specific seizure syndrome types and the anticonvulsants that work best with those conditions.

Some forms of epilepsy are inherited. Sodium, potassium, and calcium are serve the brain as ions and produce electric charges that must fire regularly in order for a steady current to pass from one nerve cell to another nerve cell. If the channels that carry them are damaged or impaired from birth an imbalance (irregularty) occurs that can cause misfire and seizures the brain.

ever needing to be re-vaccinated. Although epilepsy can start at any point during a person's life, most epilepsy is diagnosed in the age of childhood, and most of all in the first year of life - around 150 out of every 100,000 babies under the age of one year are diagnosed with epilepsy per year.

This drops to 50 adults per 100,000. However, recent reports of epilepdi have shown that epilepsy is increasing in older people, who account for a quarter of all new diagnoses, according to a survey by the National Society for Epilepsy. The condition is twice as common in older people as it is in the population as a whole in the world.

Epilepsy is divided almost equally between the both sexes, though a few epilepsy syndromes can be occur exclusively in girls. Epilepsy is slightly more common in men, and there are various reasons why this may be so. One reason is that men are more likely to suffer head injury and brain infection. Another theory is that the brains of boy and girl babies develop differently in the womb due to differences in male and female sex hormones.

 The brain matures more rapidly in girl babies than boy ones, so that girls are less vulnerable to perinatal anoxia (lack of oxygen around birth) which can damage developing areas of the brain. The Y chromosome which produces maleness in unborn babies also slows development down, so that boys are born around two to three weeks behind in maturity than girls, so making them more vulnerable to injury.

 This vulnerability persists into adulthood - one study showed that, in women, 50 per cent of the risk of developing epilepsy was past by the time they were 19, but in men, this did not happen until they were 24. This risk is thought to outweigh men's larger brain size.

 Another study showed that the brains of men and women only become the same size when they are 100, when they have both shrunk enough to be similar! There is some evidence that the prognosis or outlook is slightly worse in women, and it has been suggested that this is because women's brains are tougher, a more severe event is needed to precipitate the epilepsy. But, in practice, most of these differences are slight - again, each person with epilepsy represents an individual case, and should be treated as such.

Despite its high prevalence, epilepsy, traditionally the 'Cinderella' of the health service, attracts little by way of research money - out of the UK's annual £2 billion medical research budget only £336,000 is spent on epilepsy, less than £1 per person with epilepsy, and comparing unfavorably with say the £250 per person with muscular dystrophy and £140 per person with multiple sclerosis.

A recent survey of health managers in the UK revealed that only 5 per cent had set service standards for epilepsy