What Causes Epilepsy
By David Allesmith at 18 April, 2009
What causes persons to have recurrent electrical “storms” in the brain, bringing on seizures? The fact is that in most cases of epilepsy the cause is not known. However, it is said that anything that damages nerve cells in the brain can be responsible.
Thus a blow to the brain can be the cause, or a brain tumor. Infections also can be responsible. Viruses that cause measles, meningitis and other diseases can travel up the spinal cord and affect the brain. Or an imbalance in body chemistry may be the source of the disorder. For example, a person’s body may lack a certain enzyme that can lead to an irritation of the brain cells. Or a deficiency of pyridoxine, vitamin B6, can be responsible.
Although emotional upsets are not known to cause epilepsy, they frequently provoke the seizures of persons already subject to them. Financial or domestic worries, fear of seizures or other upsetting factors can precipitate attacks. In girls, seizures sometimes occur only in association with the menstrual cycle, generally premenstrual.
Some people seem to have a predisposition to epilepsy. It is this tendency that seems to pass on from generation to generation, even as susceptibility to other disorders such as cancer and heart troubles also seems to run in families. But epilepsy itself is not inherited. Thus laws prohibiting epileptics from marrying have been widely repealed. A generally accepted view is that an epileptic has one chance in fifty of having an epileptic child, and a non-epileptic has one chance in two hundred.
That is a great explaniaton. My nephew was diagnosed with epilepsy recently.