What Causes Epilepsy?

This is a tricky question with no clear-cut answer. Often doctors can't pinpoint exactly what causes epilepsy in a particular individual. But scientists do know that some things can make a person more likely to develop epilepsy, including:

a brain injury, such as from a car crash or bike accident an infection or illness that affected the developing brain of a fetus during pregnancy lack of oxygen to an infant's brain during childbirth meningitis, encephalitis, or any other type of infection that affects the brain brain tumors or strokes poisoning, such as lead or alcohol poisoning

Epilepsy is not contagious (you can't catch it from someone who has it). It's not passed down through families (inherited) in the same way that blue eyes or brown hair are. But someone who has a close relative with epilepsy has a slightly higher risk for it than somebody with no family history of seizures.

Understanding Seizures
Seizures may look frightening, but they're not painful. They affect different people in different ways. Epileptic seizures fall into two main categories: partial and generalized. Partial seizures start in one part of the brain. The electrical disturbances may then move to other parts of the brain or they may stay in one area until the seizure is over. A person having a partial seizure may lose consciousness. There may be twitching of a finger or several fingers, a hand or arm, or a leg or foot. Certain facial muscles might twitch. Speech might become slurred, unclear, or unusual during the seizure. The person's vision might be affected temporarily. He or she might feel tingling throughout one side of the body. It all depends on where in the brain the abnormal electrical activity is taking place. Generalized seizures involve electrical disturbances that occur all over the brain at the same time. The person may appear to be daydreaming, may stare off into space, or may pass out. The muscles may stiffen and the person might make sudden jerking motions, such as flinging the arms outward. He or she may suddenly go limp and slump down or fall over. Most seizures last only a few seconds or minutes. After a seizure is over, the person might feel sleepy or confused for a few minutes or even an hour or more. People who've had seizures may not remember the seizure or what happened immediately before the event. They may be alert and

ready to resume whatever they were doing before the seizure happened. It varies from person to person.

Certain things can sometimes trigger seizures in people with epilepsy. They include:

flashing or bright lights a lack of sleep stress overstimulation (like staring at a computer screen or playing video games for too long) fever certain medications hyperventilation (breathing too fast or too deeply)