Seizures: All That You Should Know About It

If we talk about symptoms of seizures, most of us do not know the exact meaning behind them happening in an individual’s body. Seizures normally appear when there is a sudden and uncontrollable electrical disturbance in the brain. 

It further causes changes in an individual’s behavior, feelings, movements, and levels of one’s consciousness. Moreover, it is known as a burst of uncontrollable electrical activity that appears in the human brain. Most significantly between the brain cells, which we call neurons or the nerve cells in the layman’s language. 

It causes a person to cause temporary abnormality in a person’s muscles or their movements, such as twitching, limpness, or stiffness. It could also cause sensations, behaviors, or a state of awareness. Symptoms of Seizures can act a little too extreme depending upon the condition of a person. 

One lesser-known fact about seizures is that having two or more of them at least in the duration of 24 hours could be an identifiable cause of epilepsy. However, there are many types of identifiable seizures that could range in one’s condition, symptoms, and the severity of the condition. Also, it is determined by where in the brain it begins and how far it spreads. Most of the time, seizures last within thirty seconds to two minutes.  

A seizure that dwells more than five minutes is a medical emergency. And it is more typical than one might suppose. Most of the time, seizures happen after a stroke or a closed injury, or an infection, as well as from other illnesses. Manier times, the cause of having a seizure is unknown, while most of them can be controlled with medical attention and treatment. However, the management is still necessary to be kept while doing it. 

Now an individual can work with the doctor to provide a balance to the seizure control and medication side effects. And it can be a single event that happens due to an acute cause, such as heavy medication. The case of having recurring seizures is known as epilepsy. 

Types Of Seizures

There are two types of seizures mainly that can be seen in individuals.

Focal seizures:

Focal seizures start in a particular part of your brain, and the names of these seizures are normally based upon the body part where they happen. It affects an individual physically as well as emotionally. Furthermore, it can make you see, feel, or hear things that are not present there. Around sixty percent of the patients who suffer from this type of seizure(also known as a partial seizure) exhibit some common signs of mental illness or other kinds of nerve disorders. Moving on, they are divided into three types:

• Simple focal

An individual is more likely to lose consciousness in this type, but they might feel nauseated or sweaty. It further changes how our senses read the world around us and have the ability to make us taste or smell strange. In some cases, it might make the fingers, legs, or arms twitch, and the individual might start to see flashes of lights or may start to feel dizzy. 

• Complex focal

Complex focal seizures usually happen in the part of our brain that helps us in controlling our emotions and memory. One may lose consciousness but still look as if they are awake or may do activities such as laughing, crying, or smiling, and it may take some time for them to realize it. 

• Secondary-Generalized 

They begin at one part of your body and go on to spread to the nerve cells that are present on both sides. Furthermore, they can cause some severe physical symptoms as well, such as muscle slackness in some cases. 

Generalized Seizure:

Generalized seizures happen when the nerve cells on both sides of your brain stop working. It can cause a blackout, muscle spasms, or fall. 

Some seizures start from one kind and then transform into another one. While some of them are easy to classify, others are a little difficult and can exhibit physical or sensory symptoms. 

• Tonic-Clonic Seizures

In this type, the muscles in the arms, legs, or trunk tense up, which often happens when the individual is asleep. However, an individual can experience vertigo and fail to maintain their balance while standing up. While this is common in people with an already under epilepsy type. 

• Clonic:

The muscles have spasms that can make your neck, arm, face muscles rhythmically. And it could last for several minutes. 

• Tonic:

Due to the risk of falling, people who suffer from tonic seizures must wear something heavy like a helmet in order to protect their heads from falling. The muscles of the body might suddenly go stiff. There are cases where the person might drop an object they are holding all of a sudden. 

• Atonic:

This type of seizure might last less than 15 seconds, but some patients show several consecutively. 

• Myoclonic:

The muscles might start suddenly jerking, and some people might start to experience both atonic and myoclonic at once!

• Absence:

This sort of symptom of Seizures is also prominent as petit mal. And in this type of seizure, an individual seems disconnected from others around them and, in most cases, fails to respond to them. Instead, they are most likely to stare into a blank space, and the eyes might start to roll back into your head. It could last for about a few seconds, and the patient might not even remember anything about it. Again, this is most normally occur in children around 14 years of age. 

Epilepsy is not the only ground of seizures; the symptoms of seizures could also look like:

• The confused state of mind
• Mental or emotive symptoms, such as worry, fear, or deja vu
• Not getting adequate sleep
• Undisciplined jerking motions of the arms and legs
• Loss of consciousness or cognition
• High fever, often from an illness like meningitis
• Take certain medications such as pain relievers, antidepressants, or other pharmaceutical medications.
• Bleeding in the brain from a head injury
• Brain tumor
• Low blood sodium (hyponatremia), which you can get from taking water pills
• Amphetamines or cocaine
• Alcohol abuse, during times of withdrawal or extreme intoxication
• COVID-19 infection
• Stroke