BabChoy62
Seizure, Epileptic Drugs Not Working? 4 Places to begin Healing Your mind
From the traditional medical method of seizures and epilepsy, the building blocks from the approach is anti-epileptic drug therapy (AED). This foundation is added to by brain surgery or even the use of a vagal nerve stimulator implanted within the chest. That's virtually the armamentarium. And pretty much disappointing when you take a look at just how effective these approaches are. However they all leave one important thing out.
No standard traditional medical approaches actually do almost anything to heal the brain. Remember that unhealthy brain cells (I call them "sick neurons") are where the issues with migraines and epilepsy start. Medications to manage seizures merely suppress the communication between the sick neuron or groups of neurons and the neighboring cells. For this reason not many epileptics are able to get off their meds even years or decades later--because the issue has not been fixed.
In only about 30% of the time does the first drug tried to control seizures actually work. When that first one fails, another is tried. And another, and the other. When single drugs fail to work, combinations of medicine is used. However, the realm beyond the use of a single drug is mere guesswork and never "medical science." (Don't forget this whenever your neurologist says this really is no research to support Coenzyme Q10 for seizures...).
In the event you believe that your neurologist is different and somehow can access research not available elsewhere, consider that current research into if the addition of two or more drugs is for refractory seizures (seizures that aren't well controlled with medications) finds that only a single combination ( lamotrigine and valproate) was more effective than using only one drug. The use of three drugs was not effective.
What exactly would be the alternatives? Clearly, when one drug is not effective, the likelihood of a second drug assisting to control the seizures is extremely small. When faced with this case, and hopefully well before, the addition of natural methods to heal the mind are critical. The list is long, but you can start with a few easy steps.
1) The first is to start to eliminate chemicals from your life. The brain is an extremely sensitive organ and also the massive amount of chemicals we're exposed to every day does nothing to support good brain health.
a) Never buy anything without reading the label. Even better, buy foods that don't need to come with a label. b) Do not buy foods which contain ingredients you can't pronounce without embarrassing yourself inside a crowd of chemistry students. c) Switch your shopping from the big commercial supermarkets to smaller, healthier farmer's markets. d) Avoid ALL sugar substitutes like the plague. e) Examine causes of chemical exposures in your lifetime and lower whenever possible. Including -plastic water bottles and food canisters -cosmetic and beauty products (to include hair dye) -household cleaning products, pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers -all contact with tobacco smoke -old cushions or other compounds which are flame resistant -mattresses made after July 2007 -airborne particles (make use of a room air cleanser).
2) Antioxidant supplements like ascorbic acid, vitamin E (as mixed tocopherols), CoQ10 and alpha lipoic acid
3) Being active is NOT an option; it's required for a proper brain.
4) Consider an elmination or ketogenic diet
This list is only the short list of things that can be done to heal and protect your brain. As you can see, there isn't any shortage of changes that you could make. The limitation to simply use medication to deal with seizures borders on malpractice. Every recommendation above is well founded on medical research (or don't let say "at least" too founded as medication usage).
Some of these changes are pretty straight forward, some are much more intrusive to your current lifestyle. But let's face it...it's your brain. Isn't it worthwhile?
