A seizure is a symptom of many different disorders that can affect the brain not a disease in itself. In century’s pass, the word seizure refers to people being taking over by super natural forces.
Robert Fisher: Today, we understand that a seizure is not a supernatural entity. It is a simple a medical condition in which too many brain cells becomes excited at the same time. The brain is an electrochemical machine. Nerve cells or neurons use chemical reactions to generate electricity like a very complex battery.
When a neuron becomes excited, it passes an electrical signal along its thin biological wire called an axon to communicate with other neurons in the brain. Those other neurons either can be excited or inhibited by the signal. When too many neurons become excited all at once then a seizure can result. So a seizure is like an electrical storm in the brain.
During this abnormal electrical storm, the involve part of the brain cannot perform a normal task and people who experience suddenly alterations in movements, sensations, awareness or behavior. A seizure typically goes on for a few seconds to a few minutes. The end of a seizure is a transition back to the individual’s normal state.
Because the word “ictus” is Latin for seizure, this period of recovery is referred to as the postictal period which can last from seconds to hours.
A person’s level of awareness gradually improves during the postictal period. Doctors often are asked what the differences between the seizure and epilepsy. To the medical community, epilepsy is the condition of having spontenously recurrent seizures. That means that one isolated seizure is not defined as epilepsy. There must be two or more seizures or at least one seizure with a high chance of having another. The counter epilepsy, the seizures have to appear spontaneously without and immediate precipitating factor.
For example, if Johnny falls off his motorcycle, hits his head and has two seizures on the scene, it is not epilepsy because the seizures where immediately participated by head trauma. However, if he recovers then starts having seizures weeks, months or years later as a result of the traumatic brain injury that not does count as epilepsy.
The word “epilepsy” has a long history of social stigma, but epilepsy is nothing more than a brain disorder cause by uncontrolled excessive and synchronies electrical activity.
If you are concern that you might have epilepsy, please see a physician.
The movies in these series can be viewed in any order. If you wish to watch these clips in their original sequence, the next video is understanding seizures.
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