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You are probably familiar with stress.
You encounter it in your day-to-day life.
When stressed, you experience physiological symptoms like your heart rate quickening and your blood pressure rising.
Chad Springer/Image Source/Getty
This is a normal response to stress, and your body returns to normal when the stressful event passes.
It’s not always clear what brings on seizures.
There is ongoing research into how stress is linked with seizures.
The Connection Between Stress and Seizures
A seizure is triggered by abnormal activity in the brain.
It causes your body to respond with abnormal muscle movements and behaviors.
You might also experience loss of consciousness or a loss of awareness.
Neurological Seizures
Neurological seizures are caused byneurological conditionssuch as epilepsy.
Epilepsy is a condition that is characterized by frequent and uncontrollable seizures.
It’s not clear how stress and seizures are connected.
Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures (PNES)
It’s not clear what causes PNES to occur.
Some research indicated that they could be triggered by stress and anxiety.
PNES is aconversion disorder.
This means that it’s a condition that causes emotional stress to cause physical symptoms.
It’s not entirely understood how stress causes seizures to occur.
It’s also challenging to measure how much an increase in seizure stress can cause.
This is partly because stress is highly individual, and everyone has varying thresholds for withstanding stressful events.
One theory is that stress can release certain hormones that can trigger seizures.
When stressed, you are also more likely to have difficulty sleeping.
Research shows that sleep deprivation can cause a seizure to happen.
Research shows that emotional stress can increase the frequency of seizures in people with epilepsy.
Emotional stressis typically sparked by events or people that have a deep connection with you.
For instance, going through a breakup can cause emotional stress.
Fear and anxiety are also forms of emotional stress linked explicitly to seizures.
Chronic stress has also been shown to trigger seizures in people with epilepsy significantly.
They may also order brain imaging tests such as CT scans and MRIs.
Treatment of Stress and Seizures
Both PNES and epilepsy can be treated with medication and psychotherapy.
A psychological condition brings on most cases of PNES.
Identifying the psychological cause of the condition is the first step in helping to treat it.
Different people follow varying methods to cope with stress.
What works great for you might not necessarily result in effective results for the next person.
However, there is an established connection between being stressed and experiencing an increased frequency of your seizures.
It’s essential to remember that stress isn’t all bad.
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Epilepsy Foundation.Stress and epilepsy.
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Malow BA.Sleep deprivation and epilepsy.Epilepsy Curr.
