October 23, 2018 • 54 mins
A seizure is like an electrical overload in the brain – when it gets overwhelmed, it just shuts down and resets itself. But imagine being susceptible to these overloads, where one could come at any time with little or no warning. That is epilepsy.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's guest producer Ramsey
over there. Ramsey guest producer and stuff you should Know,
(00:23):
but straight up producer on movie Crush. Yeah, movie crushers
might might know Ramsey's name. Hey, Ramsey, he knows that
he knows the joll Well, that's the duct tape over
his mouth helps for sure. So Chuck, today we were
talking about epilepsy and this has been a long time request.
(00:43):
We've gotten requests for this one over the years. Yeah,
plenty of times. And uh, I don't know why it
took us so long to do it, but I'm glad
we finally did because it's something I didn't know about.
I think it's one of those things like you're aware
of epilepsy and seizures and seizure disorders, but there's almost
like this um cartoonishly narrow version of like what epilepsy is.
(01:07):
It's just a movie version, yes, exactly, um, which actually
is kind of accurate. Depending on the type of epilepsy
or the type of seizure you're having. But um, there's
it's such a broad spectrum of really just kind of
as a physiological brain disorder that can happen in so
many different ways that I had no idea. Yeah, the
(01:29):
the movie while it's sort of like, uh, the every
square is a rectangle type of thing. Like, movies only
display seizures in one way, the Natalie Portman way. Yeah,
the kind where you're like, you're on your back, convulsive,
(01:49):
wildly frothing at the mouth. There's some jerk nearby with
a wooden spoon. That's you don't want to do that.
We should go ahead and say that, maybe more than once.
Do not stick a spoon or your wallet, or a
credit card anything else in somebody's mouth. He keeps them
from swallowing their tongue. Now, you can't swallow your tongue, no,
because it's attached. I tried, Look, yeah, you all right,
(02:10):
stop it's not working. I was just grabbing a wooden spoon.
You do that, keep that thing away from me. Yeah,
but movies display them as one kind, and that those
definitely exist. But it's far more nuanced than that. Leave
it to movies to get rid of nuance, you know.
But really isn't that the audience is fault. Isn't it
(02:31):
up to the audience whether there's nuance or not. Well,
what like during a seizure scene, next time, we should
all just stand up and shout this isn't real. I
think they would get the picture. All filmmakers would get
the picture. How about some nuance? Well, and also, movies
are all about drama, and a lot of seizures are
not very dramatic. No, it's almost like in certain types
(02:55):
of seizures, somebody like it just kind of zones out
for a second and then comes back back and says,
so what were we just started saying that that constitutes
the seizure? Ak chuck, on any given evening. Sure, there's
probably a big difference of what's going on in the
brain of somebody who's actually enduring a seizure. Right then
(03:15):
then you're zoning out, But to the observer it would
look very similar. All right, that's a nice intro. Let's
talk a little history first, can't we? Yeah, okay, well
I will say this, um, ancient medicine has always been
nutty as a fruitcake, but especially when it comes to seizures,
(03:38):
from how they're diagnosed and what people think is going
on to the various treatments. It is wacky. Yeah, people
with epilepsy have been stigmatized for ever since there was civilization. Basically,
the Code of Hammurabi, the first set of laws from
Mesopotamia four thousand years ago, contains a law that says,
(04:00):
if you have epilepsy, they didn't call it that, but
they were talking about people with epilepsy, you can't get married. Yeah,
they called it like the devil shakes or something basically,
and the idea was that there were that you were
infected with some sort of demon or the devil or
something like that. And what's interesting is that by the
time Hippocrates came around, he was like, no, no, no no,
(04:21):
you guys have it all wrong. This is just some
sort of disorder in the brain. You can probably treat
with diet and exercise and that kind of stuff, which
is actually pretty good advice for somebody who was driving
this years ago. And then somehow they got lost and
there everybody was like, no, no, it's demons, unclean spirits
all that, and it went back to being a very
(04:42):
stigmatized disease. Yeah, it was. It was an unexplainable thing,
and I think back then. Um, now we try to
poke around and learn like the real reasons behind something,
even if it still remains unexplainable at the end. But
back then they would just say they're possessed or they're
a witch, right that which thing? It was in the
Maletheus Maleficarum, the witch the witch Finder's handbook, it was
(05:07):
basically in there, and either if you had epilepsy, you
were a witch or you were possessed by a demon
or in some cases you could be possessed by like
an angel or something like that. Um, but more often
than not, it was like a negative thing, like a
negative spirit had possessed you, or you were under the
influence of a witch. So somebody in your village could
(05:29):
be accused of witchcraft if you had epilepsy because they
were like this, which over here is giving this guy epilepsy. Berner,
that was a thing. So epilepsy has always been tied
to that and that law about people with epilepsy not
being able to marry. There were laws on the books
in the United States up until nine that said people
(05:52):
with epilepsy can't get married, can't get married. Yeah, but
I'm sure those were those like laws that aren't enforced, right,
or were they literally enforcing those laws? I don't know
that part. I'm sure they were back in like the
twenties and thirties during the eugenics movement, right, I don't
know that they were up until that sounds like one
of those laws where like you can't spit on the
(06:13):
street after sundown, you can't put lipstick on a horse. Oh,
you can can't spit on the um. And then you know,
ancient treatments are exactly what you would think, like everything
from drinking blood to killing a dog and drinking it's bile. Uh,
if someone's having a seizure near you p in your
(06:36):
shoe and give it to them to drink, like it's
a jellyfish sting. Yeah, but in the shoe. I I
don't know, Like what is that just because they know
that that you have something that holds urine? That would
be my guess. Okay, I didn't know if that was like, oh, no,
a p into like cupped hands, you're cupped hands and
then just kind of like just drop it onto their mouth.
(06:57):
God regardless. That's another thing. Don't put a wallet or
a spoon or a credit card in somebody's mouth. Don't
put your urine in somebody who's having a seizure's mouth.
Doesn't help. Um. I also saw that it wasn't until
the eighteenth century that people finally were like, I don't
think this is actually infectious. One of the reasons why
people with epilepsy were so shunned, just shunned and stigmatized
(07:21):
and just kept on the outskirts or the yeah, the
outskirts of society because people thought epilepsy was contagious and
you can catch it from the breath of someone with epilepsy.
So like people with epilepsy have been treated horribly for
all the time basically, so hopefully we can kind of
(07:41):
dispel any of the last myths around it. That's my
hope with this episode, Chuck, Let's see if we can
do it. Okay, Well, we like to start off every
episode by stating our hopes and dreams. You know. Uh so,
what's going on in the brain. We'll get to that
a little bit more in detail, but kind of the
way this article in our on our own website puts it,
(08:02):
which this was so like ten years ago writing wise,
but they basically talk about a kind of traffic jam
in your brain when there's confusion when there's too much,
too many neurons firing at once, and uh, it can
cause an overwhelming sensation that can eventually cause a seizure. Yeah.
(08:24):
It's like, um, I've seen it compared to like electrical storms. Yeah,
where basically it's a a sudden overload, an electrical overload
in your brain and your brains just like I'm just
shutting down here for a second and then it resets itself.
Your brain sounds like pop Newark? Yeah, mind does mine? Uh?
(08:47):
Mind us? Um? And you said from from a bunch
of neurons firing at once, Yeah, not just a bunch
of neurons, but those neurons that are firing fire a
lot more than usual too, something like so they fire
eighty times a second normally, where during a seizure they're
going to fire like five times a second. Yeah. And
(09:08):
you know, we'll talk about the brain machines later. But
one thing that's characteristic of UH seizures is when they
look at your brain scan, they're big peaks and valleys.
It's not a steady stream of do do do do?
Just make that noise? Who knew he was going to
(09:28):
show up? That's great uh, but let's talk about some
of the types of seizures. UM. There are a couple
of broader categories, focal seizures or generalized seizures. Focal seizures
are just in one part of the brain, were generalized
and I think about six people with epilepsy have the
(09:49):
focal kind and generalized are on both sides of the brain. Yeah,
like your whole brain is under attack. Whereas yeah, the
focal seizures, it could just be from like a lesion
in its specific part, or there's something that's hypersensitive that's
just just one tiny region of your brain, but it's
enough to do some wacky stuff to you. And within
(10:10):
those groups, there are further subgroups, for instance, a simple
focal seizure or a complex focal seizure, or the two
types of focal seizures. So as simple focal seizure is UM,
you're you just kind of have like a weird feeling
like you're conscious the whole time, yes, yeh. And it's
also sometimes called an aura and an aura itself. It
(10:35):
can just be a stand alone seizure, but it's kind
of like seizure light L I T E. Right. Um.
But that same simple focal seizure can also be the
beginning of a larger complex focal seizure larger seizure of
either type, where um, it's just the ora, it's just
the beginning symptoms of it. So it can be stand
(10:55):
alone or it can lead to a larger um seizure. Yeah,
and we'll we'll get in you send a really cool thing.
We'll get into in a second about like exactly what
a seizure is like. But quickly a complex vocal seizure
the other type of focal seizure, UM, you do lose consciousness. Um.
And if you are around someone that has one of these, uh,
(11:19):
you might see it's a little bit more like what
you would think of as a movie seizure. Yeah, life
of a better term. It can be like twitching, blinking,
Maybe someone's just sort of, um, seems dazed and sort
of walking around. Well that's the thing that got me,
Like when I think of, well they lost consciousness, it
means they fainted or whatever. That's not necessarily what that
(11:40):
means when you're having a seizure, Like, lose consciousness means
like you you're not there, you blacked out, you're gone,
You're not you're not your awareness is no longer functioning
in the here and now. But people standing around you,
they might see you just kind of walking slowly around
in a circle or something like that, or sitting upright
and just kind of with a blank look on your
face or something like. It's not the traditional just falling over,
(12:03):
fainting away loss of consciousness. That was that was new
info to me. Yeah, and this aora you were talking about,
it's really interesting that UM. Other document you sent was,
I had no idea that you if you're a person
with epilepsy, you can sometimes and it's it's different for everyone,
(12:23):
but sometimes you can sense these seizures coming on days
ahead of time. Yeah, that's I've never heard of that. Yeah.
I think when you when you get when you start
having seizures, if you UM are an actual like if
you actually have epilepsy UM, you will start to notice
patterns stereotypic. It means like it's typically follows the same patterns,
(12:48):
the same sensations, and an aura can be anything from
seeing blinking lights to hearing a humming sound to suddenly
inexplicably experiencing panic or joy, or all number of things.
But basically, your brain is suddenly doing something. It's suddenly
getting a jolt of electricity that's actually not being stimulated
(13:10):
from anything outside. You're not actually seeing bright lights, but
your brain is showing you bright lights because that impulse
is actually starting from the inside rather than coming from
the outside in. That could be an oora. It could
also be a weird taste. Yeah. I think a lot
of times too, it's um People that experience the aura
have a hard time describing it in a way that
(13:30):
people that have never experienced the aura can understand. That's
sort of one of the hallmarks of it is, you know,
people like us end up stammering out you know, a
bunch of things that we can relate to. But I
think if you have had this sensation, it's sort of
one of those things like you've got to kind of
have it to really understand what it feels like. And
and the reason why is because you're probably different parts
(13:53):
of your brain that don't normally co function are functioning together,
and the information you're getting is being merged together into
it just a totally novel experience that no human has
ever had before. Yeah, which is pretty awesome if you
think about it in that way. Yeah, so pre seizure, um,
a lot of different things can be happening. You can
(14:15):
smell things, you can hear things, you could taste things.
You might get blurry vision or like you might have
a visual loss briefly or momentarily. Um, like you said,
it might be a very pleasant feeling. It can be.
I hope. I just wish it was like that for everybody. Sure,
I wish everybody who had epilepsy just had nothing but
(14:35):
pleasant brain attacks. Yeah, I totally agree. Uh So that's
at the onset um sort of pre seizure activity, when
you start to recognize these symptoms, and that's when you
might tell, you know, your friend or loved one or
whoever you're with, like, hey, I may have a seizure
(14:56):
here soon or maybe hours from now. Yeah. Um. And
I think this is from the Epilepsy Foundation, is called
what happens during a seizure Really interesting. Yeah, But they
say like every seizure has three stages to it. It's
just some are really hard to discern, Some appear to
just be the first, some have like clearly all three. Um.
(15:17):
But that beginning thing can technically stand alone, and aura
can be its own, like seizure light like I was saying,
but more often than not, it will lead into the
middle part of the um the seizure, which is called
the ictic stage of the seizure. Yes, and that's from
the first time symptoms and the aura accounts as a
(15:39):
symptom like, that's officially part of the seizure. Uh, to
the to the end of seizure activity activities at middle section. Yeah,
and the middle section is what you usually think of
as a seizure like that. It can be the classic
movie seizure where you can be um, you can convulse,
you can um your your your muscles might tighten suddenly um,
(16:01):
and you might go rigid. You might actually lose muscle uma.
And either way what those will result in it is
called a drop attack where you are standing up and
all of a sudden you tense up and fall over
like remember the fainting goats. Yeah, my clients, I knew
I knew that word from something my clonic goats and
then um or you can just lose muscle tone and
(16:22):
fall over. But either way it can be really bad
news for you because you can hit your head and um,
you can cut yourself. It's it's not good to fall
over with zero control over your body. No. And then um,
the final phase is post seizure, and that is that
can be really rough. Um, and it can take hours
(16:44):
or days to kind of fully feel like yourself again. Um.
And if someone and we'll talk about what to do
during a seizure, of course, Um, if you are around
someone that's having one, don't put your wallet in their mouth.
But post seizure is very important too, because you need
to be there and be very comforting and um, just
sort of take things slow in general. So um, that's
(17:05):
called the post ictic phase. And that can actually last
a lot longer than either of the other two phases
of a seizure. It can last twenty minutes, thirty minutes,
an hour, who knows. Yeah, you could be sleepy or
scared or anxious, have memory loss, uh, difficulty talking. It's
basically what it sounds like is is your brain and
(17:27):
your body has just undergone a traumatic experience and it's
just rough. Yeah, and it had to reset itself and
it was a hard reset and now you're paying the
prices price of it. Yeah. And that's not to even
mention um, some of the physical things. That is one
of the real dangers of having a seizure as if
you know, you fall on a glass coffee table or
(17:49):
you know, all the supplementary physical uh injuries that can occur.
One of the things that stuck out to me from
this UM Epilepsy Foundation article was that one of the
signs and symptoms of the posteictic phase is um that
the person may be frustrated, embarrassed, or ashamed. Man, that
is so sad. Um, that's just so sad, you know,
(18:12):
And I think it comes up later on too. And
this article from how Stuff Works about like the challenges
of living with epileps and you know, one of them,
I'm sure is just feeling stigmatized. Sure, people, Yeah, you
want to take a break. Yeah, we'll take a break
and we'll pick up with the different types of generalized
seizures right after this. If you want to know, then
you're in luck. Just listen to Chuck self fusire. Alright,
(18:55):
So generalized seizures. Remember we broke it down into the
two broad category raised focal generalized. There are many kinds
of generalized seizures. UM. The words you won't hear anymore
from a doctor are petite mall and grand mall. Seizures.
Those are outdated terms, but um, what they are now
referred to as is formally petite mall seizures are now
(19:18):
known as absence seizures uh and grand Mall are now
known as tonic clonic seizures. And and yes they are outdated,
but they still kind of highlight the early contributions of
some of the first French neurologists in the late eighteenth
century Dr Grandmall, who Stanley grand Mall. French neurologists. Um,
(19:41):
they helped pull this out of the realm of superstition.
And you know you can catch it from like someone
with epilepsy breathing on you. So hats off to the
early French neurologists for at least studying and identifying it.
But that's why, that's why there are French terms that
were applied to it previously. Just stuff to your work,
pie hat I did actually a little chorus line thing
(20:03):
like you can't see un at the table of my
foot's kicking too. Uh So one of the uh like
I like I said, the absent seizure formally petite mas seizure.
This is usually in children, and I think overall, I
don't know if you mentioned that children and people over
seventy five are most likely to have epilepsy, which is interesting,
(20:26):
and you can grow out of it depending on the
type of epilepsy, and I think you can even grow
back into it in your older age. Yeah, if you're
seventy five or older, you're at high you're at the
highest risk developing epilepsy. So the absent seizures um, like
I said, are mostly in children. Um, that's just like
where they zoned out, all yeah, exactly. You might see
(20:47):
some eyelid fluttering or something like that, or a twitch
or two, and it might just be a few seconds
long and then it's over. Very hard to spot what
was just going on. Were you thinking about Barney or
were you having You're just tired like it, it's tough
to spot. I think clonic seizures you will have convulsions
and jerking movements on both sides of your body. Myoclonic
(21:08):
like we talked about with the Goats, and it's funny.
I just was going through the archive today and I
saw her that was one of the best titles we've
ever had, that dangle Goat fell Over on a Fainting Goat.
I think that was one of yours. Maybe, I'm pretty sure.
But myoclonic seizures, uh, the upper body is mainly involved,
(21:30):
and it might look like someone has been shocked, like
a jerking of the upper body. The tonic seizures is
when you stiffen up, like you were talking about. Yeah,
we just suddenly your muscles go fully tense and you
just can't control them anymore. A tonic is the other
one that you were talking about, when you lose muscle control. Yeah.
And then there's the big daddy. This is the movie seizure,
(21:53):
the tonic clonic seizure. Yes, just the name of it
sounds menacing, you know, the tonic clonic. It sounds like, uh,
Star Wars character from the dark Side or something chronic.
The Fallen. Yeah, Grandmaal does too well. I think because
of the dark Mall thing and grand mof Darken. It's
a combination. Okay. I don't know who that last guy
(22:14):
is grand mof Darken. Yeah, which one is that? All right?
We should just move past this. No, No, I need
to know, especially if it's somebody from like the original three.
I think grand mof Tarkin was the guy. Wasn't that
Peter Cushing? Yeah? Okay, the digitally Peter Cushing instead of
fran Tarkington. What are you talking about? So the tonic
(22:36):
chronic movie style seizure is that that's the one that
you've probably seen on TV and films and after school specialist.
Is when the body stiffens, you sort of pass out
on the floor and your body is convulsive and jerking
on the ground. You're like eyes roll back in your head. Yeah,
that kind of thing. I couldn't tell if it kind
of alternates back between the two, or if it follows
(22:57):
that discernible pattern where it goes tonic like your muscles
tents you fall over, followed by chronic so you're convulsive
after that, or if you kind of bounce back and forth,
which would be pretty awful too. Yeah. Um, but that's yeah,
that's the like you said, the movie, that's the movie
seizure that use. I've never it just occurred to me.
I've never seen someone have a seizure that that I
(23:18):
could recognize. I'm not either, Yeah you just knocked would
I did? Is that someone trying to come into this
is like particle board? But I think it's still that
counts um seizure is generally are pretty brief a few seconds,
maybe a few minutes at the most, uh in most cases.
But they, like we said, they take a lot out
(23:41):
of your brain and body. Yeah, it's rough stuff. Here's
the thing. It's like, so tens your tents all, like
all the muscles in your body for a second. I
don't even know how to do that, So it's it's
like just doing it for a second. Sure, I'm like,
oh man, I'm sure already I'm tired. Imagine doing that
for like three minutes and like really like every muscle
(24:03):
in your body's tense, or imagine like convulsive for a
couple of minutes. Like heck, yeah, you're going to be
physically tired. It's a violent reaction, it is. But also
the normal processes of your body have just been totally
thrown out of whack and now they have to get
back into whack. And one of your body's like main
things for telling you something's wrong is to feel nauseated.
(24:26):
So you're going to probably feel nauseated. You're going to
feel um, maybe perturbed. You're not gonna feel very good,
and it's going to last a while. Sometimes people will
sleep and maybe they'll sleep for a minute, maybe they'll
sleep for an hour. There's a lot of different things
that can happen in that post actal state. Um, but
the the thing you want to look out for. So
(24:47):
we've never seen anybody have a seizure before, but there
if you do see someone who is having a seizure,
there are some very specific things that you should do
and not to. One of the things you should not
do take your dirty wallet in their mouth, card or
a spoon. What are you carrying a spoon around with
(25:07):
you for anyway, If it's to save somebody from swallowing
their tongue, leave it at home because you don't need
it anymore. Yeah. The main thing you want to do
is make sure that they will not further injure themselves.
Like if you're in an apartment and they're on the couch,
you may want to like move the coffee table out
(25:27):
away from the couch or something like that. Um, turn
them on their side if they have gone to the ground,
so they won't choke. That is a real thing, But
the tongue has nothing to do with it. It's I
think something like that. Yeah, sure, uh, and just sort
of try and ensure their safety, like don't try and
hold them down. Don't try and get them to stop
(25:49):
what they're doing, Like you can't. I'm gonna lay on
until the demons get out. Yeah, it's not a good idea.
So basically, just try and make things as safe as possible,
Like if they're around them, if their clothing is right, yeah,
keep sharp stuff away from uh. And yeah, if they're
sitting up or standing up or whatever, yet try to
get them on to the lowest point as comfortably. Um,
(26:13):
if their clothes are like bunching up around their neck, like,
try to loosen the clothing. Uh. Yeah, make it safe
and comfortable for them. Yeah, don't don't be like all right,
well I'm gonna go get my eyes checked or go
or go call the police or not the police. But
on one right, that was a really surprising thing that
that um, this article said was don't leave, just hang
(26:37):
out with them. That is more important than calling nine
one one. There is a point where you should call
nine on one though. There's a type of seizure or
there's a mode that seizures can go into called um
status epilectus, which is like a really bad situation. That's
when it continues debated keep minutes. It used to be
(27:01):
I think twenty or thirty minutes, and then they said
that's way too long. If someone has is having a
seizure of any type UM for five minutes or longer,
you want to call nine on one because what you're
seeing is a medical emergency on Under almost every single
case of a seizure, the brain can kind of reset
(27:22):
itself um and come out of the seizure within a
five minute period. If it doesn't, it strongly suggests that
it's not going to happen, and they may actually have
to medically induce a coma to just stop the electrical
activity in the brain and let it reset itself. So
you've got a bona fide medical emergency on your hands.
(27:43):
Or the other way it can happen is they can
be having a seizure and then have another seizure and
not regain consciousness in between. That actually qualifies as a
status epilectus seizure as well, and you want to call
nine and one for those, or if uh, if it's
a pregnant woman, then you want to call nine one
one because there can you know, be further complications there, Yeah,
(28:07):
for sure. Alright, So it looks like there's six different
types of epilepsy. If I'm reading this right, we'll say
at least six, starting with benign rolandic epilepsy. This is
the one that you would have in childhood and that
you would probably outgrow, Hence the benign thing. Yeah, it's
(28:27):
just kind of like, yeah, I don't any more about it.
It's just a phase the kids going through, you know. Uh.
Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy is actually one you wouldn't have it
in early childhood, but it actually would come on around
the same time as puberty. As if puberty is not
tough enough now with caesures. Yeah, I mean I feel
(28:49):
so bad for for for anyone that has this condition,
but especially like if it comes on at puberty, you
don't know what's going on. Well. Plus also it's like
the severe type of siege. There's tonic clonic seizures usually
characterize it or myoclonic, and you don't you don't outgrow it.
He comes on in childhood, but yet you got you
have it for life. Lenox guest syndrome. I feel like
(29:12):
I've heard of this one before. I had not. This
one's very severe and there are many kinds of caesars
that you can have and uh I believe this one
sticks around for life too. It doesn't. It's uh usually
it comes after it's become a parent. That they're cognitive impairments. Um.
(29:32):
It can there can be delayed motor skill development. Um.
It's it's kind of like co morbid with um like
a type of cognitive impairment as well. But it's it's
characterized by drop attacks to where you can really injure
yourself because you just fall over because there's um an
impairment in the muscle or the motor cortex. Look at you,
(29:57):
I got it eventually. Reef epilepsy is the one that
you might if you have ever like gotten a strobe
light warning or heard of that Pokemon thing, which that
legend is actually true. Yeah, I mean this this is
one that is triggered by something in the environment. Um.
In fact, remember I told you I went to that
David or was going to that David Byrne concert. We
(30:19):
got a ticket holder's got emails the day before the
show that said, you know, trigger warning, we use strobe
lights in this show. So I think they for stuff
like this that kind of are sending that stuff out
now to them? Yeah, yeah, because I mean you can
have a seizure, even if you don't have epilepsy. You
can have a seizure brought on by flashing lights and
(30:41):
they're fast enough that just basically get your brain going
and and it's off. Uh, not a seizure, but an
intense strobe light situation. I think makes everyone feel a
little off. It makes me dance. Where are the bubbles?
Give me my glowstick? Uh temporal wait, hold on, let
(31:04):
me give you one more about it. So, the reflects epilepsy,
it doesn't have to just be from like flickering lights,
like the strobe lights can be touched there they like different. Basically,
where you have reflects epilepsy, there's a part of your
brain that receives sensory stimuli that is hyper sensitive. So
(31:25):
whether it's your eyes, whether it's your ears, whether it's
your skin, and it'll be like a very small region
on your skin and it can be activated by tapping, scratching, rubbing,
and toothbrushing. Interesting, which if you think about it, that
is interesting. But also if you are going to trigger
a seizure from brushing your own teeth, that would suck. Yeah,
(31:45):
you know, I bet there are some ways around that. Oh,
surely there are, Like an electric toothbrush might have a
different or something. I hope. So, although I've bet an
electric toothbrushure would set it off more than anything. I
guess it depends. I don't know. Uh. Temporal low epilepsy
the most common kinds of seizure here complex vocal, although
(32:06):
there are other you know, seizures that can occur to
And this is the one where I think it's like, well,
it takes place in the in the temporal lobe, which
controls emotion and memory. But I think these are the
ones that are can be really interesting and hard to
describe by someone that's had one. Yeah, Like you'll have
a bunch of memories come back all of a sudden
at once, which, um, that's another thing another common device
(32:30):
you'll see in movies, not necessarily with seizures, but when
somebody's like like their brains being taken over or something
like that. Um, the like just a bunch of different
like visualizations will flash or whatever their life. Yeah, I
think that that's basically what happens with temporal lobe epilepsy. Interesting, yeah,
or you can also have just be overwhelmed by a
bunch of weird emotions good, bad, neutral that are not
(32:55):
being brought on by anything but the seizure. Yeah. I
at that David Burn show, I had a moment where
I was so overwhelmed with the sound, the lights, the
the emotion of the moment in the art that I
felt like I was on ecstasy at one point. What
(33:15):
song was it? That specific moment was during Once in
a Lifetime? So that was coming together with nostalgia to
just like suck me in the face, But you know
it was it had to do with other things as well.
So I mean, while again did not have a seizure,
I have no idea what that's like. It's interesting to
feel the brain sort of get rocked a little bit
(33:36):
to where you can feel it, but with positive feelings. Sure. See,
that's what epilepsy should be. It should be like at
ecstasy in your brain. Yeah uh. And then frontal lobe epilepsy.
It's the final kind, and this is the one where
you're more likely to have like your body herking and
(33:58):
jerking really stiff on one side. Right, Yeah, so you
got me with the hurricane and Jerky always reminds me
of the Mr. Show Herky Jerky Dancer. Um, should we
take a break. I think so Mr Show made an appearance.
So yeah, all right, we'll be right back. If you
want to know then you're in luck. Just listen to Chuck.
(34:41):
One of the things I saw, I want to say
that's not really apropos of what we're going to talk
about next, but when um, someone is having a seizure,
during the middle seizure part, they may um start start
doing like involuntary movements, like everything from lip smacking to
like playing at their buttons to actually undressing and dressing.
(35:03):
I thought that was really interesting. Yeah, that is interesting,
especially when you remember Alien Hands syndrome, and that was
the corpus closum, and I mean parts of the corpus
closum are involved sometimes with the epilepsy too. One of
the other things epilepsy bears a strong resemblance to, especially
in the fact that it has an aura and an
actual middle phase and then a recovery phase are migraines.
(35:27):
Oh yeah, very much related to migraines. And actually you
can get migraines as a symptom of the recovery phase
of the post eichtal phase, right, which that would really
suck to have a huge seizure and then come out
of it and have a migraine. Yes, that would not
be good. It would not. Uh. The causes of epilepsy
are It sort of depends. Sometimes you can have a
(35:49):
brain injury. Sometimes, like if you get hit in the head.
Sometimes you can have a tumor that's putting pressure on
the brain. Um. If you can determine the cause as
a doctor, then it's called symptomatic epilepsy. If you're not
quite sure what's going on, that's a head scratcher, yeah,
or idiopathic epilepsy. It's so funny they have a name
(36:10):
for it rather than I don't know sure. I mean,
I guess that makes sense, but I don't know is
really what that means. And then there's even another category,
cryptogenic epilepsy. And that's when the doctor is like, well,
I kind of have some information, but I'm not quite
sure if it's symptomatic or idiopathic. It's really specific, it is,
(36:35):
unless it's idiopathic, then it's totally non specific. That's right.
So UM. I found this really interesting the way that
um epilepsy is diagnosed, because just because you have one
seizure doesn't mean you have epilepsy. Yeah, if you have
a seizure, you want to go to the doctor to
find out if actually, no, you actually do have epilepsy.
(36:56):
But there's a number of ways you can get You
can have a seizure. You if you're a infin or
a kid and your temperature gets to a hundred point
four degrees fahrenheit or higher I think thirty eight degrees celsius.
That's called a febra febrile seizure feverish seizure. Doesn't mean
you have epilepsy. You may never have another seizure. Again, Supposedly,
(37:19):
if you are withdrawing from alcohol or some types of drugs,
you can suffer seizures. But I saw another research of
the literature that said this is not true. It's just
a legend. But like a medical legend um Supposedly, hypoglycemia,
abnormal heart rhythm, panic attacks, all of those can bring
(37:39):
on seizures or mimic seizures. And then there's something called
a pseudo seizure, which to anybody's witnessing it would be like,
that's a seizure, that person must have epilepsy. But if
you had that person um undergoing an electro and cephalogram
at the time a brain scan, you would see that
their brain waves were not doing somebody who has epilepsy's
(38:01):
brain would be doing. And that's actually brought on by
psychological distress, yeah, or like past abuse in your life
or something like that, which is bad enough. Yeah, I
mean that's yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned the e G.
The electro cephalograph um. At this point, if if you're
being hooked up to one of those machines, you've probably
(38:23):
already gone to the doctor had some blood tests done. Um.
It's interesting that, like the doctor, it's sort of like
bringing your car in. You're like, well it's not making
that noise now, and the mechanics like, well, I don't
know what to do then, right. Normally mechanics like, well,
just let me take your car home for a week, right,
And you gotta let them the same thing with your doctor.
You have to move into your doctor's house until you
(38:43):
have a seizure in front of That's not true, but
they can and will try and induce the seizure sometimes
so they can really see what's going on. It's not
so during an e G. They will try and to
do the seizure. They may put the strobe light in
front of your face. It'll take you to a David
Burn show exactly WHI should be a great way to
get treated, or they'll tell you to come in um
(39:05):
and not having slept. Yeah, fatigue is one thing, lack
of sleep that can bring them on its trigger. Yeah,
so they will try and induce the seizure A lot
of times after an e G. They will go hole
hog with a CT SCAN or an m R I.
And what is that funny? I just imagine you having
to ride a hog while you have the e G
(39:26):
thing on your head. Uh, C T or an m
R I. Um. Have you ever been to one of
those parties where they have the whole hog cooked just
like layd there looking like a hog? Yes, and I
shouldn't go in any more detail because they're vegetarian and
vegan listeners would not be happy. But yes, I have
all right, I have not it's something else. I bet.
(39:48):
I can't imagine just sticking a fork in something that
looks like an animal. Yeah, it says stick a fork
in me. I'm done, all right, Yeah, we'll just move on. Uh. Yes,
the C T R, m R I. UM. What they
what they're trying to do there is just get an
inside peak at exactly what's going on in the brain.
(40:10):
Like you were talking about. There could be a legion
or something that they don't see and this will this
will show all. Yeah. So again you come in, they say,
so you head a seizure. Huh. Put this calander on
your head and look into this light while I start
flashing it and make sure you haven't slept in a day,
and they try to trigger a seizure. And then they
(40:32):
look at the e G. Read out of what your
brain is doing when they say, yeah, this is an
epileptic seizure. This isn't just you know, uh, some other
type of seizure. This is like epilepsy. And then yeah,
they'll put you through the Wonder machine or something like
that and look for lesions, weird um, oxygen concentrations, whatever
to try to pinpoint where the problems coming from, because
(40:54):
again it can just be one specific region of your brain,
or it could be a generalized type of seizure in
your whole brain. And then based on these clues, they
start deducing what type of epilepsy you might have, right uh,
and then what you can do about it. Um, obviously
you're not gonna eat a pigeon these days or drink
dog bile. But um well you could eat pigeon, don't
(41:18):
drink the dog bile. No. Uh. There is medication that
you can take, but from what I read, it's it
can be pretty rough on you and a lot of
bad side effects. So what you try to do, I
think with a lot of like with a lot of
hardcore medications like this, is find that balance of what
(41:39):
do I need to try and control these seizures and
still kind of be able to operate and have a
good quality of life. Yeah, And I think a lot
like um if you've been diagnosed as say like bipolar
or depressive disorder something like that, where there's a lot
of different medications out there that do different things and
you're probably going to have to try a different combination
(42:00):
until you find the one that works best for you.
Um as as this article put it, to balance quality
of life and control of your seizures, that's what you're
looking for in a medication or combination of medications. Same
thing with with epilepsy. Yeah, I mean you may not
uh want the full dose and you may just want
to limit your seizures and have an acceptable amount of
(42:22):
seizures because the medication is so rough on you. Sure, yeah,
that's the worst part. And they've actually come up with
a device called the vegas nerves stimulator. Remember the vegas nerve,
I don't remember it. Was it a female orgasm episode
that it played such a role in. I think we've
it's a couple of them. We said God was either
a woman or clearly favors women, because women's orgasms are
(42:43):
triggered by vagus nerves and even if you become paralyzed,
the vegas nervous still intact. That's right, only for women. Well,
there's a device that's basically like a pacemaker for your brain,
is what they call it. And it stimulates that vegas
nerve and it just sends a little like t called
pulse on like a regular um rhythm to your brain.
(43:05):
And they're like, this really works. It doesn't necessarily get
rid of all of your seizures, but it brings the
frequency of them down so much that you could just
get by with a low dosage of medication. But they
have no idea how it works. They think maybe it
keeps the brain juiced on a normal basis. It's almost
(43:25):
like a pacemaker. It is that. Well, like I said,
they call it the pacemaker. Okay, I said that. And
then there's the well, I mean it sounds it sounds crazy,
but if it is isolated in one part of your brain,
they can actually go in and just remove that part
of your brain in many cases and solve the problem.
And no, not only no side effects. And they're not
(43:49):
taking a stab in the dark, like they know what
parts of the brain they can remove. They're not like,
well let's try this um. But sometimes you actually show
intellectual improvements after the surgery, like when they remove the
cryan from Homer's brain, remember that one. That was one
of the best ones ever. There's also a corpus coloss
to me, yeah, I'm saying it right, which is so
(44:12):
remember you know there's a type of generalized seizures or
the whole brain seizures. Well, the corpus colossum is the
white matter that connects the two hemispheres of the brain.
So they just go in there and go and no
more generalized brain seizures. Right. The thing is is there.
I'm very curious what the side effects are of that.
Because we developed a corpus colossum over time and there's
(44:36):
this really interesting thing. We got to do this someday
on a guy named Julian Jane came up with the
bicameral mind, and he had this theory that before we
had a corpus colossum and the two hemispheres talked to
one another. That was back when we used to think
the gods were talking to us. One part of our
brain was talking to us, and it seemed like it
was coming from outside of our brain, like the angel
(44:58):
and the devil on your shoulder, basedically or literally the
gods having like a role in your daily life and
guiding you through life. It was actually one side of
your brain, but since it wasn't connected to the other side,
it didn't seem like it was for coming from you.
And so to cut the corpus colossom, I wonder if
it would have similar effects like that. Yeah, and I
think that also was um for alien hand syndrome. The
(45:20):
corpus clossum had a lot to do with it because
one side like a malfunction of it because one side
isn't talking to the other. Interesting um. There was also
some types of epilepsy called intractable epilepsy where and this
is like this is really high of people who have epilepsy,
have intractable epilepsy, Like it's not going away. Yeah, and
(45:43):
it's really tough to control even when you're being treated,
and you can actually die too. Um, I get the feelings.
Is pretty rare, but sudden, unexplained death in epilepsy or
sued up is something that can happen. Yeah, they they again,
they don't know how it works, but they think that
(46:04):
maybe it has to do with a regular heartbeat that
can result a regular breathing, or that someone gets trapped
face down in something like betting and suffocated during a seizure,
because a lot of seizures, a lot of types of seizures,
especially tonic ones. It's the tonic that, um, yeah, that
you're hap them while you're sleeping, and if you're sleeping
(46:28):
on your stomach, you could conceivably choke or suffocate. They
think maybe that has something to do with it, but
they're just not sure. I saw an obituary the other
day for someone that died in their sleep, and that
really struck me for the first time. Is like, that's
a really nice way to say someone died in bed. Like,
(46:49):
I don't think it ever happens where someone's just asleep
and doesn't wake up right, Like, I think you're just
asleep in bed. You wake up and you're like, I'm dying,
and then you die, and it's just it's like a
really nice way to say they died in their sleep.
We've talked about that before, about somebody, can you really
die while you're asleep and I'm dying? We were talking
(47:11):
about someone who woke up to die in pain. I
think that's probably how it always rather than just dying
in their sleep. No, I think people might pass real sleep.
I think you could. That's sweet, especially if you're on
the dope, like they got you doped up, like in
hospice or something like that. You can very easily just
die in your sleep while you're kind of out of it.
(47:33):
But I don't know. I hope you're wrong. Yeah, me too. Um,
living with epilepsy, Uh, you know, it can be very tough.
It's you have to think about everything from driving to
going swimming, by yourself, raising an infant, if you're a
woman or a man or a man. Yeah, but yeah,
(47:54):
this one, this one, Um specifically said, like, epilepsy can
can be a challenge to I mean you know, when
they're deciding whether to have kids or not, you know,
they that's just I hadn't even thought about that. But
you can't have a seizure while you're breastfeeding or something.
What happens after that? Yeah? Or I mean if you're
just a the lone caregiver to a child at home, uh,
(48:17):
to a eighteen month old, and all of a sudden
you need treatment yourself. Yeah, that's a scary thing. All
the all the states and the United States have different
rules as far as driving. Uh, Like you know, sometimes
it's you can't have had a seizure for the past
twelve months or something. Yeah. You mediated a guy who
had a couple of teachers and like he like had
(48:41):
he lost his license because of it. Yeah, like think
I think it was twelve months in Virginia or something.
Uh what else? Um, yeah, I think that's it. Oh well,
I did look up celebrities with epilepsy, of course, because
that's all anyone cares about, right, Prince know that um
(49:01):
Adam Horovitz. I didn't know that from the BC Boys,
Mr Danny Glover, I didn't know that Little Wayne, Big Wayne? Uh?
Is there a medium? Wayne? And the Rock? No little
Wayne uh Neil Young really the great Harriet Tubman, I
think we knew that. And then uh the NFL former
(49:26):
NFL twins Tik and Ronde Barber, and there were twins
who both had it, So that's oh yeah, they think
there might be a genetic basis to it. Yeah, I
don't think we even mentioned that. They've identified something like
two hundred different gene deficiencies that could could possibly lead
to epilepsy. And interestingly, if you were a child and
you were diagnosed with epilepsy, your doctor may say, put
(49:48):
that kid on Atkins. Oh yeah, keytonic diets might have
something that helps. Yeah, they think, well, like when you're
when you have kind of gone through your fat stores,
you go to key tones in your brain, and it's
got to have something to do with that. Start burning
keytones in your brain. That's got to have an impact
on your electrical activity. Why it only works on kids
(50:10):
rather than adults is it's a mystery to me. You
got anything else? I got nothing else? Well, let's epilepsy everybody.
If you ever see somebody who's having a seizure, remember
everything we told you and keep that spoon out of
their mouth. And since I said that's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this boy marathon ors we heard from them.
(50:32):
We probably should have thought that through, Like we did
a marathon episode asking for people to email. Yeah, I
think we would have gotten the same amount of emails
for marathons, Like I love marathon. People who marathon love
to talk about marathons, So we were asking for it
even without asking for it. Well, and we also asked
about the marathon high versus a marijuana high, and turns
(50:54):
out a lot of marathon or smoke weed. I bet,
I will, I can. I can imagine which one you selected. Well,
actually I did not select one of those because they
were kind of all the same. They were like one
guy said, it's not the same. One guy said he
would get high and run. I saw that guy until
the runners had kicked in, and he said, so I
would be high the entire marathon. Yeah, yeah, like you're insane.
(51:17):
His friends thought, he was, how would you even start?
You know? He was probably should I eat combos today
or run a marathon today. I had a friend who
used to get super high and go to the end
workout and lift weights like Kevin Spacey, Oh that's right,
and America. That's always seems so bizarre to me. And
look what happened to him. Yeah, you want to stay
(51:38):
away from the weed for the weightlifting combo? All right,
here we go. Been listening for almost two years, guys,
never missed an episode. I'm a former ultra marathon or
typically in the fifty k distance, so definitely on the
shorter end five thousand mile. Can you believe that a
fifty k is a short one? Yeah? And I can
(51:59):
speak to experience in both the runners high and hitting
the wall in the same race. In two thousand thirteen,
I was competing in my last fift k, and while
I was towards the back of the pack of these
events always, I was feeling great when I reached the
four hour mark, laughing and joking with aid station volunteers
and having a great time. I felt like I was
(52:20):
on top of the world at mile twenty and then
it happened. I hit the wall hard. I had been
able to cover twenty miles a pretty rugged trail in
four hours. Suddenly my legs went from feeling amazing and
light feeling like sex of what submit that happens to me?
At like mile point seven five? Uh? It took me
another four hours in the final twelve miles of the race.
(52:45):
Maybe it's time I start training for my next one. Guys,
you're invited to join me. Maybe Chuck hats running because
he hasn't found the right distance yet. Perhaps it's thirty
two point five miles. Nope, Nope. That is from Sean
Riley in Columbia, South Carolina. Shaw and Riley, who is crazy.
But thanks for writing in short ones. Um. Yeah, but
(53:06):
we should say there is quite a difference apparently, between
pot High and the Runners High. Yes, no one said
that there were anything alike. No, most people said they
were pretty different. Okay, cool, So we're done with marathoning.
No need to email us more about marathons. We're good,
We got it. Okay. If you do have epilepsy or
(53:27):
you know someone who does, though, I would love to
hear from you and let us know what it's like
to live with that. Um. If you want to get
in touch with us, you can go to our website
it's called Stuff you Should Know dot com, and there
you will find links to all of our social media accounts.
Or you can send us a plain old fashioned email
to Stuff Podcast How Stuff Works dot com. For more
(53:51):
on this and thousands of other topics. Is It How
stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's guest producer Ramsey
over there. Ramsey guest producer and stuff you should Know,
(00:23):
but straight up producer on movie Crush. Yeah, movie crushers
might might know Ramsey's name. Hey, Ramsey, he knows that
he knows the joll Well, that's the duct tape over
his mouth helps for sure. So Chuck, today we were
talking about epilepsy and this has been a long time request.
(00:43):
We've gotten requests for this one over the years. Yeah,
plenty of times. And uh, I don't know why it
took us so long to do it, but I'm glad
we finally did because it's something I didn't know about.
I think it's one of those things like you're aware
of epilepsy and seizures and seizure disorders, but there's almost
like this um cartoonishly narrow version of like what epilepsy is.
(01:07):
It's just a movie version, yes, exactly, um, which actually
is kind of accurate. Depending on the type of epilepsy
or the type of seizure you're having. But um, there's
it's such a broad spectrum of really just kind of
as a physiological brain disorder that can happen in so
many different ways that I had no idea. Yeah, the
(01:29):
the movie while it's sort of like, uh, the every
square is a rectangle type of thing. Like, movies only
display seizures in one way, the Natalie Portman way. Yeah,
the kind where you're like, you're on your back, convulsive,
(01:49):
wildly frothing at the mouth. There's some jerk nearby with
a wooden spoon. That's you don't want to do that.
We should go ahead and say that, maybe more than once.
Do not stick a spoon or your wallet, or a
credit card anything else in somebody's mouth. He keeps them
from swallowing their tongue. Now, you can't swallow your tongue, no,
because it's attached. I tried, Look, yeah, you all right,
(02:10):
stop it's not working. I was just grabbing a wooden spoon.
You do that, keep that thing away from me. Yeah,
but movies display them as one kind, and that those
definitely exist. But it's far more nuanced than that. Leave
it to movies to get rid of nuance, you know.
But really isn't that the audience is fault. Isn't it
(02:31):
up to the audience whether there's nuance or not. Well,
what like during a seizure scene, next time, we should
all just stand up and shout this isn't real. I
think they would get the picture. All filmmakers would get
the picture. How about some nuance? Well, and also, movies
are all about drama, and a lot of seizures are
not very dramatic. No, it's almost like in certain types
(02:55):
of seizures, somebody like it just kind of zones out
for a second and then comes back back and says,
so what were we just started saying that that constitutes
the seizure? Ak chuck, on any given evening. Sure, there's
probably a big difference of what's going on in the
brain of somebody who's actually enduring a seizure. Right then
(03:15):
then you're zoning out, But to the observer it would
look very similar. All right, that's a nice intro. Let's
talk a little history first, can't we? Yeah, okay, well
I will say this, um, ancient medicine has always been
nutty as a fruitcake, but especially when it comes to seizures,
(03:38):
from how they're diagnosed and what people think is going
on to the various treatments. It is wacky. Yeah, people
with epilepsy have been stigmatized for ever since there was civilization. Basically,
the Code of Hammurabi, the first set of laws from
Mesopotamia four thousand years ago, contains a law that says,
(04:00):
if you have epilepsy, they didn't call it that, but
they were talking about people with epilepsy, you can't get married. Yeah,
they called it like the devil shakes or something basically,
and the idea was that there were that you were
infected with some sort of demon or the devil or
something like that. And what's interesting is that by the
time Hippocrates came around, he was like, no, no, no no,
(04:21):
you guys have it all wrong. This is just some
sort of disorder in the brain. You can probably treat
with diet and exercise and that kind of stuff, which
is actually pretty good advice for somebody who was driving
this years ago. And then somehow they got lost and
there everybody was like, no, no, it's demons, unclean spirits
all that, and it went back to being a very
(04:42):
stigmatized disease. Yeah, it was. It was an unexplainable thing,
and I think back then. Um, now we try to
poke around and learn like the real reasons behind something,
even if it still remains unexplainable at the end. But
back then they would just say they're possessed or they're
a witch, right that which thing? It was in the
Maletheus Maleficarum, the witch the witch Finder's handbook, it was
(05:07):
basically in there, and either if you had epilepsy, you
were a witch or you were possessed by a demon
or in some cases you could be possessed by like
an angel or something like that. Um, but more often
than not, it was like a negative thing, like a
negative spirit had possessed you, or you were under the
influence of a witch. So somebody in your village could
(05:29):
be accused of witchcraft if you had epilepsy because they
were like this, which over here is giving this guy epilepsy. Berner,
that was a thing. So epilepsy has always been tied
to that and that law about people with epilepsy not
being able to marry. There were laws on the books
in the United States up until nine that said people
(05:52):
with epilepsy can't get married, can't get married. Yeah, but
I'm sure those were those like laws that aren't enforced, right,
or were they literally enforcing those laws? I don't know
that part. I'm sure they were back in like the
twenties and thirties during the eugenics movement, right, I don't
know that they were up until that sounds like one
of those laws where like you can't spit on the
(06:13):
street after sundown, you can't put lipstick on a horse. Oh,
you can can't spit on the um. And then you know,
ancient treatments are exactly what you would think, like everything
from drinking blood to killing a dog and drinking it's bile. Uh,
if someone's having a seizure near you p in your
(06:36):
shoe and give it to them to drink, like it's
a jellyfish sting. Yeah, but in the shoe. I I
don't know, Like what is that just because they know
that that you have something that holds urine? That would
be my guess. Okay, I didn't know if that was like, oh, no,
a p into like cupped hands, you're cupped hands and
then just kind of like just drop it onto their mouth.
(06:57):
God regardless. That's another thing. Don't put a wallet or
a spoon or a credit card in somebody's mouth. Don't
put your urine in somebody who's having a seizure's mouth.
Doesn't help. Um. I also saw that it wasn't until
the eighteenth century that people finally were like, I don't
think this is actually infectious. One of the reasons why
people with epilepsy were so shunned, just shunned and stigmatized
(07:21):
and just kept on the outskirts or the yeah, the
outskirts of society because people thought epilepsy was contagious and
you can catch it from the breath of someone with epilepsy.
So like people with epilepsy have been treated horribly for
all the time basically, so hopefully we can kind of
(07:41):
dispel any of the last myths around it. That's my
hope with this episode, Chuck, Let's see if we can
do it. Okay, Well, we like to start off every
episode by stating our hopes and dreams. You know. Uh so,
what's going on in the brain. We'll get to that
a little bit more in detail, but kind of the
way this article in our on our own website puts it,
(08:02):
which this was so like ten years ago writing wise,
but they basically talk about a kind of traffic jam
in your brain when there's confusion when there's too much,
too many neurons firing at once, and uh, it can
cause an overwhelming sensation that can eventually cause a seizure. Yeah.
(08:24):
It's like, um, I've seen it compared to like electrical storms. Yeah,
where basically it's a a sudden overload, an electrical overload
in your brain and your brains just like I'm just
shutting down here for a second and then it resets itself.
Your brain sounds like pop Newark? Yeah, mind does mine? Uh?
(08:47):
Mind us? Um? And you said from from a bunch
of neurons firing at once, Yeah, not just a bunch
of neurons, but those neurons that are firing fire a
lot more than usual too, something like so they fire
eighty times a second normally, where during a seizure they're
going to fire like five times a second. Yeah. And
(09:08):
you know, we'll talk about the brain machines later. But
one thing that's characteristic of UH seizures is when they
look at your brain scan, they're big peaks and valleys.
It's not a steady stream of do do do do?
Just make that noise? Who knew he was going to
(09:28):
show up? That's great uh, but let's talk about some
of the types of seizures. UM. There are a couple
of broader categories, focal seizures or generalized seizures. Focal seizures
are just in one part of the brain, were generalized
and I think about six people with epilepsy have the
(09:49):
focal kind and generalized are on both sides of the brain. Yeah,
like your whole brain is under attack. Whereas yeah, the
focal seizures, it could just be from like a lesion
in its specific part, or there's something that's hypersensitive that's
just just one tiny region of your brain, but it's
enough to do some wacky stuff to you. And within
(10:10):
those groups, there are further subgroups, for instance, a simple
focal seizure or a complex focal seizure, or the two
types of focal seizures. So as simple focal seizure is UM,
you're you just kind of have like a weird feeling
like you're conscious the whole time, yes, yeh. And it's
also sometimes called an aura and an aura itself. It
(10:35):
can just be a stand alone seizure, but it's kind
of like seizure light L I T E. Right. Um.
But that same simple focal seizure can also be the
beginning of a larger complex focal seizure larger seizure of
either type, where um, it's just the ora, it's just
the beginning symptoms of it. So it can be stand
(10:55):
alone or it can lead to a larger um seizure. Yeah,
and we'll we'll get in you send a really cool thing.
We'll get into in a second about like exactly what
a seizure is like. But quickly a complex vocal seizure
the other type of focal seizure, UM, you do lose consciousness. Um.
And if you are around someone that has one of these, uh,
(11:19):
you might see it's a little bit more like what
you would think of as a movie seizure. Yeah, life
of a better term. It can be like twitching, blinking,
Maybe someone's just sort of, um, seems dazed and sort
of walking around. Well that's the thing that got me,
Like when I think of, well they lost consciousness, it
means they fainted or whatever. That's not necessarily what that
(11:40):
means when you're having a seizure, Like, lose consciousness means
like you you're not there, you blacked out, you're gone,
You're not you're not your awareness is no longer functioning
in the here and now. But people standing around you,
they might see you just kind of walking slowly around
in a circle or something like that, or sitting upright
and just kind of with a blank look on your
face or something like. It's not the traditional just falling over,
(12:03):
fainting away loss of consciousness. That was that was new
info to me. Yeah, and this aora you were talking about,
it's really interesting that UM. Other document you sent was,
I had no idea that you if you're a person
with epilepsy, you can sometimes and it's it's different for everyone,
(12:23):
but sometimes you can sense these seizures coming on days
ahead of time. Yeah, that's I've never heard of that. Yeah.
I think when you when you get when you start
having seizures, if you UM are an actual like if
you actually have epilepsy UM, you will start to notice
patterns stereotypic. It means like it's typically follows the same patterns,
(12:48):
the same sensations, and an aura can be anything from
seeing blinking lights to hearing a humming sound to suddenly
inexplicably experiencing panic or joy, or all number of things.
But basically, your brain is suddenly doing something. It's suddenly
getting a jolt of electricity that's actually not being stimulated
(13:10):
from anything outside. You're not actually seeing bright lights, but
your brain is showing you bright lights because that impulse
is actually starting from the inside rather than coming from
the outside in. That could be an oora. It could
also be a weird taste. Yeah. I think a lot
of times too, it's um People that experience the aura
have a hard time describing it in a way that
(13:30):
people that have never experienced the aura can understand. That's
sort of one of the hallmarks of it is, you know,
people like us end up stammering out you know, a
bunch of things that we can relate to. But I
think if you have had this sensation, it's sort of
one of those things like you've got to kind of
have it to really understand what it feels like. And
and the reason why is because you're probably different parts
(13:53):
of your brain that don't normally co function are functioning together,
and the information you're getting is being merged together into
it just a totally novel experience that no human has
ever had before. Yeah, which is pretty awesome if you
think about it in that way. Yeah, so pre seizure, um,
a lot of different things can be happening. You can
(14:15):
smell things, you can hear things, you could taste things.
You might get blurry vision or like you might have
a visual loss briefly or momentarily. Um, like you said,
it might be a very pleasant feeling. It can be.
I hope. I just wish it was like that for everybody. Sure,
I wish everybody who had epilepsy just had nothing but
(14:35):
pleasant brain attacks. Yeah, I totally agree. Uh So that's
at the onset um sort of pre seizure activity, when
you start to recognize these symptoms, and that's when you
might tell, you know, your friend or loved one or
whoever you're with, like, hey, I may have a seizure
(14:56):
here soon or maybe hours from now. Yeah. Um. And
I think this is from the Epilepsy Foundation, is called
what happens during a seizure Really interesting. Yeah, But they
say like every seizure has three stages to it. It's
just some are really hard to discern, Some appear to
just be the first, some have like clearly all three. Um.
(15:17):
But that beginning thing can technically stand alone, and aura
can be its own, like seizure light like I was saying,
but more often than not, it will lead into the
middle part of the um the seizure, which is called
the ictic stage of the seizure. Yes, and that's from
the first time symptoms and the aura accounts as a
(15:39):
symptom like, that's officially part of the seizure. Uh, to
the to the end of seizure activity activities at middle section. Yeah,
and the middle section is what you usually think of
as a seizure like that. It can be the classic
movie seizure where you can be um, you can convulse,
you can um your your your muscles might tighten suddenly um,
(16:01):
and you might go rigid. You might actually lose muscle uma.
And either way what those will result in it is
called a drop attack where you are standing up and
all of a sudden you tense up and fall over
like remember the fainting goats. Yeah, my clients, I knew
I knew that word from something my clonic goats and
then um or you can just lose muscle tone and
(16:22):
fall over. But either way it can be really bad
news for you because you can hit your head and um,
you can cut yourself. It's it's not good to fall
over with zero control over your body. No. And then um,
the final phase is post seizure, and that is that
can be really rough. Um, and it can take hours
(16:44):
or days to kind of fully feel like yourself again. Um.
And if someone and we'll talk about what to do
during a seizure, of course, Um, if you are around
someone that's having one, don't put your wallet in their mouth.
But post seizure is very important too, because you need
to be there and be very comforting and um, just
sort of take things slow in general. So um, that's
(17:05):
called the post ictic phase. And that can actually last
a lot longer than either of the other two phases
of a seizure. It can last twenty minutes, thirty minutes,
an hour, who knows. Yeah, you could be sleepy or
scared or anxious, have memory loss, uh, difficulty talking. It's
basically what it sounds like is is your brain and
(17:27):
your body has just undergone a traumatic experience and it's
just rough. Yeah, and it had to reset itself and
it was a hard reset and now you're paying the
prices price of it. Yeah. And that's not to even
mention um, some of the physical things. That is one
of the real dangers of having a seizure as if
you know, you fall on a glass coffee table or
(17:49):
you know, all the supplementary physical uh injuries that can occur.
One of the things that stuck out to me from
this UM Epilepsy Foundation article was that one of the
signs and symptoms of the posteictic phase is um that
the person may be frustrated, embarrassed, or ashamed. Man, that
is so sad. Um, that's just so sad, you know,
(18:12):
And I think it comes up later on too. And
this article from how Stuff Works about like the challenges
of living with epileps and you know, one of them,
I'm sure is just feeling stigmatized. Sure, people, Yeah, you
want to take a break. Yeah, we'll take a break
and we'll pick up with the different types of generalized
seizures right after this. If you want to know, then
you're in luck. Just listen to Chuck self fusire. Alright,
(18:55):
So generalized seizures. Remember we broke it down into the
two broad category raised focal generalized. There are many kinds
of generalized seizures. UM. The words you won't hear anymore
from a doctor are petite mall and grand mall. Seizures.
Those are outdated terms, but um, what they are now
referred to as is formally petite mall seizures are now
(19:18):
known as absence seizures uh and grand Mall are now
known as tonic clonic seizures. And and yes they are outdated,
but they still kind of highlight the early contributions of
some of the first French neurologists in the late eighteenth
century Dr Grandmall, who Stanley grand Mall. French neurologists. Um,
(19:41):
they helped pull this out of the realm of superstition.
And you know you can catch it from like someone
with epilepsy breathing on you. So hats off to the
early French neurologists for at least studying and identifying it.
But that's why, that's why there are French terms that
were applied to it previously. Just stuff to your work,
pie hat I did actually a little chorus line thing
(20:03):
like you can't see un at the table of my
foot's kicking too. Uh So one of the uh like
I like I said, the absent seizure formally petite mas seizure.
This is usually in children, and I think overall, I
don't know if you mentioned that children and people over
seventy five are most likely to have epilepsy, which is interesting,
(20:26):
and you can grow out of it depending on the
type of epilepsy, and I think you can even grow
back into it in your older age. Yeah, if you're
seventy five or older, you're at high you're at the
highest risk developing epilepsy. So the absent seizures um, like
I said, are mostly in children. Um, that's just like
where they zoned out, all yeah, exactly. You might see
(20:47):
some eyelid fluttering or something like that, or a twitch
or two, and it might just be a few seconds
long and then it's over. Very hard to spot what
was just going on. Were you thinking about Barney or
were you having You're just tired like it, it's tough
to spot. I think clonic seizures you will have convulsions
and jerking movements on both sides of your body. Myoclonic
(21:08):
like we talked about with the Goats, and it's funny.
I just was going through the archive today and I
saw her that was one of the best titles we've
ever had, that dangle Goat fell Over on a Fainting Goat.
I think that was one of yours. Maybe, I'm pretty sure.
But myoclonic seizures, uh, the upper body is mainly involved,
(21:30):
and it might look like someone has been shocked, like
a jerking of the upper body. The tonic seizures is
when you stiffen up, like you were talking about. Yeah,
we just suddenly your muscles go fully tense and you
just can't control them anymore. A tonic is the other
one that you were talking about, when you lose muscle control. Yeah.
And then there's the big daddy. This is the movie seizure,
(21:53):
the tonic clonic seizure. Yes, just the name of it
sounds menacing, you know, the tonic clonic. It sounds like, uh,
Star Wars character from the dark Side or something chronic.
The Fallen. Yeah, Grandmaal does too well. I think because
of the dark Mall thing and grand mof Darken. It's
a combination. Okay. I don't know who that last guy
(22:14):
is grand mof Darken. Yeah, which one is that? All right?
We should just move past this. No, No, I need
to know, especially if it's somebody from like the original three.
I think grand mof Tarkin was the guy. Wasn't that
Peter Cushing? Yeah? Okay, the digitally Peter Cushing instead of
fran Tarkington. What are you talking about? So the tonic
(22:36):
chronic movie style seizure is that that's the one that
you've probably seen on TV and films and after school specialist.
Is when the body stiffens, you sort of pass out
on the floor and your body is convulsive and jerking
on the ground. You're like eyes roll back in your head. Yeah,
that kind of thing. I couldn't tell if it kind
of alternates back between the two, or if it follows
(22:57):
that discernible pattern where it goes tonic like your muscles
tents you fall over, followed by chronic so you're convulsive
after that, or if you kind of bounce back and forth,
which would be pretty awful too. Yeah. Um, but that's yeah,
that's the like you said, the movie, that's the movie
seizure that use. I've never it just occurred to me.
I've never seen someone have a seizure that that I
(23:18):
could recognize. I'm not either, Yeah you just knocked would
I did? Is that someone trying to come into this
is like particle board? But I think it's still that
counts um seizure is generally are pretty brief a few seconds,
maybe a few minutes at the most, uh in most cases.
But they, like we said, they take a lot out
(23:41):
of your brain and body. Yeah, it's rough stuff. Here's
the thing. It's like, so tens your tents all, like
all the muscles in your body for a second. I
don't even know how to do that, So it's it's
like just doing it for a second. Sure, I'm like,
oh man, I'm sure already I'm tired. Imagine doing that
for like three minutes and like really like every muscle
(24:03):
in your body's tense, or imagine like convulsive for a
couple of minutes. Like heck, yeah, you're going to be
physically tired. It's a violent reaction, it is. But also
the normal processes of your body have just been totally
thrown out of whack and now they have to get
back into whack. And one of your body's like main
things for telling you something's wrong is to feel nauseated.
(24:26):
So you're going to probably feel nauseated. You're going to
feel um, maybe perturbed. You're not gonna feel very good,
and it's going to last a while. Sometimes people will
sleep and maybe they'll sleep for a minute, maybe they'll
sleep for an hour. There's a lot of different things
that can happen in that post actal state. Um, but
the the thing you want to look out for. So
(24:47):
we've never seen anybody have a seizure before, but there
if you do see someone who is having a seizure,
there are some very specific things that you should do
and not to. One of the things you should not
do take your dirty wallet in their mouth, card or
a spoon. What are you carrying a spoon around with
(25:07):
you for anyway, If it's to save somebody from swallowing
their tongue, leave it at home because you don't need
it anymore. Yeah. The main thing you want to do
is make sure that they will not further injure themselves.
Like if you're in an apartment and they're on the couch,
you may want to like move the coffee table out
(25:27):
away from the couch or something like that. Um, turn
them on their side if they have gone to the ground,
so they won't choke. That is a real thing, But
the tongue has nothing to do with it. It's I
think something like that. Yeah, sure, uh, and just sort
of try and ensure their safety, like don't try and
hold them down. Don't try and get them to stop
(25:49):
what they're doing, Like you can't. I'm gonna lay on
until the demons get out. Yeah, it's not a good idea.
So basically, just try and make things as safe as possible,
Like if they're around them, if their clothing is right, yeah,
keep sharp stuff away from uh. And yeah, if they're
sitting up or standing up or whatever, yet try to
get them on to the lowest point as comfortably. Um,
(26:13):
if their clothes are like bunching up around their neck, like,
try to loosen the clothing. Uh. Yeah, make it safe
and comfortable for them. Yeah, don't don't be like all right,
well I'm gonna go get my eyes checked or go
or go call the police or not the police. But
on one right, that was a really surprising thing that
that um, this article said was don't leave, just hang
(26:37):
out with them. That is more important than calling nine
one one. There is a point where you should call
nine on one though. There's a type of seizure or
there's a mode that seizures can go into called um
status epilectus, which is like a really bad situation. That's
when it continues debated keep minutes. It used to be
(27:01):
I think twenty or thirty minutes, and then they said
that's way too long. If someone has is having a
seizure of any type UM for five minutes or longer,
you want to call nine on one because what you're
seeing is a medical emergency on Under almost every single
case of a seizure, the brain can kind of reset
(27:22):
itself um and come out of the seizure within a
five minute period. If it doesn't, it strongly suggests that
it's not going to happen, and they may actually have
to medically induce a coma to just stop the electrical
activity in the brain and let it reset itself. So
you've got a bona fide medical emergency on your hands.
(27:43):
Or the other way it can happen is they can
be having a seizure and then have another seizure and
not regain consciousness in between. That actually qualifies as a
status epilectus seizure as well, and you want to call
nine and one for those, or if uh, if it's
a pregnant woman, then you want to call nine one
one because there can you know, be further complications there, Yeah,
(28:07):
for sure. Alright, So it looks like there's six different
types of epilepsy. If I'm reading this right, we'll say
at least six, starting with benign rolandic epilepsy. This is
the one that you would have in childhood and that
you would probably outgrow, Hence the benign thing. Yeah, it's
(28:27):
just kind of like, yeah, I don't any more about it.
It's just a phase the kids going through, you know. Uh.
Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy is actually one you wouldn't have it
in early childhood, but it actually would come on around
the same time as puberty. As if puberty is not
tough enough now with caesures. Yeah, I mean I feel
(28:49):
so bad for for for anyone that has this condition,
but especially like if it comes on at puberty, you
don't know what's going on. Well. Plus also it's like
the severe type of siege. There's tonic clonic seizures usually
characterize it or myoclonic, and you don't you don't outgrow it.
He comes on in childhood, but yet you got you
have it for life. Lenox guest syndrome. I feel like
(29:12):
I've heard of this one before. I had not. This
one's very severe and there are many kinds of caesars
that you can have and uh I believe this one
sticks around for life too. It doesn't. It's uh usually
it comes after it's become a parent. That they're cognitive impairments. Um.
(29:32):
It can there can be delayed motor skill development. Um.
It's it's kind of like co morbid with um like
a type of cognitive impairment as well. But it's it's
characterized by drop attacks to where you can really injure
yourself because you just fall over because there's um an
impairment in the muscle or the motor cortex. Look at you,
(29:57):
I got it eventually. Reef epilepsy is the one that
you might if you have ever like gotten a strobe
light warning or heard of that Pokemon thing, which that
legend is actually true. Yeah, I mean this this is
one that is triggered by something in the environment. Um.
In fact, remember I told you I went to that
David or was going to that David Byrne concert. We
(30:19):
got a ticket holder's got emails the day before the
show that said, you know, trigger warning, we use strobe
lights in this show. So I think they for stuff
like this that kind of are sending that stuff out
now to them? Yeah, yeah, because I mean you can
have a seizure, even if you don't have epilepsy. You
can have a seizure brought on by flashing lights and
(30:41):
they're fast enough that just basically get your brain going
and and it's off. Uh, not a seizure, but an
intense strobe light situation. I think makes everyone feel a
little off. It makes me dance. Where are the bubbles?
Give me my glowstick? Uh temporal wait, hold on, let
(31:04):
me give you one more about it. So, the reflects epilepsy,
it doesn't have to just be from like flickering lights,
like the strobe lights can be touched there they like different. Basically,
where you have reflects epilepsy, there's a part of your
brain that receives sensory stimuli that is hyper sensitive. So
(31:25):
whether it's your eyes, whether it's your ears, whether it's
your skin, and it'll be like a very small region
on your skin and it can be activated by tapping, scratching, rubbing,
and toothbrushing. Interesting, which if you think about it, that
is interesting. But also if you are going to trigger
a seizure from brushing your own teeth, that would suck. Yeah,
(31:45):
you know, I bet there are some ways around that. Oh,
surely there are, Like an electric toothbrush might have a
different or something. I hope. So, although I've bet an
electric toothbrushure would set it off more than anything. I
guess it depends. I don't know. Uh. Temporal low epilepsy
the most common kinds of seizure here complex vocal, although
(32:06):
there are other you know, seizures that can occur to
And this is the one where I think it's like, well,
it takes place in the in the temporal lobe, which
controls emotion and memory. But I think these are the
ones that are can be really interesting and hard to
describe by someone that's had one. Yeah, Like you'll have
a bunch of memories come back all of a sudden
at once, which, um, that's another thing another common device
(32:30):
you'll see in movies, not necessarily with seizures, but when
somebody's like like their brains being taken over or something
like that. Um, the like just a bunch of different
like visualizations will flash or whatever their life. Yeah, I
think that that's basically what happens with temporal lobe epilepsy. Interesting, yeah,
or you can also have just be overwhelmed by a
bunch of weird emotions good, bad, neutral that are not
(32:55):
being brought on by anything but the seizure. Yeah. I
at that David Burn show, I had a moment where
I was so overwhelmed with the sound, the lights, the
the emotion of the moment in the art that I
felt like I was on ecstasy at one point. What
(33:15):
song was it? That specific moment was during Once in
a Lifetime? So that was coming together with nostalgia to
just like suck me in the face, But you know
it was it had to do with other things as well.
So I mean, while again did not have a seizure,
I have no idea what that's like. It's interesting to
feel the brain sort of get rocked a little bit
(33:36):
to where you can feel it, but with positive feelings. Sure. See,
that's what epilepsy should be. It should be like at
ecstasy in your brain. Yeah uh. And then frontal lobe epilepsy.
It's the final kind, and this is the one where
you're more likely to have like your body herking and
(33:58):
jerking really stiff on one side. Right, Yeah, so you
got me with the hurricane and Jerky always reminds me
of the Mr. Show Herky Jerky Dancer. Um, should we
take a break. I think so Mr Show made an appearance.
So yeah, all right, we'll be right back. If you
want to know then you're in luck. Just listen to Chuck.
(34:41):
One of the things I saw, I want to say
that's not really apropos of what we're going to talk
about next, but when um, someone is having a seizure,
during the middle seizure part, they may um start start
doing like involuntary movements, like everything from lip smacking to
like playing at their buttons to actually undressing and dressing.
(35:03):
I thought that was really interesting. Yeah, that is interesting,
especially when you remember Alien Hands syndrome, and that was
the corpus closum, and I mean parts of the corpus
closum are involved sometimes with the epilepsy too. One of
the other things epilepsy bears a strong resemblance to, especially
in the fact that it has an aura and an
actual middle phase and then a recovery phase are migraines.
(35:27):
Oh yeah, very much related to migraines. And actually you
can get migraines as a symptom of the recovery phase
of the post eichtal phase, right, which that would really
suck to have a huge seizure and then come out
of it and have a migraine. Yes, that would not
be good. It would not. Uh. The causes of epilepsy
are It sort of depends. Sometimes you can have a
(35:49):
brain injury. Sometimes, like if you get hit in the head.
Sometimes you can have a tumor that's putting pressure on
the brain. Um. If you can determine the cause as
a doctor, then it's called symptomatic epilepsy. If you're not
quite sure what's going on, that's a head scratcher, yeah,
or idiopathic epilepsy. It's so funny they have a name
(36:10):
for it rather than I don't know sure. I mean,
I guess that makes sense, but I don't know is
really what that means. And then there's even another category,
cryptogenic epilepsy. And that's when the doctor is like, well,
I kind of have some information, but I'm not quite
sure if it's symptomatic or idiopathic. It's really specific, it is,
(36:35):
unless it's idiopathic, then it's totally non specific. That's right.
So UM. I found this really interesting the way that
um epilepsy is diagnosed, because just because you have one
seizure doesn't mean you have epilepsy. Yeah, if you have
a seizure, you want to go to the doctor to
find out if actually, no, you actually do have epilepsy.
(36:56):
But there's a number of ways you can get You
can have a seizure. You if you're a infin or
a kid and your temperature gets to a hundred point
four degrees fahrenheit or higher I think thirty eight degrees celsius.
That's called a febra febrile seizure feverish seizure. Doesn't mean
you have epilepsy. You may never have another seizure. Again, Supposedly,
(37:19):
if you are withdrawing from alcohol or some types of drugs,
you can suffer seizures. But I saw another research of
the literature that said this is not true. It's just
a legend. But like a medical legend um Supposedly, hypoglycemia,
abnormal heart rhythm, panic attacks, all of those can bring
(37:39):
on seizures or mimic seizures. And then there's something called
a pseudo seizure, which to anybody's witnessing it would be like,
that's a seizure, that person must have epilepsy. But if
you had that person um undergoing an electro and cephalogram
at the time a brain scan, you would see that
their brain waves were not doing somebody who has epilepsy's
(38:01):
brain would be doing. And that's actually brought on by
psychological distress, yeah, or like past abuse in your life
or something like that, which is bad enough. Yeah, I
mean that's yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned the e G.
The electro cephalograph um. At this point, if if you're
being hooked up to one of those machines, you've probably
(38:23):
already gone to the doctor had some blood tests done. Um.
It's interesting that, like the doctor, it's sort of like
bringing your car in. You're like, well it's not making
that noise now, and the mechanics like, well, I don't
know what to do then, right. Normally mechanics like, well,
just let me take your car home for a week, right,
And you gotta let them the same thing with your doctor.
You have to move into your doctor's house until you
(38:43):
have a seizure in front of That's not true, but
they can and will try and induce the seizure sometimes
so they can really see what's going on. It's not
so during an e G. They will try and to
do the seizure. They may put the strobe light in
front of your face. It'll take you to a David
Burn show exactly WHI should be a great way to
get treated, or they'll tell you to come in um
(39:05):
and not having slept. Yeah, fatigue is one thing, lack
of sleep that can bring them on its trigger. Yeah,
so they will try and induce the seizure A lot
of times after an e G. They will go hole
hog with a CT SCAN or an m R I.
And what is that funny? I just imagine you having
to ride a hog while you have the e G
(39:26):
thing on your head. Uh, C T or an m
R I. Um. Have you ever been to one of
those parties where they have the whole hog cooked just
like layd there looking like a hog? Yes, and I
shouldn't go in any more detail because they're vegetarian and
vegan listeners would not be happy. But yes, I have
all right, I have not it's something else. I bet.
(39:48):
I can't imagine just sticking a fork in something that
looks like an animal. Yeah, it says stick a fork
in me. I'm done, all right, Yeah, we'll just move on. Uh. Yes,
the C T R, m R I. UM. What they
what they're trying to do there is just get an
inside peak at exactly what's going on in the brain.
(40:10):
Like you were talking about. There could be a legion
or something that they don't see and this will this
will show all. Yeah. So again you come in, they say,
so you head a seizure. Huh. Put this calander on
your head and look into this light while I start
flashing it and make sure you haven't slept in a day,
and they try to trigger a seizure. And then they
(40:32):
look at the e G. Read out of what your
brain is doing when they say, yeah, this is an
epileptic seizure. This isn't just you know, uh, some other
type of seizure. This is like epilepsy. And then yeah,
they'll put you through the Wonder machine or something like
that and look for lesions, weird um, oxygen concentrations, whatever
to try to pinpoint where the problems coming from, because
(40:54):
again it can just be one specific region of your brain,
or it could be a generalized type of seizure in
your whole brain. And then based on these clues, they
start deducing what type of epilepsy you might have, right uh,
and then what you can do about it. Um, obviously
you're not gonna eat a pigeon these days or drink
dog bile. But um well you could eat pigeon, don't
(41:18):
drink the dog bile. No. Uh. There is medication that
you can take, but from what I read, it's it
can be pretty rough on you and a lot of
bad side effects. So what you try to do, I
think with a lot of like with a lot of
hardcore medications like this, is find that balance of what
(41:39):
do I need to try and control these seizures and
still kind of be able to operate and have a
good quality of life. Yeah, And I think a lot
like um if you've been diagnosed as say like bipolar
or depressive disorder something like that, where there's a lot
of different medications out there that do different things and
you're probably going to have to try a different combination
(42:00):
until you find the one that works best for you.
Um as as this article put it, to balance quality
of life and control of your seizures, that's what you're
looking for in a medication or combination of medications. Same
thing with with epilepsy. Yeah, I mean you may not
uh want the full dose and you may just want
to limit your seizures and have an acceptable amount of
(42:22):
seizures because the medication is so rough on you. Sure, yeah,
that's the worst part. And they've actually come up with
a device called the vegas nerves stimulator. Remember the vegas nerve,
I don't remember it. Was it a female orgasm episode
that it played such a role in. I think we've
it's a couple of them. We said God was either
a woman or clearly favors women, because women's orgasms are
(42:43):
triggered by vagus nerves and even if you become paralyzed,
the vegas nervous still intact. That's right, only for women. Well,
there's a device that's basically like a pacemaker for your brain,
is what they call it. And it stimulates that vegas
nerve and it just sends a little like t called
pulse on like a regular um rhythm to your brain.
(43:05):
And they're like, this really works. It doesn't necessarily get
rid of all of your seizures, but it brings the
frequency of them down so much that you could just
get by with a low dosage of medication. But they
have no idea how it works. They think maybe it
keeps the brain juiced on a normal basis. It's almost
(43:25):
like a pacemaker. It is that. Well, like I said,
they call it the pacemaker. Okay, I said that. And
then there's the well, I mean it sounds it sounds crazy,
but if it is isolated in one part of your brain,
they can actually go in and just remove that part
of your brain in many cases and solve the problem.
And no, not only no side effects. And they're not
(43:49):
taking a stab in the dark, like they know what
parts of the brain they can remove. They're not like,
well let's try this um. But sometimes you actually show
intellectual improvements after the surgery, like when they remove the
cryan from Homer's brain, remember that one. That was one
of the best ones ever. There's also a corpus coloss
to me, yeah, I'm saying it right, which is so
(44:12):
remember you know there's a type of generalized seizures or
the whole brain seizures. Well, the corpus colossum is the
white matter that connects the two hemispheres of the brain.
So they just go in there and go and no
more generalized brain seizures. Right. The thing is is there.
I'm very curious what the side effects are of that.
Because we developed a corpus colossum over time and there's
(44:36):
this really interesting thing. We got to do this someday
on a guy named Julian Jane came up with the
bicameral mind, and he had this theory that before we
had a corpus colossum and the two hemispheres talked to
one another. That was back when we used to think
the gods were talking to us. One part of our
brain was talking to us, and it seemed like it
was coming from outside of our brain, like the angel
(44:58):
and the devil on your shoulder, basedically or literally the
gods having like a role in your daily life and
guiding you through life. It was actually one side of
your brain, but since it wasn't connected to the other side,
it didn't seem like it was for coming from you.
And so to cut the corpus colossom, I wonder if
it would have similar effects like that. Yeah, and I
think that also was um for alien hand syndrome. The
(45:20):
corpus clossum had a lot to do with it because
one side like a malfunction of it because one side
isn't talking to the other. Interesting um. There was also
some types of epilepsy called intractable epilepsy where and this
is like this is really high of people who have epilepsy,
have intractable epilepsy, Like it's not going away. Yeah, and
(45:43):
it's really tough to control even when you're being treated,
and you can actually die too. Um, I get the feelings.
Is pretty rare, but sudden, unexplained death in epilepsy or
sued up is something that can happen. Yeah, they they again,
they don't know how it works, but they think that
(46:04):
maybe it has to do with a regular heartbeat that
can result a regular breathing, or that someone gets trapped
face down in something like betting and suffocated during a seizure,
because a lot of seizures, a lot of types of seizures,
especially tonic ones. It's the tonic that, um, yeah, that
you're hap them while you're sleeping, and if you're sleeping
(46:28):
on your stomach, you could conceivably choke or suffocate. They
think maybe that has something to do with it, but
they're just not sure. I saw an obituary the other
day for someone that died in their sleep, and that
really struck me for the first time. Is like, that's
a really nice way to say someone died in bed. Like,
(46:49):
I don't think it ever happens where someone's just asleep
and doesn't wake up right, Like, I think you're just
asleep in bed. You wake up and you're like, I'm dying,
and then you die, and it's just it's like a
really nice way to say they died in their sleep.
We've talked about that before, about somebody, can you really
die while you're asleep and I'm dying? We were talking
(47:11):
about someone who woke up to die in pain. I
think that's probably how it always rather than just dying
in their sleep. No, I think people might pass real sleep.
I think you could. That's sweet, especially if you're on
the dope, like they got you doped up, like in
hospice or something like that. You can very easily just
die in your sleep while you're kind of out of it.
(47:33):
But I don't know. I hope you're wrong. Yeah, me too. Um,
living with epilepsy, Uh, you know, it can be very tough.
It's you have to think about everything from driving to
going swimming, by yourself, raising an infant, if you're a
woman or a man or a man. Yeah, but yeah,
(47:54):
this one, this one, Um specifically said, like, epilepsy can
can be a challenge to I mean you know, when
they're deciding whether to have kids or not, you know,
they that's just I hadn't even thought about that. But
you can't have a seizure while you're breastfeeding or something.
What happens after that? Yeah? Or I mean if you're
just a the lone caregiver to a child at home, uh,
(48:17):
to a eighteen month old, and all of a sudden
you need treatment yourself. Yeah, that's a scary thing. All
the all the states and the United States have different
rules as far as driving. Uh, Like you know, sometimes
it's you can't have had a seizure for the past
twelve months or something. Yeah. You mediated a guy who
had a couple of teachers and like he like had
(48:41):
he lost his license because of it. Yeah, like think
I think it was twelve months in Virginia or something.
Uh what else? Um, yeah, I think that's it. Oh well,
I did look up celebrities with epilepsy, of course, because
that's all anyone cares about, right, Prince know that um
(49:01):
Adam Horovitz. I didn't know that from the BC Boys,
Mr Danny Glover, I didn't know that Little Wayne, Big Wayne? Uh?
Is there a medium? Wayne? And the Rock? No little
Wayne uh Neil Young really the great Harriet Tubman, I
think we knew that. And then uh the NFL former
(49:26):
NFL twins Tik and Ronde Barber, and there were twins
who both had it, So that's oh yeah, they think
there might be a genetic basis to it. Yeah, I
don't think we even mentioned that. They've identified something like
two hundred different gene deficiencies that could could possibly lead
to epilepsy. And interestingly, if you were a child and
you were diagnosed with epilepsy, your doctor may say, put
(49:48):
that kid on Atkins. Oh yeah, keytonic diets might have
something that helps. Yeah, they think, well, like when you're
when you have kind of gone through your fat stores,
you go to key tones in your brain, and it's
got to have something to do with that. Start burning
keytones in your brain. That's got to have an impact
on your electrical activity. Why it only works on kids
(50:10):
rather than adults is it's a mystery to me. You
got anything else? I got nothing else? Well, let's epilepsy everybody.
If you ever see somebody who's having a seizure, remember
everything we told you and keep that spoon out of
their mouth. And since I said that's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this boy marathon ors we heard from them.
(50:32):
We probably should have thought that through, Like we did
a marathon episode asking for people to email. Yeah, I
think we would have gotten the same amount of emails
for marathons, Like I love marathon. People who marathon love
to talk about marathons, So we were asking for it
even without asking for it. Well, and we also asked
about the marathon high versus a marijuana high, and turns
(50:54):
out a lot of marathon or smoke weed. I bet,
I will, I can. I can imagine which one you selected. Well,
actually I did not select one of those because they
were kind of all the same. They were like one
guy said, it's not the same. One guy said he
would get high and run. I saw that guy until
the runners had kicked in, and he said, so I
would be high the entire marathon. Yeah, yeah, like you're insane.
(51:17):
His friends thought, he was, how would you even start?
You know? He was probably should I eat combos today
or run a marathon today. I had a friend who
used to get super high and go to the end
workout and lift weights like Kevin Spacey, Oh that's right,
and America. That's always seems so bizarre to me. And
look what happened to him. Yeah, you want to stay
(51:38):
away from the weed for the weightlifting combo? All right,
here we go. Been listening for almost two years, guys,
never missed an episode. I'm a former ultra marathon or
typically in the fifty k distance, so definitely on the
shorter end five thousand mile. Can you believe that a
fifty k is a short one? Yeah? And I can
(51:59):
speak to experience in both the runners high and hitting
the wall in the same race. In two thousand thirteen,
I was competing in my last fift k, and while
I was towards the back of the pack of these
events always, I was feeling great when I reached the
four hour mark, laughing and joking with aid station volunteers
and having a great time. I felt like I was
(52:20):
on top of the world at mile twenty and then
it happened. I hit the wall hard. I had been
able to cover twenty miles a pretty rugged trail in
four hours. Suddenly my legs went from feeling amazing and
light feeling like sex of what submit that happens to me?
At like mile point seven five? Uh? It took me
another four hours in the final twelve miles of the race.
(52:45):
Maybe it's time I start training for my next one. Guys,
you're invited to join me. Maybe Chuck hats running because
he hasn't found the right distance yet. Perhaps it's thirty
two point five miles. Nope, Nope. That is from Sean
Riley in Columbia, South Carolina. Shaw and Riley, who is crazy.
But thanks for writing in short ones. Um. Yeah, but
(53:06):
we should say there is quite a difference apparently, between
pot High and the Runners High. Yes, no one said
that there were anything alike. No, most people said they
were pretty different. Okay, cool, So we're done with marathoning.
No need to email us more about marathons. We're good,
We got it. Okay. If you do have epilepsy or
(53:27):
you know someone who does, though, I would love to
hear from you and let us know what it's like
to live with that. Um. If you want to get
in touch with us, you can go to our website
it's called Stuff you Should Know dot com, and there
you will find links to all of our social media accounts.
Or you can send us a plain old fashioned email
to Stuff Podcast How Stuff Works dot com. For more
(53:51):
on this and thousands of other topics. Is It How
stuff Works dot com
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