I’m on the hunt to nail down the potential causes of a seizure my youngest child suffered right after Christmas. It may be that we’re over-reacting, as there’s a lot of evidence that once someone has a second seizure, the chances of recurrent seizures rises dramatically.
As we search for a physiological explanation for this event, we’re trying to minimize the risk of a recurrent seizure. In this, the concept of a seizure threshold has really helped us along, in trying to reduce the risk of another seizure. This works from the premise that each person has some stressor, that if exceeded, can induce a seizure. For most people, the threshold is relatively high, while others may even have a handful of potential triggers. Furthermore, for those triggers, there are certain conditions that can lower the threshold. Right now, we’re methodically going through the things that were different in our household, trying to eliminate all the conditions that were either a) different, or b) suspected of inducing seizures.
At Christmas, that turns out to be quite a few.
Potential Causes Of A Seizure
1. Fatigue
According to much of my reading, fatigue is one of the greatest risk factors for inducing a seizure. People who suffer seizures are known to be more likely to suffer seizure activity when they have irregular sleep patterns, or are simply tired.
Generally speaking, my kids have early bedtimes and we’re fairly strict about enforcing those. After all, when they’re tired, they’re cranky. Most pediatricians seem to recommend 8-10 hours of sleep for kids, and if ours don’t get enough, they definitely suffer.
However, over the Christmas break, we had been letting them stay up longer as a treat. After all – no school the next day. That quickly came to an end. They’re back to school now, so it would have ended anyway. However, this incident just reinforced the need to keep regular sleep patterns.
2. Video Games
According to Nintendo’s website, approximately 1 in 4000 people will suffer a seizure when playing video games. This is generally accepted as a by-product of photosensitive-induced seizures – a condition in which seizures are triggered by flashing lights.
Most experts seem to believe that seizures from flashing lights are a function of frequency of the flashing light. People have been documented to have seizures induced by conditions as simple as driving through a forest – and the sunlight streaming through the branches can induce a seizure.
After talking with people, there’s some anecdotal evidence that even the color of the flashing object may play a role. I’m not sure the “experts” agree with this assessment, but reading boards and talking with those who have suffered through this are pretty convinced.
The fact remains that, while our kids don’t usually play many video games, we bought them a copy of Wii Sports Resort for Christmas. They were having a 2-day marathon on the 52-inch television. Fatigue + extended play on a large screen equals a risk factor.
We’ve since disconnected the Wii. We don’t know for certain that was the reason, but they were playing the Wii when it happened. Again – something different in our household.
3. Medications
This is another subject that seems to be of some debate. However, there are certainly medications that have been documented to lower the seizure threshold. Our son is a diagnosed asthmatic, and although he wasn’t taking any of the medications on this list, he does take Singulair and Pulmacort.
My position on this is that if some drugs are known to induce seizures, others may as well. At this point, it becomes a risk/reward decision. RxList mentions a potential risk of seizures in post-market experience on its Singulair website. We’ve discussed this with our pediatrician, who discounted the matter.
I’m not really satisfied with that though – so we’re taking our son back to his asthma specialist. If he doesn’t need the medication then why take the risk?
4. Food Additives
There are, of course, many additives in foods. Many of these have been implicated in seizure and/or behavior problems. Although we don’t usually drink many sodas in our house, he loves “Big Red,” which contains Red Dye #40.
Red dye #40 has been repeatedly implicated in behavior problems, and chat boards can be found where it is mentioned by individuals as a possible cause of seizures.
Although its a weak link, its a link nonetheless. Toss in the fact that I have a grandparent with a documented allergy to both red and yellow food dyes and the foods and drinks that contain these ingredients have been greatly reduced from our household.
That’s where we stand with this for now. It may be that none of these things was responsible – or all of them. Or 2 or 3 of them in combination. We simply don’t know. But until we have some answers, it seems prudent to take these steps to reduce the potential for another seizure.
It must be frustrating not to know.
It’s very stressful. Trip to Vanderbilt today to explore the Singulair…