Who Has Epilepsy?

By: Mental Phobia Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Although epilepsy can begin at any point during the life of a person's epilepsy is diagnosed in more children, especially in the first year of life - around 140 per 100,000 children under one are diagnosed with epilepsy each year. This figure falls to 40 for every 100,000 adults. However, recent reports have shown that epilepsy is increasing in the elderly, who represent a quarter of all new diagnoses, according to a survey by the National Society for epilepsy. The condition is twice as common in the elderly as it is in the population as a whole.

Maybe even more common than is documented, because some of you probably do not recognize. The diagnosis of epilepsy in the elderly can be difficult. In many cases seizures are mild, and although this is excellent news in terms of control, may also mean that it is not so easy to see how they are. Aunt Alice awake dreaming of Grandma "is fun," may be part of the folklore of the family and of course is not justified for medical research. We tend to expect that disease and neglect in the elderly as a matter of course. However, epilepsy in early life may be one of the most preventable cases of the disease. The more we age, we are responsible for more loss of fitness and health, but in particular epilepsy in the elderly is often due to cerebrovascular disease that leads to small scars in the brain. In general, the risk of epilepsy in the elderly can be reduced with proper attention to lifestyle, including healthy diet, enough exercise, not smoking and drinking alcohol in moderation. Paying attention to questions of lifestyle can help people of any increase in age better seizure control and improve overall health, and can also prevent its worsening epilepsy in older adults.

Epilepsy is divided almost equally between the sexes, although some epilepsy syndromes appear exclusively in girls. Epilepsy is slightly more common in men, and there are several reasons why this is so. One reason is that men are more likely to suffer head injuries and brain infection. Another theory is that the brains of newborn girl child and to develop differently in the womb due to differences in male and female sex hormones. The brain matures more rapidly in boys than girls boy, because girls are less vulnerable to perinatal anoxia (lack of oxygen at birth) that can damage the developing brain areas. The Y chromosome, which produces masculinity in the fetus also slows down the development so that children are born about two to three weeks behind in the maturity of girls, which makes them more vulnerable to injuries. This vulnerability persists into adulthood - One study showed that in women, 50 percent risk of developing epilepsy was the last time they were 19, but in men, this did not happen until were 24. This risk is greater than the size of the older men of the brain. Another study showed that the brains of men and women are only the same size when they are 100, when has fallen enough to be similar! There is some evidence that the prognosis or outlook is slightly worse in women, suggesting that this is due to the fact that the brains of women are tougher, more serious a case is needed to precipitate epilepsy . But in practice, most of these differences are small - again, every person with epilepsy is an individual case and should be treated as such.

Despite its high prevalence, epilepsy, traditionally, the 'Cinderella' of the health service, attracts so little money for research - the annual EUR 2 billion of UK medical research budget is only £ 336,000 intended to epilepsy, less than £ 1 per person with epilepsy, comparing unfavorably with say £ 250 per person with muscular dystrophy and £ 140 per person with multiple sclerosis.

A recent survey of managers of health in the United Kingdom revealed that only 5 percent has established service standards for epilepsy. However, this may change as epilepsy achieves greater media coverage and public interest, something that is done - in recent years, according to the National Society for Epilepsy, epilepsy has become an "interesting question" how genetic research and brain scanning methods modem reveal more about the condition.

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