A little more than a year ago, a friend of mine experienced three seizures (two in the early morning while he was asleep, and one later in the day while he was having an MRI done). After extensive testing, doctors were unable to pinpoint a cause for the seizures.
He wasn’t on any medications at the time, had no history of nerological abnormalities, etc.
However, in the weeks leading up to the event he’d been getting very little sleep, and when the seizures happened he was sleeping for the first time in a couple days.
My question is this: has lack of sleep ever been connected in any way with epilepsy or seizures?
(Most of my brain is screaming that I’m just looking for a connection where none exists, but there’s an itty-bitty itch that’s not going to go away until I’m told no evidence exists to support it.)
Our daughter had a number of behaviors that indicated that she might be having siezures. When she was 6, the neurologist set up a test to investigate that possibility, we had to keep her awake for 24 hours prior to the test to make her more susceptible. (She tested clean.)
Hunh…so that may have been it. I didn’t want to think it was the lack of sleep, because he had shown no signs of epilepsy beforehand. But I guess we don’t always know when people are predisposed to something or when a particular behavior’s going to set it off.
Sleep deprivation can greatly increase the odds of a seizure. In fact, may EEG tests for epileptic brian patterns are done so after the subject has been awake for 24 hours or more.
Ten years ago I had a siezure as I was laying down to sleep after a long day, long week, long month of work.
At the time I was working 60 hours a week in a large arcade.
Exactly a year later I had a siezure again after a long work month.
After an unbelievable amount of testing no real cause was found. Since then, I’ve never had another one. I lead a perfectly normal lifestyle.
I also have non-typical migraines about once or twice a year if I workout too hard (blindess, temporary memory loss, headache). Go figure.