Epilepsy and non-epileptic or dissociative seizures (FND?)

[rvallee]

much fuller explanation here:
https://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/non-epileptic-seizures

I don't see any difference between this and the Scientology Thetans-inhabiting-the-body thing. It's literally the same idea, a deus ex machina without substance.

How did such ridiculous ideas ever got taken seriously? Let alone continue to be. Emotions being stored in the body? Ghosts of aliens past stored in the body? There's no difference here. It's the exact same thing for all practical matters.

 

[Sid]

Stumbled on this old paper on nonepileptic seizures (FND) and tilt table test.

Head-up tilting is a useful provocative test for psychogenic non-epileptic seizures

Seventeen patients (81%) experienced typical attacks during head-up tilt.

No patient developed significant EEG abnormalities in association with their tilt-induced attack. In addition, no attack was associated with hypotension or bradycardia, confirming the diagnosis of NEAD, but in 16 of the 17 ‘positives’, the non-epileptic attack was immediately preceded by sudden sinus tachycardia (up to 150 beats/minute) and hypertension. The exception was the patient who developed absence. The mean time to onset of seizurelike activity was 13.2 ± 11 minutes (range 0–31 minutes).

 

[Mithriel]

That is quite shocking to me. They talk about way of inducing psychogenic seizures but what is right there in front of there eyes is that seizures can happen because of lack of blood flow to the brain.

It is only blinding ideology that makes the connection no electrical activity so it must be psychological when nerves have chemical signalling and to quote an article in the New Scientist a few weeks ago "The brain is so complicated it bankrupts language"

Differentiating types of seizures is perfectly valid it is trying to explain them by some magic event in the past that is wrong.

Personally, I found this finding stunning. As a teenager I had absence seizures which were like a badly cut film. In every case I had been standing at a bus stop or in a queue; upright for too long. I got worse with standing as my ME became worse so I began to find ways to prevent having to stand for any length of time which may be why the absences stopped.

 

[Sid]

Personally, I found this finding stunning. As a teenager I had absence seizures which were like a badly cut film. In every case I had been standing at a bus stop or in a queue; upright for too long. I got worse with standing as my ME became worse so I began to find ways to prevent having to stand for any length of time which may be why the absences stopped.

It’s remarkable that the authors don’t consider, not even for a moment, that this could be anything other than suggestibility. What if FND is linked to autonomic dysfunction?

 

[Mithriel]

I think that functional neurological problems are caused by a variety of brain dysfunctions as well as the ones that are just what they sound like, IBS, interstitial cystitis things like that.

Seizures may well be linked to blood flow problems in the brain.

 

[rvallee]

I think that functional neurological problems are caused by a variety of brain dysfunctions as well as the ones that are just what they sound like, IBS, interstitial cystitis things like that.

Seizures may well be linked to blood flow problems in the brain.

It's low numbers but I've seen plenty of long haulers reporting non-epileptic seizures. It's probably just one of the possible consequences. Roughly similar to the number of reports of testicular pain, which I have so far seen only one in medical literature. Low-number symptoms are being missed simply because they are too rare given the small samplings used and the right experts have to happen to pay attention to a given sample.

In a way it's weird that the charlatans pushing for the FND/MUS are basically correct that this is all pretty much the same thing underneath, it's just that they are right for the wrong reasons, with the wrong cause and mechanism. But it looks a lot like part of the same overall disease category, the conflicting interaction of the body and the environment, mostly but not just pathogens.