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Keppra

Sun, 01/02/2011 - 11:15
I take Keppra 250mg once a day. I have noticed that by 6 in the evening I get some dizzy spells. I am supposed to take 250 twice a day but I am very moody and afraid if I take more this will get worse.  Am I getting dizzy cause the medicine is wearing off or is this a side effect. I have been taking it for a year now.

Comments

Re: Keppra two times a day, Keppra XR one time a day

Submitted by tbaldwin on Sun, 2011-01-02 - 21:58
XR = eXtended Release. If this isn't being taken and you are taking regular Keppra always take medicine two time a day

Re: Keppra

Submitted by 3Hours2Live on Sun, 2011-01-02 - 23:56
Hi Ckidd2000, I utilize Keppra in an unorthodox manner too. The only medication I'm taking now is Keppra. I take Keppra mainly to prevent secondarily generalized tonic-clonics (TCs). My TCs usually strike in the middle of about monthly clusters of strong partial seizures. To be prepared for the prodromal phase of my clusters, I take a minimal dose of Keppra before going to sleep each night. The prodromals are very vague, and not very reliable, but tend to be of some value as an earliest possible warning. By trial-and-error, and the best to minimize my prodromals to clusters of seizures, I take an alternating weaker, then stronger, minimal doses every other day before going to sleep each night. When the physical side-effects of Keppra become annoying (for me, mainly easily irritated "dry" throat and lungs), I reduce the minimal dose lower until recovery, or a distinct warning event. With a pre-ictal event, or warning, to a cluster of seizures, I take a moderate dose of Keppra immediately. My pre-ictals to a cluster of seizures is a day, to hours, before stronger seizures in a cluster before possible TCs. If, and with continuing and stronger pre-ictals and partial seizure, I then take up to a maximum dose of Keppra for the weighted time period. So far, I haven't had a notable TC for 21 months now, when they were monthly without any treatment, and just about every other month, following "professional" advice. My seizure clusters usually reach a peak during a sleep cycle. Most research finds more than 50% of typical seizures occur during sleep cycles, the next most common, without differentiation between sleep and awake, and the least common concentrated only during complete wakefulness (the exact opposite is generally believed, because of the riddle that people are asleep when they are asleep). My non-cluster partial seizures have not responded to any medical treatment in my 58 years of life. About 35 years ago, a total carbohydrate-free diet for weight-loss/muscle-mass somewhat stopped my partial seizures, but the diet, diet expenses, and problems with bouts of hypoglycemia, tend to make the continuous diet untenable in economic practice. Bouts of painless and painful migraines, distinct from seizures, do not respond to any continuous treatment, but do respond to brief intermittent treatments, for very short periods (i.e., an isolated, occasional, dose of Keppra tends to stop my migraine, but frequent, or continuous use for TC control, neutralizes this otherwise beneficial effect of Keppra). When a Medicaid snafu interrupted my Keppra prescriptions, I went a week without taking any Keppra. Luckily, this happened about two weeks before my period of strong seizure clusters, and rough periods of "drowsiness", "raggedy" going to sleep, and vivid dreaming were a problem, with a stronger, than other recent, clusters near schedule. I cited the "red-tape" at: epilepsy-dot-com/discussion/992143 Regular Keppra has a short half-life, so if my seizures leading to TCs were totally unpredictable, it would probably be better to take Keppra every 12 hours at large enough doses to continually block TCs. Since I can make predictions, I can reduce the frequency and the average size of doses of Keppra, and prevent needless side-effects and continual intoxication levels, while relying on how fast Keppra works when I receive a warning. Doctors tend to be stuck with a "standard practice" philosophy. Long before my epilepsy became life-threatening with massive TCs, doctors told me that epilepsy was rare and outside of "standard practice", with my signs and symptoms. With stronger seizures, Medicaid/MediCruz dispensed haphazard doses/sources of carbamazepine and acetaminophen as "standard practice" until kidney and liver failure, then short and abrupt termination because of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, because the Medicaid neurologist vanished. Since my non-cluster partial seizures are intractable, I now follow the advice "Complete control of partial complex seizures is sometimes difficult to achieve. Since the seizure manifestations are often not too disruptive, the patient may prefer incomplete control over the side effects of high doses of medication." "Drug treatment: principles and practice of clinical pharmacology and therapeutics" by Graeme S. Avery, (1980, 1987), Chapter XXV, "Treatments of Seizure Disorders" by H. Kutt and F. H. McDowell, page 1023. This stance is beyond the understanding of many neurologists who demand a high rate of success, and/or claim nearly 100% accuracies. In fact, a doctor can't even measure something as simple as a person's height with nearly a "100%" accuracy and precision to the population's value. Tadzio

Re: Keppra

Submitted by 3Hours2Live on Wed, 2011-01-05 - 00:06
I live in California, USA. Tadzio

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