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Seizures and yawning, stretching

Sat, 12/06/2008 - 11:08

I've noticed a coorelation between stretching and yawning with my seizures.  In particular, I do these compulsive strings of half yawns (meaning, they're full yawns, but for the most part I'm not sucking in air, just stretching my mouth or some such) and these extended stretches.  I'm not sure if they're part of my "episodes," an aura to them, or part of the post-ictal, but I've definitely noticed they're there.

Does anyone else have/do something similar? I'd love to hear. :-)

~hams

Comments

Re: Seizures and yawning, stretching

Submitted by fastjim on Wed, 2011-03-16 - 01:54
I've watched our girl who has epilepsy, yawn and stretch and then in the midst of it doing either, have a seizure, I wonder if there is a connection too, very interesting. 

Re: Seizures and yawning, stretching

Submitted by tabermudes on Tue, 2011-04-19 - 03:48

I just started about two months ago having episodes of yawning, stretching and then al my back muscles tightening.  I get the shivers and am cold.  And my breathing gets real shallow because my muscles are so tight.  My legs get shakey.

 I'm not sure what a seizure really is but I ruled out the medcine I was given at the time it started.

Any advice from you can give me would be great.

I just started about two months ago having episodes of yawning, stretching and then al my back muscles tightening.  I get the shivers and am cold.  And my breathing gets real shallow because my muscles are so tight.  My legs get shakey.

 I'm not sure what a seizure really is but I ruled out the medcine I was given at the time it started.

Any advice from you can give me would be great.

Re: Seizures and yawning, stretching

Submitted by Allina on Tue, 2011-04-19 - 11:13

Hello all you yawners/stretchers out there...

I HAD to respond to this before Keppra time....

I have been diagnosed with epileptic complex partial seizures in the frontal lobe (So I guess, in smaller words, I'm a frontal lobe epileptic) I experience simple partial seizures (auras) as well although these never showed up on the EEG.

The reason I wanted to respond is because I know exactly what you guys are talking about. I will have these days (even if I got enough sleep the night before) I will be absolutely exhausted. On these days, my back is tense ALL DAY and it feels like I need to stretch really bad. Sometimes it gets worse through my arms and legs, and if it gets as bad to where I start the yawning--oh yes, the yawning--I can be yawning every ten seconds for hours, and the thing with the yawning is I don't yawn all the way, I just take that big gasp of air, and then my whole body tenses up, and my arms fly up and shake. Sometimes I yawn all the way, sometimes I don't. It gets exhausting. On some occasions, when the yawning was so bad, I started to have jerking motions in my back and arms, and by the time my husband got me in the car to take me to the hospital my feet were kicking. I had just been to the hospital the day before for a sudden five hour long series of laughing (for no reason) They didn't run any tests, they simply told me I was stressed.

Needless to say, when I went to the hospital the next day for all this yawning, kicking business, they were all looking at me like I was faking, crazy, and I was placed in a wheelchair because I couldn't even walk. They labeled it, once again as stress, and sent me home. Once again, no tests. The yawning persisted for several days. On some occasions I would yawn and end up on the floor because it was so powerful. No doctor would ever help me. So I have just grown to get used to it.

Even with this new diagnosis, I talk to my neurologist, and he does not really give me a chance to explain it. I have a lot of weird "quirks" that I feel should be looked at, and we are talking about VEEGs because of it. That is what I was going to suggest you ask your neuro. I think that if I have a VEEG, I may do some of these odd things, and may be able to get better treatment. Right now, my neurologist has been very helpful and is doing everything he can to help me. Hopefully you guys have a neurologist who is the same and lets you ask a million questions. His big thing is that he can't tell me whether or not it is a seizure because he does not have evidence of these odd behaviors on the EEG as "seizure activity."

So he advised me to log it all, and write it all down as "spells." Since I was asleep during the EEG, they are not sure what I'm doing during my CP seizures while awake.

AJ

Hello all you yawners/stretchers out there...

I HAD to respond to this before Keppra time....

I have been diagnosed with epileptic complex partial seizures in the frontal lobe (So I guess, in smaller words, I'm a frontal lobe epileptic) I experience simple partial seizures (auras) as well although these never showed up on the EEG.

The reason I wanted to respond is because I know exactly what you guys are talking about. I will have these days (even if I got enough sleep the night before) I will be absolutely exhausted. On these days, my back is tense ALL DAY and it feels like I need to stretch really bad. Sometimes it gets worse through my arms and legs, and if it gets as bad to where I start the yawning--oh yes, the yawning--I can be yawning every ten seconds for hours, and the thing with the yawning is I don't yawn all the way, I just take that big gasp of air, and then my whole body tenses up, and my arms fly up and shake. Sometimes I yawn all the way, sometimes I don't. It gets exhausting. On some occasions, when the yawning was so bad, I started to have jerking motions in my back and arms, and by the time my husband got me in the car to take me to the hospital my feet were kicking. I had just been to the hospital the day before for a sudden five hour long series of laughing (for no reason) They didn't run any tests, they simply told me I was stressed.

Needless to say, when I went to the hospital the next day for all this yawning, kicking business, they were all looking at me like I was faking, crazy, and I was placed in a wheelchair because I couldn't even walk. They labeled it, once again as stress, and sent me home. Once again, no tests. The yawning persisted for several days. On some occasions I would yawn and end up on the floor because it was so powerful. No doctor would ever help me. So I have just grown to get used to it.

Even with this new diagnosis, I talk to my neurologist, and he does not really give me a chance to explain it. I have a lot of weird "quirks" that I feel should be looked at, and we are talking about VEEGs because of it. That is what I was going to suggest you ask your neuro. I think that if I have a VEEG, I may do some of these odd things, and may be able to get better treatment. Right now, my neurologist has been very helpful and is doing everything he can to help me. Hopefully you guys have a neurologist who is the same and lets you ask a million questions. His big thing is that he can't tell me whether or not it is a seizure because he does not have evidence of these odd behaviors on the EEG as "seizure activity."

So he advised me to log it all, and write it all down as "spells." Since I was asleep during the EEG, they are not sure what I'm doing during my CP seizures while awake.

AJ

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