Classification of (tonic clonic) seizure occurances/putative causes (not types)

I did a brief search through the forums for something like this discussion, but didn't find any. Please point me to it if it already exists and if not, I think this is worth thinking about. Since I am only experienced with tonic clonic seizures (twice) my comments are pretty much limited to those, but people with other seizure types can add more. Figuring out why and how seizures occur, and how to make sure they don't happen again (which I'd be happy with) seems to be this very frustrating exercise with patients and doctors not really knowing is going on. The idea that there is one reason seems to be right for some people but not for a significant fraction. I was wondering if anyone had come up with a systematic method of evaluating triggers that reduce seizure thresholds. For example, right off the bat, I can see seizure causes falling into two broad categories (there may be more, but I think I've experienced both, once each, which is why I am curious about this): Overexcitation of the brain: This is caused by either acute or chronic overexcitation which causes the brain to go into a seizure state to achieve homeostasis. Some subcauses are natural hyperactivity, excessive stress/worry/lack of sleep, and powerful stimultant drugs (which may include high doses of caffeine, etc.). Reexcitation of a suppressed brain: This is caused by some condition where the natural excitatory states of the brain have been suppressed, and suddenly the elements causing the suppression have been lifted. This could include (just hypothetical examples) switching jobs where you did nothing (leading to slowness) to one that demands a lot, going from a depressed state to a non-depressed one (i.e., SAD -> sunny weather), removal of CNS depressant drugs from your systems (classic examples are benzodiazapene and alcohol WDs). So I was wondering if someone had come up with a checklist of possible triggers based on a point system using the above criteria (and then some) where you start with some seizure threshold (let's say 100 points) and then you took out points for each possible trigger. By charting your seizures in this manner, you might get a handle on what is causing them and how to avoid them. My guess from reading the forums is that we have a lot of common triggers with about the same emphasis. So a lack of sleep the night before could result in a reduction of, say, five points, and use of benzodiazapenes the three nights before could result in a reduction of ten points, and so on. This point system however cannot be done anecdotally but should be based on actual observation of many many patients with seizures. Over time, if you had a lower seizure threshold, you could normalise the scales or even adjust the points for different triggers (for example, if you were more prone to alcohol WD than others--I know someone who can drink only 3-4 drinks and is guaranteed to have a seizure within 12 hours, probabilistically speaking). None of my doctors seem to work like this and seem to be pretty ad hoc (one is a neurologist). I'm not a complete reductionist but it seems such an approach would help in addition to a doctor taking a bunch of notes about all sorts of things and then using their intuition to figure out what's going on. --Ram