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Nocturnal Seizures @ 5:00 AM

Wed, 08/10/2016 - 23:24
Hi everyone, Hoping that someone here has some experience and can help me. My boyfriend has been diagnosed with nocturnal seizures for about 9 years, but they are controlled by medication. Basically, he can sense when they are coming on, he gets a "flushing feeling" his heart beat increases and he overall just doesn't feel well. Once he feels these symptoms, he's able to take his medication which calm his body down and he can usually sleep it off (8/10 it works, sometimes he feels sick the whole day). The medication does fully prevent the seizure from happening, but it doesn't help it from happening in the future. He takes medication everyday, and then this specific medication when he feels the seizure coming on. Usually his symptoms occur at the same time, around 5:00 - 6:00 AM. Has anyone else experienced this? Though they don't happen everyday and are isolated instances, they do occur on a quite frequent basis, at least 3-5x per month. Is this diet related? We thought that maybe gluten was encouraging these symptoms as i've read briefly about the Ketogenic diet, but I know this is intended for children. I also read that it can be blood sugar related, and that having something to spike your blood sugar levels can help as well. The weird thing is that i've taken him to emergency so that they can see him exactly when he's feeling these symptoms, but everything comes back normal. They take his blood, do an ECG, literally the whole 9 yards and they basically send him off on his way as if nothing is wrong (except for encouraging increasing his medication levels). I hope that there is someone on here who has similar symptoms and can help me in treating him in anyway. Thanks so much in advance!

Comments

Seizures that occur at night,

Submitted by just_joe on Thu, 2016-08-11 - 11:56
Seizures that occur at night, or nocturnal seizures.They can occure just before sleep or right after waking up. As for feelings I don't know them but most people with nocturnal seizures are asleep when they occure.As for your trips to the ER. The ER workers run the same tests of everybody. Heart test, blood test and scans. They want to see if there is anything that is not normal. They generally do not know what causes a seizure.Yes talking about meds being increased does happen. But at the same time the person having the seizures should be asking the neurologist questions. I know increasing or decreasing medications can reduce the number of seizures. I know changing meds can also reducing the number of seizures. Asking questions at every visit lets the neurologist know you want control. If he doesn't have a visit yearly or at least talk to his neurologist yearly the neurologist will think everythings line and just keep writting the prescription as is.Yes the ketogenic diet has helped many kids. They even have a Modified Atkins Diet which has helped people. But to find out more he needs to research it which can be done on this site. he can also talk to his neurologist because they know about it and probably have a patient using it.If  his prescription hasn't been changed in a period of time it may need increasing. As the body changes the therapeutic levels may need to be changed so it is at a higher level which might keep breakthru seizures from happening.I hope this helpsJoe

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