What is epilepsy?
Epilepsy is an illness that causes someone to have a sudden spasm attack that’s usually called a seizure. With epilepsy, you don’t feel sick like you do when you have a cold. In fact, you feel as normal as anyone else, but you might have seizures that affect you suddenly and then go away.
What's a seizure?
A seizure is a sudden spasm attack or convulsion that happens in a person with epilepsy.
When this happens, parts of your body can shake on their own and things around you might look, sound, or feel strange. Sometimes you just stare for a little while. Other times you can even fall, get really stiff, and shake for a minute—making you move like you’re only half awake. After a minute or two, your brain goes back to working normally, but you may feel tired.
How your brain works
Your brain has a network of cells in it that make things work in your body. It’s how your brain controls everything from breathing to jumping up and down. Let’s say you’re crossing a street and come to a curb. The cells in your brain send a signal through the body that tell your legs that you need to step up.
These cells are also working even when you’re asleep. For the most part, the cells in your brain work just fine and do what they’re supposed to do.
Mixed-up signals
When you have epilepsy, sometimes these cells in your brain send mixed-up signals to the rest of the body and that’s when a seizure happens. These mixed-up signals last for just a few seconds or maybe a minute or two. The body isn’t quite sure what to make of these signals from the brain and becomes confused.
What causes a seizure?
No one can really tell when a seizure will happen. And most of the time, doctors aren’t really sure exactly what causes someone to start having seizures. For some people, epilepsy seems to run in their family, and in others it can be caused by:
 Head injury
Brain infections, such as meningitis
Brain tumors, surgery, or abscess
Stroke
Poisoning
Birth defects of the brain
What doctors do know is that taking the right medicine helps to control seizures.
How does medicine prevent seizures?
Every time you take your medicine, it helps your brain keep signals going to and from your body from getting mixed-up. It does this by controlling how fast the signals are sent. If the brain does start to send signals too fast, the medicine helps to get them under control.
But the medicine will only work if the right amount of it is in your brain all the time—ready to control a seizure whenever it may occur.
Why is it important to take your medicine as prescribed?
If you haven’t had a seizure or felt sick in a while, it may seem like
it’s okay to skip a dose of your medicine or stop taking it. But it’s NOT!
You won’t feel any effects from not taking your medicine until a seizure occurs. Your body naturally uses up the medicine, just like food. Think about when you eat a sandwich for lunch—by dinnertime you feel hungry again. That’s because your body has already used up the sandwich for energy and needs more.
Let’s say your doctor tells you to take your epilepsy medicine twice a day. If you take it at 8 AM, the body uses it up by 8 PM. So, unless the medicine is replaced twice a day, you may have a seizure.
To help control seizures, take every dose of medicine your doctor tells you to—every single day.
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