It’s estimated that one out of every 26 Americans will experience a seizure in their lifetime. It can be a frightening situation, but doctors are hoping that with more awareness and understanding, these movement disorders will become less scary.
Is there a difference between epileptic seizures and a movement disorder?
“You can think of them as two different things, or two different types of neurological or brain disorders. Seizures themselves are caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain. It can occur in anywhere in the brain and that's how it manifests as different symptoms. What people generally think of is the generalized shaking that you visibly see, but sometimes it's just a loss of awareness. Sometimes it's this sensation of dread or anxiety and so the different areas of the brain, when they're activated, can cause any symptom you can imagine,” said Justin Persson, MD, a neurologist with Avera Medical Group Neurology.
How do you identify if someone has epilepsy?
“In the workup we typically do, we want to make sure there's not any structural causes to the seizures, so we obtain an MRI of their brain to look for that. We also get an electroencephalogram, or EEG, where we put little electrodes on a person’s head to record the brain's electrical activity to see if there's areas of irritability that's suggestive that they'll be more likely to have a seizure in the future, but doesn't necessarily predetermine that they will,” said Dr. Persson.
Is that the same for tremors and movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease?
“The most common movement disorder is called essential tremor. It's a tremor that affects both hands and it affects doing things with your hands. This doesn't happen if you're just sitting watching TV, but if you're trying to eat or drink then it shakes both hands usually about the same. Parkinson's tremor happens only when you're not using your hands, so it happens if you're just sitting and resting but your body is shaking. There's a protein that builds up called alpha-synuclein; it's also called Lewy bodies, and they build up in a certain part of the brain and we think cause the damage to the nerve cells that make dopamine and we think that's the problem,” said Andrew Ridder, MD a neurologist with the Avera Medical Group Neurology. Dr. Ridder is also fellowship trained in the treatment of movement disorders.
What should someone do if they are noticing more body tremors?
“It's a very good idea to see a movement disorders neurologist or a general neurologist to help with the treatment of that. There are definitely medications and sometimes surgical options to help treat those symptoms and depending on the person, it can take a long time to decide what those are,” said Dr. Ridder.
How does awareness help those with epilepsy and movement disorders?
“I think there's a lot of people that have these types of tremors and are pretty good about compensating for or hiding them so people don't always see them. It can make a big impact on your life and so I think bringing awareness to it can help by having other people know that these diseases exist and they are actually fairly common,” said Dr. Ridder.
Learn more about epilepsy and movement disorders
