That's a seizure?

Most of the time when some hears the word seizure they think of a person convulsing and jerking around, with their eyes rolled back, maybe even foaming at the mouth and grunting, the truth is that is only one type of seizure. Most know that type as a Grand Mal seizure also known as a Tonic Clonic seizure. The Tonic part of the seizure is when a person's body stiffens the persons breathing may become shallow or stop all together and their face may become blue or grey in color. Then begins the clonic phase which the persons breathing will return but they begin to jerking. A person may bite their tongue or the inside of their mouth. Once the clonic phase has passed the person will be lethargic and tired even confused at times. They may possibly go straight to sleep following the seizure.

As I said though a Tonic Clonic seizure is only one type of seizure. There are four categories of seizures, Generalized seizures which include, Absence seizures, Myoclonic seizures, Tonic Clonic seizures, Clonic, Tonic and Atonic seizures. The next category of seizures is Partial seizures there are two types of partial seizures, Simple partial and Complex partial. I said in my last post that I was going to write about all the types of seizures since I started with explaining a Tonic Clonic "Grand Mal" seizure I will explain an Absence seizure.

Have you ever seen a person just stare off into space and blank out? Well most people do its called a day dream, but now have you ever called the person's name and not get a response from them until about the 20 or 30th time of calling their name? Did you know that could possibly be a seizure? That is what an Absence seizure looks like. A person just blanks out and stares off into space they may have some eye movement they last for a short time about 10-20 seconds and when a person comes out of them they go back to life as usual sometimes without even knowing it happened.

Another type of seizure is Myoclonic these are brief jerks in a muscle or muscles they last for a few seconds most people do have muscle jerks occasionally so don't worry if you do you don't need to pick up the phone and call a doctor. Those who have myclonic seizure experience the muscle jerks on both sides of their body at the same time. These types of seizure occur in a few types of epilepsy syndromes.

Atonic seizures are also know as drop seizures or drop spells, are just that. A person may appear fine one second and suddenly just fall to the ground. The word Atonic means "without" tone, so when a seizure occurs the person loses tone in their muscles and drops to the ground. These types of seizures last less than 15 seconds.

Tonic seizures are opposite of Atonic, a person may still fall down but the tone in their muscles is increased causing their body to stiffen. A person will remain conscious during these seizures and the seizure usually only last less than 20 seconds.

Clonic seizures are a rare type of seizure unlike Tonic-Clonic seizures. When they occure a person will have convulsions, rapid jerks of their muscles. They can vary on length but the person will not have stiffening of the body as they do in Tonic-Clonic seizures.

Simple Partial seizures vary from person to person so to explain these I am going to refer you to read about them on epilepsy.com http://www.epilepsy.com/EPILEPSY/seizure_simplepartial

If you would like to also learb about Complex Partial seizures Im also going to suggest you read about them at epilepsy.com http://www.epilepsy.com/EPILEPSY/SEIZURE_COMPLEXPARTIAL

If you want to learn more about the types of seizure I explained please feel free to go to www.epilepsy.com to read more.