What are the symptoms of a seizure?
Seizure symptoms vary based on the type and severity, but may include:
- Loss of consciousness.
- Uncontrollable movements (convulsions, muscle spasms, jerking).
- Staring.
Other symptoms may include:
- Sudden emotional changes (confusion, fear, joy, anxiety).
- Teeth clenching.
- Drooling.
- Abnormal eye movements.
- Loss of bladder or bowel control.
- Noise making (grunting or snorting).
These symptoms are temporary and only last for a few seconds to minutes.
What are the stages of a seizure?
The stages or phases of a seizure include:
- Prodrome phase: Before a seizure, you may notice mood or behavioral changes, feel lightheaded or have trouble focusing. Days before a seizure, you may have trouble sleeping.
- Aura phase: Right before the first symptoms of a seizure start, you may notice vision changes, a headache, dizziness, nausea, anxiety or fear, and changes to your senses (like taste, sound, smell and feeling).
- Ictal phase: This is when a seizure happens. You’ll experience seizure symptoms.
- Postictal phase: Immediately after a seizure ends, you may feel confused, exhausted, sore, strong emotions and more.
Not everyone who has a seizure experiences all phases, especially the aura. Many seizures come on suddenly and you’re unaware of any early signs.
What are the warning signs of a seizure?
Warning signs of a seizure may include:
- Sensory symptoms: Seeing bright lights or distortions in how objects appear, hearing unexpected sounds, sudden unexpected tastes (metallic or bitter) or smells and strange feelings on your skin (numbness or tingling).
- Emotional changes: Strong emotions like fear or joy, déjá vu (when a new experience somehow feels familiar) or jamais vu (when a familiar experience somehow feels new).
- Autonomic symptoms: These affect body systems that your brain runs automatically, like sweating, making too much saliva (drooling), an upset stomach and pale skin.
Not everyone experiences warning signs before a seizure.
What causes a seizure?
A surge of electrical activity in your brain causes a seizure.
Neurons (nerve cells) communicate by sending electrical signals to different parts of your brain. When a seizure happens, the affected brain cells fire signals uncontrollably to others around them. This kind of electrical activity overloads the affected areas of your brain and causes seizure symptoms.
Seizure causes fall into two main categories depending onwhythey happen:
- Provoked seizures (nonepileptic): A trigger, which could be a temporary condition or certain circumstances, causes seizure symptoms to happen.
- Unprovoked seizures (epileptic): Seizures happen spontaneously (randomly). They may happen often. These seizures are the primary symptom of epilepsy.
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Seizures without a known cause are called idiopathic seizures.
Seizure triggers
The following may trigger a seizure:
- Abnormal blood sugar levels (low or very high blood sugar).
- Certain medications, such as Wellbutrin® or bupropion.
- Flashing or flickering lights.
- Heat illness.
- High fever.
- Sleep deprivation.
- Stress.
- Substance use (including alcohol withdrawal).
Triggers are different for each person. If you have seizures regularly, you may want to keep track of what you were doing before a seizure took place. A healthcare provider can review this information with you to determine your triggers.
Conditions that cause seizures
Seizures can happen for many different reasons. These include but aren’t limited to the following:
- Aneurysms.
- Brain tumors.
- Cerebral hypoxia.
- Cerebrovascular disease.
- Diabetes.
- Severeconcussionand traumatic brain injury, especially ones with loss of consciousness.
- Degenerative brain diseases likeAlzheimer’s diseaseorfrontotemporal dementia.
- Eclampsia.
- Electrolyteproblems, especiallylow sodium (hyponatremia), calcium or magnesium.
- Epilepsy (seizures that happen frequently without any clear, underlying cause).
- Genetic conditions.
Other conditions that can cause seizures may include:
- Hormone-related changes.
- Infections (especiallyencephalitis, meningitis or sepsis).
- Inflammation from autoimmune conditions.
- Mental health issues (known as psychogenic seizures) likeconversion disorder.
- Problems with how your brain developed (congenital brain abnormalities meaning occurring with birth).
- Strokes.
- Toxins and poisons (such ascarbon monoxide poisoningor heavy metal poisoning).
- Venomous bites or stings.
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What are the risk factors for a seizure?
Anyone at any age can have a seizure. You may be more at risk if you:
- Have an underlying medical condition.
- Have a biological family history of seizures.
- Are a child (under 18 years).
- Are over age 50.
What are the complications of a seizure?
Seizures often involve losing consciousness and passing out. When this happens, there’s a risk of injuries from falling or suddenly stopping what you’re doing at the time (like driving, operating machinery or climbing heights). Convulsions may cause you to smack your arms or legs on hard objects, causing cuts, bruises or broken bones.
Status epilepticushappens when a seizure lasts for more than five minutes or you have more than one seizure without enough time between them to recover. Status epilepticus is a life-threatening medical emergency because it can cause brain damage or even death.
Seizures and mental health
Seizures can significantly impact your mental health. It’s also common to have symptoms of anxiety and depression with seizures.
This may happen because seizures are distracting and can pull you away from the activities you enjoy. You may feel anxious or fearful of having another seizure. You may keep yourself up at night worrying about when the next one might happen. You might avoid going out in public or spending time with loved ones if you’re embarrassed about having a seizure in front of others.
Seizures happen outside of your control, so it’s normal to have these feelings. A mental health professional can help you manage how seizures affect your emotional well-being.
