Stress and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

I have suffered from epilepsy since I was a child (I am now 27). I am on a combination of Tegretol and Topamax and my seizures are mostly under control. However my family and friends continually blame stress as a major cause of my seizures. I dont ever feel very stressed and I feel that this is a simplistic understanding of what epilepsy is. Please help... is stress a major / minor cause of epileptic seizures?

Lea-Anne

[Abhijeet Deshmukh, MD]

Hello.

Temporal lobe epilepsy is a disorder which shows a vast range of symptoms. There are behavioral symptoms, sensory symptoms and many others. When you have the seizures, there has to be a structural change / damage to the brain tissue. If no such damage is seen, there still has to be an EEG change for us to say that it is a seizure.

Stress is not a causative factor for seizures. It is known to "trigger" some types of seizures. Temporal lobe epilepsy can also be triggered by stress. But it definitely does not cause the seizures.

Regards

[daybaer]

If there's one thing I could do without hearing for the rest of my life it's people/doctors/family saying, "It's just stress."  For the love of mercy, it's not just stress!
My heart goes out to you lamb14 and to all the others who need serious attention and are getting instead this lame line about stress.  

[juliewave]

I have temporal lobe seizures.  Lack of sleep can bring them on.  I had brain surgery for mine.  While doing all the pre surgery testing to see if I was a canidate they kept me up every other night for most of the night to help induce a seizure.