Seizure Triggers

I have been trying for a while now to try to find what triggers my seizures, and I have a few which are possible culprits:


1) Diet - I started my "diet" in May. I put diet in quotes because it isn't your traditional diet. I cut out a few things here and there, but for the most part it was more of eating more often, and eating healthy foods at those "more often" intervals. These healthy foods include mostly fruits and high protein foods like nuts.

Recently, I've been a little more relaxed about this both parts of this. Mostly because my schedule changed with my new job, so I have to get into a new routine. I have not been eating as much throughout the day, because I simply forget, and I've been occasionally been drinking soda or other things that my body isn't used to any more. I've been mostly drinking water and milk with this diet, but I drink Snapple a lot at my mom's house recently because they have been buying it a lot. Usually tea is good for you, but I don' know where Snapple falls on that spectrum of "good for you" and my body just isn't used to that.

I want to look at my seizure log and compare it to my bank account receipts to see if I can figure out the times that I went to Wendy's, or the bar, or anywhere that I might have had soda. At my reunion I had 3 drinks in about a 3-hour period, but other than that I haven't been drinking alcohol so I can't really blame that. At most I'll average about a drink a month.


2) Exercise - I've been a little relaxed about the exercise routine lately as well. The gym was closed most of this past week, and I've just been busy doing other life things recently and haven't been able to get to the gym every night.

I need to compare my seizure log to my workout log again and see if there are any trends.


3) Light - Unfortunately this one is extremely hard to avoid, it's the one that I think is most likely, and it isn't going to be what you expect. I know most of you are expecting me to say "strobe lights are causing them." In this case though, that's not it. What seems to be more common is a constant intense light in a dark place.

What do I mean by that? A lot of these lately seem to happen while driving. Since it has been getting dark earlier, and the sun is coming up later, a lot of my driving is while it's dark out. All of the headlights shining in my face are very bright, and on the highway (which is where about 90% of my driving is) they are also very constant. Friday night, at my high school reunion, I was at a dark bar with bright lights shining on a dance floor that was in front of me. Saturday night I was in a dark living room in my brother's house watching TV. One of them that happened at the hockey game started around the time of the player introductions, where the lights are off with the exception of a spotlight.

I don't think I've had any of these seizure at home, and this would explain that. I ALWAYS have a light on in whatever room I'm in, except when I go to bed. This is because I like to have light when I'm looking at a computer or TV, and since I live alone having light on is comforting.

 I could probably keep listing why I think this is most likely at this point, but I think that's all pretty convincing.


4) Allergies - this might be a stretch, but I think that they are sometimes worse when my allergies act up. I noticed it earlier this year when they were bad, and my allergies were pretty bad this weekend at my brother's place because of his cat - especially that night after I had been around the cat all day.


The diet and exercise are there because of the sudden changes in both, but I think they are less likely, and the allergies are there mostly from previous observations. I want to talk to my doctor and see if it's possible to get an EEG where they actually leave the light on for a while, instead of strobing it. If I can just sit in a dark room and have a bright light in front of me for a few minutes while connected to an EEG, we could possibly get some positive results.

I also think it may be a combination of these things, but I need to do some more thinking and studying myself and the trends a bit more to see where there are patterns.