Skilled Advice
Q: My 52-year-old son had a grand mal seizure recently and will have to remain on seizure medication for the rest of his life. Are there any natural alternatives for him?
JVW: Since it's not safe to try natural therapies for seizures on your own, your son should work closely with a natural medicine physician in his area to determine the best therapy or combination of therapies to help him. Contact the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM) to find a doctor in your area (888-439-6891; www.acam.org).
But in the meantime, there are some steps you can take to clear up one of the most troubling side effects associated with seizure medications: mental fog.
Seizure medications interfere with the absorption of vitamin B12, folic acid, calcium, and vitamin D. The quickest way to clear the mental fog is to take injections of vitamin B12 (2,000 micrograms) with folic acid (2 1/2 milligrams) and the entire B-complex (1cc), twice weekly until the fog clears. Then those dosages can be tapered down according to your individual response.
If you can't get an injection, try sublingual vitamin B12 (5,000 micrograms daily), folic acid liquid drops (2 milligrams daily), and a "B-100" capsule (a supplement that includes 100 milligrams of most B vitamins) twice daily. Taking vitamin B12 and folic acid orally doesn't work quite as well as injections, but if you're persistent they'll likely do the job.
There are a few other nutrients to take along with the B-vitamins: 1,000 milligrams of calcium (from citrate or lactate) daily, along with 400 milligrams of magnesium (from citrate, aspartate, taurate, glycinate) daily, and 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily.
This should help make up for the malabsorption of these nutrients caused by anti-seizure medication. And I can't stress this point enough: Please make sure to work with a doctor near you who knows all about natural medicine. What is a...grand mal seizure?
Another name for a grand mal seizure is tonic-clonic seizure. This type of seizure involves the whole body and begins when a person loses consciousness and falls to the ground. The body briefly becomes rigid (tonic phase) and then is consumed by violent, rhythmic convulsions (clonic phase). The person also loses bowel and bladder control and has difficulty breathing. The whole experience lasts anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes and leaves the person feeling drained, with a headache, and with some mild, temporary confusion. Most often, the seizures occur randomly, although some people do experience an aura or warning sign before a seizure begins. Seizures are caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain. |
