hormones...seizures...menopause

cm-

I just had to reply to your post about hormones and menopause...  as for me, I had been on Dilantin and well controlled for many years, having only  3-4  CP in a year at best and very mild.  In fact, in 15 years of marriage, my husband had never even seen me have a seizure.  That was how good my seizure control  was.  When my seizures decided to escalate in severity and frequency a few years ago, it was associated with the onset of early menopause.  No amount of drug manipulation had seemed to help me, and I saw a Gynecologist specializing in catamenial seizures.  I am taking homones now in addition to my Anticonvulsants (Oh, joy).  I was averaging 12 seizures a month before menopause, and now its more like 2-3.  I think the worse part was that I was told menopause was going to be rough because with the fluctuating levels of estrogen in my body, I might expect poor control of my seizures.  That's exactly what happened to me.   So, in addition to having the hot flashes and waking up in the middle of the night sweating, I was also having all these intense CP seizures that were much more severe than I had ever experienced.    I'm happy to report that I HAVE lived through menopause, and although the seizures are not under as good control as before, at least they are a lot better than when I was going thru hormone hell!         Glenda

cm-

I'm 46.  Menopause started with my periods being just irregular and having a lot of backaches.  This went on for at least 6 months and when my seizures started to get worse... I knew something was lurking around that wasn't good.  My twin sister hasn't gone thru menopause yet.  (She doesn't have E - double lucky).    My mother died of lupus at age 46 and didn't go thru menopause. 

Yes, That's right about menopause being a pattern in women in a family.  I can just tell you that with all the women that I've talked to about menopause, it's a wonder that anybody recognizes it in the first place because it never looks the same in anybody until most people get hot flashes.  Some women are lucky not to get even that!  A good friend of mine went thru menopause at age 32 if you can believe that.   My neuro told me if I went on hormones it would probably help me with seizure control because mine were so sensitive to the onset of menses, but unfortunately, I feel that the consequences of the additive effects of my anticonvulsants and hormones are contributing to this ever present headache problem. 

If you are presented with the issue of taking hormones, then make sure you know about possible side effects too.    I wish my body wasn't so sensitive to these drugs.  It's taken me over a year to just get over the nausea and lethargy with lamictal and now I am starting to feel that zonegran is the same story.  Sometimes I'm a little desperate when I have  a bad headache for 4 days straight.  That's the time when I want to get rid of the drugs one by one.  I've often wanted to try to do without the hormones to see how I would feel- but would the seizures be worse?  Heck if I know.  But like anything, there are two sides to every coin- on the days when I don't have a headache, I feel thankful that I ONLY have 2-3 seizures/month instead of 12.             Glenda

 

    This post is for the ladies dealing with menopause and hormone changes which cause onset of seizures.  Every month right before it was time for me to start my period, the seizures would hit, my neurologist said that when I went through menopause the seizures would probably go away. I didn't wait for menopause to see if the seizures would go away. I elected to have the brain surgery and have done great!  I still wonder if when I go through menopause if the seizures might return, maybe that is somthing I should ask my neurologist.  I have been seizure free now for almost 3 years, only haveing a couple of auras.  I still take lamictal and probably will for a couple more years. 

from what I read on different epilepsy related sites and in my direct experience, peri-menopause and menopause do clearly seem to impact upon a lot of women (including me) who suffer from epilepsy. I once did mention this to a neuro (a male doc) who wasn't specialized in Epilepsy, brushed it off but then he always has this tendency to brush everything off to begin with. lol

until I had gone past my mid-Forties, never even thought of epilepsy though in retrospect, I did have quite a few other sensory, intellectual and other more subtle forms of epilepsies since I was much younger (in my teens). my diagnosis of epilepsy came only after my peri-menopause started and since, I have read personal accounts of other women who kept asking the same quetion, "is hormone related to epilepsies?". Definitely, yes.

suppose it's usually a body of research done about the subject which would convince doctors who may simply ignore speculations by patients, who are in fact, expert in knowing our own body.

I had my 1st seizure in Dec 2007. no one could figure out why, had never had any in my life. Well I had an ambulatory EEG, where you have electrodes on your head and you wear them home overnite so they can read your brain waves the next day. T diagnosis was that I had something wrong in the right trmporal lobe of the brain which is the emotional and mood swing part of the brain. Well I was on my cycle when I had the test done and it showed a spike there. (go figure) I began to think that maybe this was related to menopause because of the time of the month and I was just starting in to the pre menopausal stuff, well my neurologist said it could be since they never found anything on the MRI's I had. I am on 500 mg of dilantan everyday and I don't have seizures at all. Doc tried to ween me off one time and when I was totally off for over a week I had another one, so two in my whole life. Don't have a gyno, I need one and would like to find out if this is the reason, would like to just not treat the symptom, but also the cause.