Vol.XIII #1 - Seizure Disorders

Simillimum - Fall 2000

A.U. Ramakrishnan MBBS, MFHom, PhD

Seizures, or convulsions, are paroxysmal episodes involving sudden, violent, involuntary contractions of a group of skeletal muscles and disturbances in consciousness, behaviour, sensation, and autonomic functioning. Seizures may be tonic or clonic, focal and unilateral or bilateral. The term epilepsy denotes a group of neurologic disorders characterized by the repeated occurrence of any of the various forms of seizures. Approximately two to four million Americans have epilepsy, and many of them are children.

I have had a very encouraging results in cases of epilepsy. The first reality one has to contend with is that the homeopathic medicine must be prescribed while the patient is concurrently on allopathic drugs. A lot of my homoeopathic colleagues have run into serious problems in trying to stop the allopathic anti-seizure medicines totally. The patient goes into very severe and frequent seizures and sometimes even into status epilepticus. Hence one has to work with homeopathy along with the allopathic drugs until a very satisfactory level of progress is achieved. Only then can the other drugs be gradually phased out. You have to explain this aspect to the patient at the very outset, and also prepare them for the long time frame in which you have to work due to this factor.

For a homeopathic physician this can also pose a few problems. Basically, one feels very uncomfortable about the idea of applying two therapeutic modalities which are fundamentally acting at cross purposes. A big compromise for a homeopath! We also run into a problem of assessing the presenting totality of symptoms. The whole picture is altered by the drugs that the patient is taking. Some of the symptoms could be the side effects of a drug. For instance, Tegretol or Mazetol have the side effect of memory loss. In a case where the patient is taking one of these drugs, you can't key in "loss of memory" as a symptom or rubric. The patient may look very dull, placid, and unresponsive, and all this could be due to the various cerebral depressant drugs that he is on.