hi I'm dr. Mike here in this video we're going to talk about seizures and epilepsy and the first important point is that not everyone that has seizures is termed an epileptic so epilepsy is usually in an individual who has two or more seizures and usually they're unprovoked meaning we don't know what the cause is provoke seizures usually happen because of drug interactions or drug overdoses or metabolic changes so maybe there's a problem with potassium or sodium levels for example it could be tumors so these are known or provoked causes of seizures now the unprovoked we don't know what's happening we don't know what's underlying the cause of those seizures now we can broadly categorize seizures into two major categories we've got two generalized and the focal in this video we're just going to focus on the generalized seizures now the definition of a seizure is a temporary involuntary change caused by abnormal and excessive cortical neuron activity basically the cortex they add a couple of millimeters of your brain has neurons within it and if you have this excessive and abnormal misfiring of these neurons that leads to a seizure now generalized seizures which we're focusing on now it means these seizures happen in all parts of the brain focal seizures only happen in certain isolated parts of the brain another important point to know about generalized is that it results in individual becoming unconscious due to this type of seizure so generalized seizures use all the brain and the individual ends up being unconscious there's a couple of different categories of generalized seizures the most common is the tonic clonic seizure which used to be called the grand mal seizure or the major contractile seizure so this is the one that you probably often see or think about when you hear of seizures now what happens is the individual first thing that usually happens is this cry and that's because the body contracts air escapes and you hear this cry and then the individual becomes unconscious so falls to the floor and then it's followed by this rhythmic contraction and relaxation of the body which we talk called tonic clonic so tonic is where the muscles become rigid and then clonic is a rhythmic relaxation and contraction again now this when this happens the individual stops breathing and can stop breathing for up to a minute once it's finished once these tonic clonic or contractile seizures start to slow down towards the end after usually around about two to three minutes up to two to three minutes and slows down then usually the contractile force starts to diminish and the individual begins to breathe again so that means they can start to turn blue during these types of grand mal or tonic clonic seizures now if a seizure like this happens for more than five minutes then it's usually termed status epilepticus okay status epilepticus so that's the tonic clonic seizure the next most common is that of the absence seizure which used to be termed the petit mal seizure now what happens in a petit mal seizure is the individual will be performing a task or doing something and then they just stop they often look away or look into the distance and don't do anything for a short period of time there's not really any muscular contraction they lose consciousness for that time period but often it's as though it looks as though they're daydreaming and this is the petit mal seizure doesn't usually last for very long maybe twenty to thirty seconds and then they go back into their task as though nothing has happened this can happen up to 70 to 100 times per day for some people with petit mal seizures far more common in children than it is for adults generally speaking seizures are far more common in children than adults so 10 percent of infants so 10 percent of individuals up until they're just 16 have experienced at least one seizure usually due to some sort of febrile event that just means I've had a fever often due to some sort of illness all right now the rest of these types of seizures are less common but you can see the ball got similar terms like clonic tonic myoclonic a tonic so the first thing is if we define that tonic clonic tonic is where you have a prolonged contraction of your muscles clonic is more of a rhythmic contraction and relaxation so if you have a clonic seizure then you're going to have more of a rhythmic contraction and relaxation if you have a tonic seizure it's more of a prolonged contraction if you have a myoclonic it's usually a single muscle or a group of muscles and it happens very quickly so it may be a quick contraction and then it stops and an a tonic seizure is where you lose all contractile ability and often these individuals just fall to the floor but again generalized entire brain resulting in unconsciousness so in a future video I'm going to talk about the partial or focal seizures and then talk about some of the treatments