Often, women with epilepsy notice a relationship between their hormonal cycles and seizures. My parents didn't really know what was wrong until one day I had a seizure in front of my Dad. Even after visiting doctors, Loe says she didn't get a lot of answers. Among the concerns for women with epilepsy are that seizures, and the medications that control them, present several risks for those who are pregnant and their babies. In addition, women taking anti-seizure medication may have lower fertility rates and sexual dysfunction.
Seizures often begin at puberty for women, adding to an already stressful time.
And because of their longer life expectancy, women are more likely to develop epilepsy later in life than are men. Epilepsy is a general term for a variety of seizure disorders - disturbances in the electrical activity of the brain. About one person in 10 will have some type of seizure at some point in life, and one person in about 100 has some form of epilepsy. In many cases of epilepsy, no cause can be found. For others, the disorder can be linked with strokes, head or birth injuries, brain tumors, poisoning such as lead poisoning, infections and heredity.