what causes people to have epilepsy?
This's no clear-cut answer to why people have epilepsy. Often doctors can't pinpoint the exact cause of a person's epilepsy. But scientists do know that some things can make a person more likely to develop epilepsy, including: a brain injury, such as from a car crash or bike accident.
The epilepsies have many possible causes, but for up to half of people with epilepsy a cause is not known. In other cases, the epilepsies are clearly linked to genetic factors, developmental brain abnormalities, infection, traumatic brain injury, stroke, brain tumors, or other identifiable problems.
People have seizures when the electrical signals in the brain misfire. These overactive electrical discharges disrupt the brain's normal electrical activity and cause a temporary communication problem among nerve cells. Having a seizure doesn't always mean that a person has epilepsy. Seizures can be triggered in anyone under certain conditions, such as life-threatening dehydration or being severely overheated. But when a person experiences repeated seizures for no obvious reason, that person is said to have epilepsy.