4 Ways to Promote Healing After Seizures

Over the course of the past few years, I’ve dealt with some intense seizure activity. My six-year-old Raegan suffers from a Periventricular heterotopia (a mass of neurons that didn’t disperse during gestation) which separately causes epilepsy.

The result is seizures hit early and hard for us. Yet we gained control quickly and without medication using Cannabis for two years. Until acute issues started. Thing is, any extreme distress or infection - viral or bacterial - can trigger major activity. At baseline-well (meaning not sick or in distress), we have no seizure activity, but in a matter of minutes that can all change with the right conditions.

This makes controlling acutely triggered seizures extremely hard. So while I’ve spent a lot of time trying to just maintain control over seizures in acute situations, recovering from seizures mattered immensely.

The brain has an amazing ability to heal. Here are some approaches and tools I’ve used to help Raegan recover from intense seizure activity.

Raegan, my nonverbal child, constantly complains of headaches after seizures. On her speech device, she goes to ‘something hurts’ and then to her body map and says ‘brain’. Smart kid. Using our peppermint variety on temples, neck and forehead provide almost instant relief and I reapply every hour or so for a day after major seizure or clusters. Many nurses will tell you how nice our room always smelled too.

Seizure activity causes inflammation of the brain, so rubbing turmeric around the head, neck, temples can also reduce brain swelling post-seizures. When things have gotten really bad, her entire head is covered with ANSHI Total Healing Turmeric.  It may make her head and hair slick - but this can help stop seizures begetting seizures because the brain is literally swelling within the skull. 

Massaging with ANSHI down the spine, feet and all over the body can help the body heal and calm the nervous system. I like to do baths as well. Scoop in your favorite ANSHI variety and/or and add baking soda, Epsom salt, and a tiny amount of citric acid so the body absorbs whatever it's lacking in terms of minerals and aids in total relaxation.

• Sleep

Sleep is when the brain rests and repairs itself. Sleep is critical after a bad seizure or cluster of activity. Whatever you do, sleep should be the goal, and as soon as you can after the trauma. The more the body and brain rest the more it can immediately start to repair and regenerate. The reality is, sleep is really hard to achieve because of the state of the brain post-seizure. See our below recommendations for how to aid sleep after seizure activity.

After seizure activity, the abnormal, non-epileptic brain activity increases. I’ve personally seen this on EEGs (we’ve had a LOT over the last two years). I’m always perplexed why it is not discussed more with parents or patients that seizure activity will increase the non-epileptic abnormal activity in the brain.

So whether your kid has a condition like Rett Syndrome or Autism, one bad seizure can really set them back because of the lingering noise left over from trauma. We variate our Cannabis usage by increasing after seizures (we use the full plant for treating her Rett Syndrome and separately dose CBD oil orally as well as patches for added seizure control). If you don’t use Cannabis, use more of any natural medicine that can help calm the body or nervous system (like Magnesium for example).

• Frequencies

We’ve written about the power of frequencies before here.  There are varying levels of frequency-based treatments. Youtube and headphones are definitely one that is inexpensive and really effective to help deepen the healing power of sleep after seizure activity. Just put headphones on with low volume and chose your favorite healing vibes.  Theta is a deep healing frequency that can spur the sort of sleep that repairs the brain after trauma. Just search youtube for Theta or Delta healing frequencies.

Pro tip: Using headphones is really much more effective than simply playing the music in a room. Even the music on low volume coming through headphones will have a greater impact than music playing generally in a space.

If you have access to more funds, and seizures are really a daily reality or very intense, you may consider investing in a micropulse. This Micropulse Model M1 is under $700. We had one for a year before it broke (from overuse maybe?!). We couldn’t afford to repair it. However, we had it during the hardest times for our kiddo and it really made a huge difference in her recovery. While sustaining her through serious trauma of increased seizure activity over the course of major infections like Sepsis, E-Coli, and C-Diff. We used it continually on her head when she was intubated in a Status Epilepticus Seizure Coma (read more on those here.)