According to the Epilepsy Society, consuming alcohol may make your epileptic medications less effective and may make the side effects of your medications worse. Prolonged drinking can lead to compensatory changes in your brain, such as the down-regulation of GABA receptors and increased expression of NMDA receptors. This article explores how alcohol affects people with epilepsy epilepsy and alcohol and provides recommendations for how much alcohol is best to consume.
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This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article. According to the Epilepsy Foundation, seizures by themselves typically are not fatal. However, they may cause people to fall and sustain potentially serious injuries, such as head injuries. This section answers some frequently asked questions about alcohol and seizures. Status epilepticus is a life threatening condition in which a person has a seizure lasting longer than 5 minutes without regaining normal consciousness or has more than one seizure within 5 minutes.
Consuming alcohol seems to aggravate seizures in people with epilepsy and may lead to increased seizure frequency. Doctors often warn people who have epilepsy to avoid alcohol or to only drink in moderation. For people with epilepsy, alcohol may interfere with anti-seizure medications and increase the risk of seizures. In people with epilepsy, drinking three or more drinks may increase the risk of seizures. Over 50% of alcohol withdrawal seizures may relate to additional risk factors, such as preexisting epilepsy, structural brain lesions, or drug use. According to a 2017 article, alcohol withdrawal seizures in those without epilepsy may occur 6–48 hours after a person consumes their last alcoholic drink.
- Status epilepticus is a medical emergency that may lead to lasting brain damage or death.
- ASMs can make you more sensitive to the sedating effects of alcohol, leading you to feel drowsy or feel intoxicated more easily.
- Another 4.5 percent of this population will be diagnosed with epilepsy by the age of 80.
- One line of defense is anti-seizure medications (also called antiepileptic drugs or AEDs).
Recommendations for Safe Alcohol Consumption in Individuals with Epilepsy
You can better cope by identifying what triggers cause seizures and avoiding them as best you can. Epilepsy and alcohol dependence are both diagnosed using completely separate approaches. Epilepsy is primarily diagnosed based on your medical history, a physical and neurological examination, and diagnostic tests. Your doctor may use an electroencephalogram (EEG) to monitor electrical activity in the brain as well as specialized imaging, like MRI or CT scans. Based on surveys of volume and frequency of consumption, approximately 10 to 20 percent of the adult population (over age 10) “drink heavily.” Approximately 10 percent of this population will have seizures. Another 4.5 percent of this population will be diagnosed with epilepsy by the age of 80.
Medications such as clonazepam and lorazepam are benzodiazepines that can cause a life threatening interaction when mixed with alcohol.
Alcohol consumption
Brain tumors in the frontal, temporal, or parietal lobes are more likely to cause seizures. Tumor types like glioblastomas, astrocytomas, and oligodendrogliomas have a higher seizure risk. A seizure happens when the brain has a sudden, uncontrolled burst of electrical activity.
In a 2020 study, research found that the risk of SUDEP was twice as high in people with a history of alcohol dependence or substance misuse disorder. Before a seizure, people may experience an aura or feel a change in sensation — such as smell, taste, sound, or vision — due to abnormal activity in the brain. A person with epilepsy should speak with their doctor to determine how much alcohol, if any, is safe to consume with their condition.
Lifestyle Quizzes
Drinking water in between alcoholic drinks can help reduce the chances of a hangover, but will not prevent seizures from occurring. The patient information leaflet that comes with your ASM should say if alcohol is not recommended. Finally, the present study population was exclusively recruited at a tertiary care epilepsy center where usually patients with more severe variants of the disease are treated.
There is no other way to avoid alcohol dependence or to rid yourself of it once it has developed. Seizures are often thought of as convulsions that randomly strike; however, convulsions are actually a symptom of seizures. Seizures themselves are a type of brain function change in which the neurons in your brain stop firing in the patterns they are supposed to and begin all firing together.
How Alcohol Affects Seizures and Epilepsy
AUD is diagnosed separately, using a specific set of psychiatric criteria. To learn more about the risks of epilepsy and alcohol, speak to your medical team. There is evidence that people who have uncontrolled seizures are more likely to have seizures after drinking (but people with controlled seizures could also be at risk). Before taking your medications, it’s a good idea to check with your doctor or your pharmacist to see if it’s safe to mix with alcohol.
They can advise you on what is safe for you and if there could be interactions. Alcohol can be a big part of many people’s social life, so you may be wondering if it’s ever safe. Remember that even a small amount of alcohol is bad for your health, and it is lower risk to avoid alcohol altogether, according to the CDC. While abstaining from alcohol is the safest option, if one chooses to drink, adhering to low-risk drinking guidelines is crucial. Continuous data are presented as mean ± standard deviation (SD) or median where appropriate.
Toward the end of the interview, patients were questioned on illicit drugs. Study subjects passed through the domains of the questionnaire with an increasing social stigma degree. According to the Epilepsy Foundation, some studies have linked chronic alcohol misuse to the development of epilepsy. This article looks at the connection between alcohol, seizures, and epilepsy, as well as treatment options and support. The good news is that seizures can often be managed effectively, allowing you to continue treatment and daily life with fewer interruptions. At Duke’s Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center, we take a comprehensive approach to seizure management, tailoring treatment plans to each patient’s unique needs.
If you have any concerns aboutdrinking alcohol it’s a good idea to ask your doctor, that way you can learnmore about how drinking may affect your ASMs or particular type of epilepsy. Of course, it is lower risk – and better for your general health – to avoid alcohol altogether. If you have epilepsy and would like to drink alcohol, it’s best to speak with your physician about this first. Signs include needing to drink more to feel the same effects, experiencing withdrawal symptoms, and continuing to drink despite negative consequences. Alcohol can interact with antiepileptic medications, potentially affecting their effectiveness. Common triggers include lack of sleep, stress, alcohol, and not taking their prescribed anti-seizure medication (ASM).
If a patient wishes to regain their licence, s/he must complete a recognized rehabilitation program for substance dependence and remain sober and and seizure-free for 12 months. This is when you drink a lot of alcohol in a short amount of time or drink continually for many hours. If you have epilepsy you may have heard about risks related to alcohol and seizures. It is true that drinking beer, wine and spirits may make you more likely to have a seizure. So, it’s important to be aware of the facts around epilepsy and alcohol.
Epilepsy is a neurological disorder characterised by abnormal brain activity leading to recurrent seizures, that affects over 15 million people in India. Many people with epilepsy also have auras, a sensation like a taste, smell or vision change that precedes a seizure. Knowing your aura can help you recognize when you are about to have a seizure and notify those with you. Recognizing your aura can also help you take action to avoid dangerous situations, such as falls, during a seizure. Diagnosing alcohol dependence is done by observing whether withdrawal symptoms occur when you stop using alcohol. It is important to note that alcohol dependence is different from alcohol addiction or alcohol use disorder (AUD).
Only a minority of patients documented details on alcohol-related seizures in seizure diaries. Our retrospective data collection on alcohol-related seizures also depended on subjects’ recall capability, and may reflect bias due to recall errors. We addressed this by focusing only on alcohol-related seizures that had occurred within the last 12 months. Details were only recorded on those alcohol-related seizures that subjects were able to remember the best. As a consequence however, alcohol-related seizures may have also occurred after smaller amounts of alcohol intake or in other circumstances that were not taken into account in the present study. Fifteen out of 95 (15.8%) alcohol-experienced but now abstinent subjects had experienced alcohol-related seizures in the past.
This is not the same as having epilepsy, which is a tendency to have seizures that start in the brain. Independent predictors for alcohol consumption within the last 12 months. Alcohol and some antiseizure medications can have similar side effects, and taking them together can cause potentially dangerous complications. Additionally, if a seizure cannot be stopped or multiple seizures occur in rapid succession, it could result in permanent injury or prove fatal. Alcohol seizures may share symptoms with seizures that are not linked to alcohol. Side effects vary between medications, and finding the right match often takes some trial and error.