No Medications epilepsy

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I have a friend, who refuses to take any kind of medication, for epilepsy. I was wondering what I should do for him. Should I follow his wishes, and continue allowing him to not take it, or should I strongly encourage him to take it. I really don't know what to do. Thanks for the input everyone.

Yikes! I wholeheartedly support individuals choosing to refuse medications that they dislike, except when the reason for the medications include diabetes, heart problems, seizures, psychopathies, etc. Simply put, there are just some medications that certain people must take ... or risk injury and death. I would carefully and gently suggest my concerns about just that if he was my friend. In the end, though, it is his choice.

Perhaps it there's some supplements or a med patch that would help. Your friend may be more perspective to those options if they are options & may be enough if his epilepsy isn't too bad. It may also help to have him talk with someone who has it & is being very successfully treated by meds.

I rarely lose consciousness from my seizures. I don't want to take meds because they'll slow me down (or like every med I've taken, make me manic) and the side effects sound pretty bad.

Not all epilepsy makes you regularly end up in hospital.

Well if they are your friend there is no way for you to disallow him to continue not taking it....I mean friends can't really force each other to do things. But I'd need more detail to determine if I think you should encourage him to or not..why does he refuse the medications? do they have nasty side effects?....Is he doing anything else to help the epilepsy and how often does he get seizures.

I wanted to respond to this anyway for maybe general information or other people reading this.

I have epilepsy but also have talked to other people who have epilepsy, many other neurological issues.

The kindling theory postulates that as we let a condition such as epilepsy go untreated, it can get worse and worse. So a relatively "mild" case of epilepsy [in context there can be such a thing] can get progressively worse- even to the point where it may be refractory/intractable/drug resistant. This means that the seizures are not responsive to medications or they are not responding well to medications but they have also reached a point where they are severely interfering with day-to-day functioning.

It's just something to consider when thinking about medications.

A ketogenic diet [as well as some other alternatives to pharmacological therapies- some still being invasive to varying degrees] can be helpful in some cases, but it is NOT something to be undertaken without professional guidance.

If you are the person experiencing seizures or a seizure disorder or you have a loved one in this position, maybe research could be done and alternatives to pharmacological options could be discussed rather than just outright refusal of any treatment at all?

The only sane approach is to figure out why he doesn't want to take medication and then weigh those reasons against potential benefits of taking medication and potential risks when not taking it in his specific case. Then you can try to make an argument based on this analysis. Ultimately, you have to accept the decision your friend makes.

For context, by the way, I'm speaking as someone who has epilepsy that has gotten worse as it was not medicated/treated properly for a long time. [Not by choice. We didn't clearly know what we were dealing with.]

My epilepsy has gotten steadily worse over the years. At first it was only partial seizures and the occasional absence seizure. I never bothered to address it. Even after the first few tonic-clonic seizures I stubbornly refused to seek medical advice. It was when they started coming 3-4 times a month that I first saw a neurologist. He told me that not addressing it sooner likely contributed to how bad it had gotten so fast (he said that some seizures have the potential to cause some damage which could aggravate the condition further).

I have been on medication for a while now, and have been increasing dosage and adding additional anti-convulsants along the way, as it continues to worsen. The side effects are brutal, though. I don't think any of it is time release, and especially shortly after the first dose of the day I have trouble with fuzzy thinking, difficulty with word retrieval, and sometimes have trouble moving one side of my body. They also seem to dull my emotions significantly whenever the dosage goes up.

My current neuro team wants to crack open my head and chop out some bits (as well as have me stop working and go on disability). It seems my body becomes more and more effective at removing the medications from my system. The last round of seizures (multiple seizures every day) were particularly rough, and I ended up using up all my sick time and most of my vacation time. The medication cocktail after that round left me pretty worthless when it comes to written or verbal communication and coherent thinking. The cocktail has been adjusted (thankfully) to something much more tolerable.

I guess what I am saying is you should try to get them to seek medical advice and to follow it. Being completely honest is essential, as the medications all work slightly differently in different dosages and carry different severities of different side effects. For mild epilepsy, the medication they would likely be precribed would have very limited side effects.