Wanted backward to our weekly diabetes advice chromatography column,Ask D'Mine — with your host veteran type 1 and diabetes author Wil Dubois. This hebdomad, Wil's addressing a question related to diabetes seizures that can be quite crippling. Rent a look at what he has to enounce…

{Got your possess questions? Electronic mail us at AskDMine@diabetesmine.com}

Zach, type 2 from New Hampshire down, writes: I have had type 2 diabetes for the past 12 years, and 6 years ago I was diagnosed with non-epileptic seizures (NES). They happen when hypoglycaemia is underway. I've had numerous episodes since my diagnosis, from each one lasting about 10 minutes each. I always to strain to keep my blood sugar at 90-110; and always make my New Year's Solving to non have a seizure for the unharmed year (merely 4 this year). Just my question is: Am I en route to brain damage? I can only find that diabetic seizures are possibly fatal, but nothing close to mental sickness. Thanks for the answer.

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: Well, hell. That sucks. That's a lot to have happening your plate. And I'm or so to make information technology worse, as you're not going to like my answer to your question. Still, on the bright face, I think I'm in a position to help you with your Radical Year's Resolution this year, then please baffle with me to the cease.

To reply your core question: Are you on the way to Einstein damage? Bad overmuch and then. Yeah. Pitiful about that. The latest attest is that both seizures and low blood sugar independently crusade brain scathe. You induce a double over-barrel shotgun pointed at your head.

Maybe.

Because there's something we need to consider, and that's your diagnosing of non-brain disease seizures (NES). That's a very unusual way of describing seizures associated with diabetes. Typically, they'Re called hypoglycaemic seizures, not non-epileptic seizures. Or sometimes they're called acute characteristic seizures. So the question is: Are your seizures really being caused by low blood shekels? Or something else?

Here's the deal: According to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Irelan Epilepsy Society, thither are two panoramic types of NES and many sub-types. The beamy types are animate thing and psychogenic. Nonsynthetic NES have got physical or biochemical causes. And, in point of fact, the orde does include diabetes as a mathematical solution cause of constitutional NES, but over again, we don't usually see the NES diagnosis in diabetes care. Meanwhile, psychogenic NES are triggered away mental or emotional processes, and include dissociative seizures, scare attacks, and factitious seizures. The Epilepsy Society says the organic character are easier to pot with, optimistically going on to say that once the underlying cause is unconcealed and baked, the seizures will stop.

If only it were and then wanton.

Still, one thing you need to be pure around with your medical squad is this: Do they consider the NES is caused by the diabetes? Like I said, it's an unusual sorting, but non of necessity inaccurate. I guess, like your diabetes: Your doctor may change. Unruffled, you should equal clear happening why your medical team gave you that diagnosing.

But backing up, just what the heck is a seizure in the first place? Wholly seizures are physical phenomenon in nature. They are electrical storms in the brain that temporarily short-circuit the nervous system, causing the hallmark jerking movements of the head, body, arms, legs, surgery eyes. And while on that point's a ton of info happening brain damage causing seizures, for decades information technology was loosely accepted that the seizures themselves were harmless to the brain. But that's changing, and new research is starting to call the old assumption into question. Sadly, a growing body of evidence suggests that seizures are bad news for the brain.

And for those of us with diabetes, the news gets worse. While any seizure is caused by unchecked electrical activity in the brain, with low profligate loot seizures, there's more than going on than meets the twitching eyes. Here's the pile: Your brain is an out-and-out sugar hog. It uses to the full 20% of the body's fuel. So when your blood sugar gets low, the brain runs outgoing of fuel. Quickly. Depriving your brain of sugar is no contrastive, really, than depriving it of oxygen. And exactly similar linear out of atomic number 8, when brain cells are deprived of sufficiency lucre long enough, they die. As an FYI, IT's this lack of sugar that bathroom make a hypo fatal, not the seizure itself.

Still, it looks like, regardless of induce, electric storms in the brain can cause OR worsen mastermind damage. And although there is some conflicting science, the majority of the research out there indicate that the lack of carbohydrate in hypoglycemia also causes wi impairment. Like I said, information technology sure looks like a double-barrelled, mental capacity scathe-inflicting shotgun is acuate at your head.

So what would this brain damage look suchlike? IT's commonly delineated as a reduction in cognation. Memory problems. Wooly thinking. Long term decrease in IQ. Thrust like that. It sounds worse than depressing, but non completely is missed. Here's the deal: We are speaking about oh-so-subtle changes, not overnight Alzheimer's. Although information technology is quantitative, it may be so slight arsenic to make no difference. Maybe that scattergun is a BB gun.

Meanwhile, the degree of mind impairment aside, simply having brain terms won't make you insane, like you worried about. At to the lowest degree, not necessarily. Brain damage and psychopathy are about the same as spear up fishing and search for grizzly bears with a bow and arrow. Sure, they both use a pointy stick, but that's where the similarities end.

Mental malady is defined by the American Psychiatric Association as "wellness conditions involving changes in emotion, thinking, Oregon behavior." They keep to state that these changes rise to the level of interfering with social, work, surgery family activities. And present's the kicker: Knowledge illness is treatable.

Brain harm, then again, is broken in into two types by the Brain Wound Association of America: traumatic and acquired. Traumatic brain injury is either a "penetrating head injury" or a critical blow to the head that "disrupts the function of the brain." Acquired nous injury (while non "hereditary, congenital, surgery chronic") is caused by medical conditions Beaver State metabolic disorders. Hypo damage waterfall into this class. Is brain damage treatable? That depends on the type, but hurt is, healthy, damage. Given an bottomless budget, if you total your car, you can take in it atomic number 3 fresh as new again. Total your brain? Well… every last the king's horses and all the king's men…

All of that said, however, in any rare cases, apparently, brain harm can conduct to genial sickness. But we need to embody scrupulous in our Word of God choices when talking about things that fail in our heads. And we need to be careful about assuming one will lead-in mechanically to the other. And we need to recollect that the total of brain damage we're talking some with low blood sugar and seizures is very minimal in the first-class honours degree lay out. Peradventure the mop up that leave happen is that your moo seizures will leave you a tomentum more forgetful. You'll tend to leave your household without your keys more often, non turn into a psychotic person killer whale or a drooling vegetable. (No offense intended to psycho killers and drooling vegetables.)

Still, wherefore consume whatsoever brain damage at all, if information technology can Be prevented, right?

So let's assume that your NES, is, in fact, caused by hypoglycemic seizures. The "cure" is to not feature any hypos. I suspect you already know that. What I'm non sure that you know is the best way to go about that. You aforementioned you attempt to suppress your pedigree saccharide in the 90-110 range. Why? That's the "regular" not-diabetic range. It's nearly impossible, using today's medicines and tools, for a PWD to keep his or her rake sugar that tightly controlled without frequent episodes of hypoglycemia.

And, worse, it's unnecessary.

All our best manifest shows that blood sugar doesn't really showtime to go dicey until A1Cs go above 9%, which full treatmen intent on an average of 212 mg/decilitre. I think you're over-contained, and that's leading to lows. Equally you have seizures when you're low, you're in more than danger being on the low side than on the high root. So buoy up up on that control a morsel. Talk to your doc about high—but still safe and sound—targets for the new year. That will lose weight some the hypos and the seizures.

And the brain you save will be your own.

PS: One last matter. Typically, seizures, eventide in epilepsy, last under 4 minutes, so yours, at 10 minutes, run terribly long. In fact, seizures over 5 minutes have their own name: Position epilepticus , and they are regarded equally life-threatening . Bad seizures like these are most unremarkably caused by over- or nether-dosage of anticonvulsant meds, but they are also triggered past strokes, many liver and kidney problems, and even inebriant withdrawal. So if flailing close to part of your seizures really lasts 10 minutes, I impulse you to find a specialist. If you're just "come out of the closet of it" for 10 minutes, with a shorter period of time of body jerks, then that's All right.

Well, non OK, but you know what I mean…

Disclaimer:This is not a medical advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly communion the wisdom of our collected experiences — ourbeen-there-done-that noesis from the trenches. But we are not MDs, RNs, NPs, PAs, CDEs, operating theatre partridges in Pyrus communis trees. Bottom line: we are only a small part of your whole prescription. You notwithstandin need the professional advice, treatment, and care of a licensed medical professional.