HEALTH MAKES A LIVING

Sunday 4 September 2011

CONVULSIONS, PARALYSIS AND EPILEPTICS




CONVULSIONS, PARALYSIS AND EPILEPTICS
Paralysis: Is anabily to move certain muscles. This is usually a failure of the motor nerve  to carry impulse to the muscle s concerned.
            If motor nerve to a limb are cut as a result of an accident, the muscle cannot be made to contract. If the damage is not extensive, the nerve may grow again.
            Spinal injury may lead to paralysis. If the spina chord is damage by the disease or injury, the part below the damage area may have neither motor function nor sensation. Poliomyelitics sometimes result in paralysis because the polio virus affect the motor nerve of the spinal chord.
Stroke usually lead to partial paralysis because the blood supply to certain brain  cells is off for a time.
            Hysterical paralysis I is a psycological disorder. Although there is no sign of disease or obvious damage of the brain, the is unable to move one or more limbs.  If the speech centre id affected, the patient may loose power of speech. If, under the influence of drugs or hynosis, the patient regains the use of affected part, ths is an indication that the cause of the paralysis is psychological or pyschosomatic  and not the result of injury or infection.
Convulsions:    this is involuntory burst of the muscles contraction involving the face and the limbs. It result from an irritation of motor nerve cells in the brain and spinal chord. In diabetics convulsion may occur if the brain cells are deprive of sugar, in tetanus the convulsions are the result of tetanus toxin acting on the neuronin the spinal chord. In young children the most usually cause of convulsion is high temperature resulting from an infection illness.
            Hysterical convulsions are produce by a psychological state rather by any disease or disorder of the nerve system. They may be induced by the fervour of the religion or ritual ceremony energetic, rhythmic dancing movements.
            The treatment of the convulsions is injection of anti-convulsant, tranquilizing drugs. If the causes of convulsion is an abnormal high body temperature, attempt should be made to lower the temperature as soon as possible.
Epilepsy   this arises in the brain as a result of a large number of nerve cells  all firing off impulses at the same time. The affect may  be a brief loss of conciousness; the person just stop what he is doing and just stares blankly ahead for 30seconds. This form of epilepsy is sometimes called ‘petit mal’. It ocurs most offen in children and young people and dissapear as they get older.
            The more severe form of epilepsy is called “grand mal” and involves loss of conciousness, falling over and convulsion lasting for a minute or two. The patient sometimes has sensations that tell him or her that an attack is about to happen.
Anybody may experience epilepsy as a result of head injury, meningitis or a blockage of some blood vessels in the brain. People described as epileptics have attack without any obvious cause although it is likely that there is some  small area of damage in the brain which set off the discharge of nervous impulses.
Epileptic are normally in other respect and are not mentally retarded unless their disease is the result of serious brain damage at birth. Because epileptic attacks cannot usually be predicted and often involve a temporary loss of conciousness, it is important that epileptics should not work in situation where they might be injured either by themselves or other people. Most coutries do not allow epiletics to drive.
            Epileptic attack can be control by giving anticonvulsant drugs at times when seizures most often occur. These drugs are depressants and have the disadvantage of making the patient less mentally alert than usual.