Viruses and Epilepsy

Celiac.com 03/27/2021 - Yes, I am “just” a veterinarian but I now speak at both veterinary and human conferences on the topic of epilepsy. The response to the elimination diet that I talk so much about has been phenomenal and part of the reason it does work is that the immune system becomes healthy enough to deal with the viral “culprits” in epilepsy.

Many epilepsy sufferers have not been told that viruses are known causes of seizures. The fact is that there are over 25 viruses known to causes seizures in people, many of which are ubiquitous (e.g. the Herpes and paramyxovirus families, including Epstein Barr, Herpes simplex, measles, mumps, Coxsackie viruses, and many more). I would encourage all of you to do some creative Internet searches for “virus, epilepsy”, etc., and see this for yourselves. 

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This should all make total sense to people. There is a myriad of viruses that love the central nervous system. Many of them have a real affinity for the glial cells (astrocytes and oligodendricytes) that support the neuron and regulate levels of neurotransmitters (e.g glutamate) at the synapse. This is one of the main reasons why “the G.A.R.D.”...the glutamate/aspartate restricted diet...works so well to help control seizures. It dramatically reduces the work load of these dysfunctional cells and puts a great Band-aid on the epilepsy situation. However, the long-term solution comes from the same diet that helps to reverse the immune failure and tissue ill health that set the stage for the viral uprising to begin with.
It is interesting and easily explained why people have unusual seizure histories. Many of our viral infections do not come and go but rather come and stay. As I am fond of saying, “If I could do a Star Trek type of scan on your body and give you a print out of the viruses you have in there, once you got over the shock of that news, you might just be motivated to take better care of yourself, eh?” Some infections are “diphasic”, with the initial infection causing some signs while other symptoms arise later, once the individual fails to control the infection or continues to bombard these viruses with things that “make them mad”, as explained below.

Latent viruses are involved in many of the disease “syndromes” with which we are afflicted, including epilepsy and cancer. I like to use cancer as the parallel to illustrate the difference between “causes” and “triggers”. For example, carcinogens do not cause cancer.  Viruses cause cancer. Carcinogens incite the virus to cause the cancer. I am convinced that most of you reading this will hear, in your lifetime, that all cancer is viral. Researchers have been saying this for years and years. It’s what viruses do. However, that alone is not enough for us to develop cancer. We also have to experience some degree of immune failure in order to get the “big C”. Thus, it is a triad of factors...viruses, carcinogens, and immune failure...that come together to yield the resulting cancer. That is what we call a “syndrome”.

Epilepsy is also a syndrome and the parallel is probably already quite clear. We are loaded with viruses that have the potential to cause seizures. Epstein Barr is one such Herpes virus. 50% of our kids in the US have Epstein-Barr by age 5 and 95 % of Americans over age 40 have this guy in their body. Why don’t we all have seizures if the Epstein-Barr virus can cause them? Because we don’t have the right cofactors in place. There are many cofactors in epilepsy, including diet, air quality, hormonal influences, lifestyles, and many other things that affect our immune systems and the health of our central nervous system, liver, kidneys, and endocrine systems, all of which can play vital roles.

Of all of these factors, diet is clearly the most important. This is easy to see once we understand what is required for our brains, bodies and immune systems to stay healthy and operate optimally. The “big 4” (gluten, dairy, soy and corn) are the who’s who of what is wrong with foods, as they damage our gut’s ability to absorb nutrients (e.g. celiac disease), shower our body with damaging proteins (lectins), load us up with staggering levels of “excitotoxins” (glutamate and aspartate) and pound us with estrogens. As a result, tissue health suffers, immunity fails, enzyme systems go down, and the Pandora’s Box of viruses is opened wide. The bottom line is that viruses don’t like certain things hurled at them (e.g. lectins, chemicals, pollution) and when they react to these noxious stimuli, we had better hope that we have a competent immune system to put down their rebellion. If not, we suffer a full blown syndrome, whether it is epilepsy, cancer, or the myriad of things we love to call “autoimmune disorders”. These things are not as “idiopathic” as we have all been led to believe.

I think you will see how your medical histories all line up with this once you fully grasp the role (and ultimate purpose) of viruses in nature and our bodies. They are not the malicious critters that we have labeled them to be. They are just doing their job. It is what we are throwing at them that is the real issue. We are literally forcing them to become pathogens.

As Pogo so wisely stated, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”