Definitive conclusions cannot be drawn, but a study carried out by the University Hospital of Jena, in Germany, has found direct relationships between the weather and epileptic seizures. According to this work, when there is a day with low atmospheric pressure and high relative humidity, it seems that a greater number of epileptic seizures occurs.
On the contrary, high temperatures help reduce the number of outbreaks suffered by patients. The relationship between weather conditions and epilepsy was demonstrated in this study, but it is insufficient to take it as an absolute truth. It is necessary to repeat the sampling in areas of the world with different climates to try to reach universal conclusions.
By confirming that there is a direct relationship between the disease and the weather situation, a new path of investigation of this pathology is visualized, which is suffered by 50 million people in the world and which has become one of the most frequent diseases of the nervous system in the world. planet. In Spain, its incidence is high with a ratio that indicates that 15 out of every 1,000 people will have at least one epileptic seizure at some point in their lives. Epilepsy groups a series of diseases caused by the modification of brain electrical activity that sometimes leads to loss of consciousness.
A strong trauma, a tumor, a stroke, an infection, genetic or immune alterations or a metabolic disease are some of the causes of epilepsy. There are also other factors that can trigger a crisis such as fever, irregular sleep schedules, stress, or alcohol and drug use. To help control and reduce the frequency of epileptic seizures, it is advisable to have healthy habits such as following healthy eating guidelines, physical exercise, sleeping well and having a regular sleep schedule, reducing stress and not consuming drugs or alcohol. In addition, the medication guidelines indicated by the doctor must be followed.
The study carried out in Jena consisted of analyzing the incidence of temperature, atmospheric pressure and relative humidity in the appearance of epileptic seizures in 604 previously diagnosed patients. This work observed that the combination of low atmospheric pressure and high relative humidity causes a greater risk of epileptic seizures. The opposite effect occurs when higher temperatures occur.
The study indicates that the greater the drop in atmospheric pressure, the risk of seizures increases. For every 10.7 hPa of lower atmospheric pressure, the risk of epileptic seizures increased in the entire study population by 14%. In patients with less severe epilepsy treated with an antiepileptic drug alone, the risk of seizures was increased by 36%. The other factor that increases the risk is the relative humidity of the air, which when it was above 80% caused a 48% increase in the cases of epileptic seizures.
Warm weather, when the temperature is above 20 degrees Celsius, acts positively on the other hand. In this sense, the data from the study show a drop of almost 50% in the number of cases of seizures when it is hot. In addition, analyzing the different subgroups into which the 604 participants in this research were divided, it is observed that this phenomenon of risk reduction due to high temperatures affects the male population more.
