Help-occipital epilepsy and chronic constipation

[louisedun]

my d 3 has a few health probs and just wanted some advice. She has been complaining of flashing in her eyes and headaches for about 4 months, mri scan showed scarring on the brain and eeg possible occipital epilepsy, she is due for a 24hr eeg end of jan. Does anyone have any experience of occipital epilepsy? and will the 24hr eeg ruin her hair? Plus will the scarring on her brain cause learning difficulties?
Also she has had chronic constipation for 2 years and is on regular movicol does anyone know how long a child should be kept on laxatives b4 further investigation ahould be done (diet is great)-just feel like i am pumping her full of drugs when there might be a cause for the constipation x

Hi, I think you might as well consider this in case it helps.
I looked into neuro-side quite a bit for my ds and read tons of neuro research, some on epilepsy. In some cases, epilepsy reverses on gluten-free diet, but this needs to be started before too much damage is done.
If she was mine, I would remove all gluten (wheat, rye, oats & barley) & some dairy from her diet to see if it helps. It will remove constipation and might even help with epilepsy. If her scarring was calcification, some of it could reverse on diet. Migraine & flashing lights are often linked with celiac.

In my ds, constipation was caused by dairy, went away went we cut out a lot of it, but gluten carried on causing damage (inc neurological) until we found out that it was a real cause. My ds is now gluten-free & dairy lite.

You could consider testing her for celiac, but even if you don't do it before going off gluten, nothing is lost as there are genetic tests that don't rely on eating gluten (not offered as standard, so you would have to ask for it).

Some people also use ketogenic diet for epilepsy with great success.