Epilepsy: Health Story

Aired on Lifetime Television
Sunday, November 4 and December 23, 2007
Show 425

As a star of the hit show Heroes, Greg Grunberg is used to dealing with onscreen bad guys. But it's his son's disease that has him on edge in real life. "With epilepsy, you never know when it's going to strike. It's like an earthquake waiting to happen at any time," says Greg. His son Jake was diagnosed with epilepsy when he was seven years old. Like most children with the disease, Jake was having seizures, but they were tough to detect. Dr. Sankar, a pediatric neurologist, says epilepsy is more common in the young and old. It can be caused by genetic or prenatal problems, or often from head trauma and disease. Despite all the unknowns, there is good news on the treatment front. "There is an increasing number of medications that are available. And the newer ones have fewer side effects," says Dr. Donald Shields, the Director of the Pediatric Epilepsy Program at Mattel Children's Hospital in Los Angeles. In fact, about 50 to 70 percent of epilepsy patients can be easily controlled and live seizure free with the right medication. And new medications and procedures being tested right now have doctors and patients hopeful that epilepsy will one day be curable.