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Condition

Seizures

CBD for Seizures

Seizures are sudden, uncontrolled changes in the brain’s electrical activity. These disturbances can go unnoticed or cause dramatic changes in your movements, behavior, feelings, and consciousness.
Seizures are common, causing 1 to 2 percent of all visits to the emergency room. Usually, a first seizure happens before age 25. Most last from 30 seconds to two minutes; a seizure lasting longer than five minutes should be treated as a medical emergency.

Because the exact cause of a seizure cannot always be pinpointed, you should be evaluated by a doctor the first time you experience one. This will ease your concern over the episode, and help identify if you have a treatable underlying health condition, such as epilepsy.

Seizure Symptoms

There are many types of seizures, which can cause symptoms varying from mild to severe:

Seizure Types

The International League Against Epilepsy developed new terms to provide more clarification about each type of seizure1. The following four types now better classify the onset, awareness, and effects experienced during a seizure:

Generalized Onset Seizures
These seizures affect both sides of the brain and body at the same time, and can include atonic, absence, and tonic-clonic, to name a few.

Focal Onset Seizures
Previously referred to as partial seizures, focal seizures begin within one side of the brain and one side of the body. These seizures are most common with a diagnosis of epilepsy.

Focal Onset Aware Seizures
Once known as a simple partial seizure, focal aware seizures occur when you are awake and aware during an episode.

Focal Onset-Impaired Awareness
When your awareness is affected in some way during a focal seizure, it’s known as a focal-impaired awareness seizure (previously known as complex partial seizures).

Unknown Onset Seizures
If the start of a seizure is unknown or unwitnessed, it is called an unknown seizure, or unknown onset seizure.

Seizure Causes

While the most common cause of seizures is epilepsy, anything that disrupts the communication pathways in the brain can cause a seizure, including the following:

Seizure Treatment

Just because you’ve had one seizure is no reason to believe you’ll have another. If your doctor determines it was an isolated incident, treatment may be delayed until you've experienced another seizure. Once your doctor determines the cause of your seizures and the likelihood you'll have another, they’ll prescribe the best possible therapy to stop them, with the fewest side effects. This may include:

Medication. Your doctor may prescribe medication based on your age, the frequency of your seizures, and other factors to prevent or limit seizures.
Nerve stimulation. Often combined with medication, your doctor may choose to implant a device in your chest to stimulate the vagus nerve in your neck to inhibit seizures.
Surgery. A surgeon may remove any brain abnormalities.
Responsive neurostimulation. When implanted on the surface of your brain or in brain tissue, this device can detect and stop seizure activity.
Deep brain stimulation. Your doctor may choose to implant a pacemaker-style device in your chest to produce electrical impulses that regulate abnormal brain activity.
Diet restrictions. A ketogenic diet, which is high in fat and low in carbohydrates, can improve seizure control.
Alternative medicine. Cannabidiol, or CBD, has garnered significant scientific evidence supporting usefulness in the treatment of seizures.

The most recent study showed that patients taking a 10 mg daily dose of pharmaceutical-grade CBD in the form of Epidiolex experienced a reduction in seizures and fewer side effects compared to other drugs used to treat epilepsy.2

While more research is needed, scientists believe the reason CBD tends to help with seizures is because the endocannabinoid signaling pathways are altered with seizure disorder—and CBD can potentially help get them back on track.3

CBD for Seizures

Research & Scientific Evidence

Dose-Ranging Effect of Adjunctive Oral Cannabidiol vs Placebo on Convulsive Seizure Frequency in Dravet Syndrome: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Patients with Dravet's syndrome are at high risk of mortality due to sudden seizures. More difficult control of seizures is associated with more comorbidities and lower quality of life. Despite treatment with many antiepileptic medicines, patients with Dravet's syndrome often remain refractory to treatment. In 2020, a multicenter, double-blind, randomized study was published in which children with Dravet's syndrome received CBD and placebo to determine the frequency of seizures.

Patients were randomly assigned to the research groups using a computer-generated schedule. An interactive response system was used to assign patients to receive cannabidiol 10 or 20 mg/kg/d or placebo in volumes corresponding to two doses of cannabidiol. Placebo groups were pooled to provide efficacy and safety results. CBD was administered twice daily at 2 equal doses starting at 2.5 mg/kg/d, reaching 10 mg/kg/d on day 7 and 20 mg/kg/d on day 11. In this randomised clinical study of 2 doses of highly purified cannabidiol in children with refractory Dravet's syndrome, both doses significantly reduced the incidence of convulsive seizures compared to placebo.

At least a 50% reduction in seizure frequency was achieved and an improvement in quality of life was noted. These results are consistent with the results of previous studies with this medicine, one of which concerned Dravet's syndrome and only assessed the dose of 20 mg/kg/d and two of which were Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. CBD is an effective treatment for seizures.

1 Fisher RS, et al. Operational classification of seizure types by the International League Against Epilepsy: Position Paper of the ILAE Commission for Classification and Terminology. Epilepsia. 2017; ;58(4):522-530. doi: 10.1111/epi.13670.
2 Devinksy O, et al. Trial of Cannabidiol for Drug-Resistant Seizures in the Dravet Syndrome. The New England Journal of Medicine. 2017; 376:2011-2020; doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1611618
3 Reddy DS, Golub VM. The Pharmacological Basis of Cannabis Therapy for Epilepsy.The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. 2016. ;357(1):45-55. doi: 10.1124/jpet.115.230151.