July 11, 1999
Hypoglycemia
Question from Michigan, USA:
Does anyone have any good solid information pertaining to seizures that are on set by hypoglycemia and possibly throwing puberty in there on top of it? I am so confused. My son who is now 11, was diagnosed with hypoglycemia last year. The doctor felt that diet was the key to his problem. He was experiencing severe headaches, sweets, color loss and confusion. We tried orange juice but it didn’t work very well. Our doctor suggested we try an EEG. The results were okay, but showed a questionable area, so we were given a choice of letting it go or taking him for a 24 hour sleep deprived videotaped EEG at a major hospital. We of course chose to have him take the second EEG. The results of that were fine, no indications of seizures at all. We were relieved.
Now one year later this “problem” he is experiencing is still with him. He is losing concentration, his grades in school have gone from A,B to D,E. I have taken him to another doctor and he felt that another EEG was a good idea along with blood work. The results of the latest EEG indicated normal, but more testing is recommended, that was the results from the hospital. Our doctor feels that our son is experiencing petit-mal seizures and that the EEGs need to be done during waking hours because he is experiencing the problems at that time. He wants us to take him to a well know medical center and have a 3 day EEG done. Of course we will take our son, but my question is, can hypoglycemia be contributing to all of this? What about puberty? I am so confused right now. I would love some stable information so I can understand and explain it to my son. This is very trying on him too.
Answer:
I am not a pediatric neurologist and thus not specially qualified to give an opinion on your son’s problems. I would say though that the central nervous system seems to be at its most vulnerable to hypoglycemic damage in the very early years of life so that it would surprise me if this turned out to be the explanation. In addition I would want to be cautious about the diagnosis of hypoglycemia so much so that I would suggest going back to the original doctor to see if he can tell on what grounds this suggestion was made and what further tests need to be done to find out the precise cause of the hypoglycemia.
Whilst I would agree that some form of petit mal may provide an explanation, I think it also possible that your son has some late onset form of one of the inherited neurodegenerative or metabolic diseases. And without knowing any but the smallest details of his history I also wonder if it is possible that some psychosocial issue is involved.
This seems to be a difficult and distressing problem, the more so because there is as yet no firm diagnosis. For this reason I would urge that he be seen by an experienced pediatric neurologist in a University setting where opinions from other subspecialties would be readily available.
I do not think that puberty is a significant issue.
DOB
