Woman with Seizures Helped with Chiropractic - Case Study

A case study documenting the improvement of a 25 year old woman suffering from seizures who was helped by chiropractic was published in the June 2010 issue of the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine. In this case the woman was diagnosed at age 14 with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME), and had suffered with the problem for more than 10 years.

The woman's history showed that the seizures started at age 14 shortly after a neck injury and just after her first menstrual cycle. She had been diagnosed with JME by the Michigan Institute for Neurological Disorders in 1998, 11 years before starting chiropractic care. She reported that at age 14 she fell out of bed and hit her head on a desk 2 to 3 months before the seizures began. At the time of her initial chiropractic visit she was taking 200 mg of lamotrigine per day to control the seizure activity. Over the previous 11 years, she reported that she experienced 1 to 2 seizures per month. She also noted that her menstrual cycles were severely abnormal lasting approximately 10 days, with 10 to 15 days between cycles.

Chiropractic examination was specifically focused on the upper cervical spine and care was initiated to correct a first cervical vertebrae (atlas) subluxation using specific chiropractic adjusting procedures geared toward the correction of atlas subluxations. The study reported that the woman received this chiropractic care over a 12 week period.

The results showed that the woman did report one seizure a few days after the beginning of chiropractic care. After that point she reported having 6 episodes of minor twitching that did not progress into seizure. According to the study the woman did not experience any additional seizures from this point forward. In addition to the seizure benefits she also reported that her last 2 menstrual cycles lasted less than 7 days and were 28 days apart.

In their conclusion the authors wrote, "This case study demonstrated improvement in a young woman with a seizure disorder after she received upper cervical chiropractic manipulation. This case suggests the need for more rigorous research to examine how upper cervical chiropractic techniques may provide therapeutic benefit to patients with seizure disorders."