epilepsy

I know we have several in progress, and one of those comes from our podcast today.

So in my conversation with NFL wide receiver C.J. Daniels, we talk about his experience with advocacy for epilepsy and how epilepsy affected his family since he was even a young child and the nonprofit that he and his mother, who is the one that lives with epilepsy, help support.

To learn more about living with epilepsy, please listen through to our medical expert discussion with Dr. David Spencer, the editor of the Brain Health book series, the Navigating Life with Epilepsy book, and an epilepsy specialist from the West Coast.

So I hope you enjoy this episode.

Welcome back to the Brain and Life Podcast.

It's a hot summer all over the country, and many of us are inside escaping some of that heat watching one type of football with the World Cup, but there are those who are out there training for the NFL season.

And today we're joined and excited to be here with CJ Daniels, a professional football wide receiver and epilepsy advocate.

Just this last April, he was selected by the LA Rams in the NFL Draft after playing at Liberty University, Louisiana State, and University of Miami.

Together we create possible Together we create possible

Welcome back to the Harder to Manage Epilepsies podcast.

In today's episode, we're focusing on transition in harder to manage epilepsy.

So exploring what this process can involve, why it can be challenging and the support that make a difference.

Paul refused to go and see a neurologist for many years.

As you know, he had epilepsy and he had epilepsy surgery.

And after that, it took him a long time to be able to drive again.

And I think there was a fear there that if a neurologist checked him out, they might find something wrong and they might take his license away again and there might be more problems.

He did have a EEG to make sure that he wasn't having seizures.

There was blood tests and then there was the neuropsychology.

And when Paul initially had all of those tests done, that was towards the end of 2024, Rowena said, explained that Paul was quite complex because of the epilepsy resection.

And there was a lot going on in his brain, a lot of different things.

You know there are so many options for epilepsy surgery available but fundamentally we can divide it into three parts.

One is a receptive surgery where we take out certain tissues of the brain and these tissues of the brain are already damaged you know they are abnormal electrophysiologically.

So in terms of imaging you may still not find a significant abnormality in that but you know electrophysiological and maybe histopathologically they are abnormal.

So last week, neurologist Dr. Manjari Tripathi chatted with us all about when epilepsy surgery should be considered and how individualized care, so care being a crucial word here, for people with an epilepsy should be.

Today, we have neurosurgeon Dr. Surat Chandra, who is going to take us inside the operating theatre.

Well, not literally, no imagery here, but he's going to explain the different types of epilepsy surgery there are and the potential outcomes of epilepsy surgery today in 2026.

Thank you so much for joining us, Suresh.

Could you please just tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?

Um, and, and this is the thing we tend to find with all these things.

Epilepsy is another great example.

When, when, when my brother died, uh, 40 or so years ago, um, epilepsy was kind of a, a two things, two types of seizure.

But now the more research we know, we now know how, how different examples of epilepsy are connected to different genes are.

If you're experiencing seizure-like symptoms, the first step is always medical evaluation.

PNES can look and feel very similar to epileptic seizures, so it's really important to rule out epilepsy or other neurological conditions.

This is typically done by seeing a neurologist and completing testing such as an EEG, which measures the electrical activity in the brain using electrodes placed on the scalp.

There are different types of EEGs depending on how long they record and whether video is included.

Video EEG monitoring, which records both brain activity and video at the same time, is considered the gold standard for distinguishing between epilepsy and PNES.

I went through this process myself.

I worked with neurologists and underwent EEG testing at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and it provided a lot of clarity for me as to what was happening to my body.

With epilepsy, seizures are caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain.

And the clinical validation for this approach just got a massive upgrade.

They recently published their 18-month Nautilus trial results in the peer-reviewed journal Epilepsia.

Yeah, that was a huge deal.

The data provided level one evidence showing a 77% median reduction in generalized tonic-clonic