From the Johns Hopkins Medical website "A seizure is a burst of uncontrolled electrical activity between brain cells (also called neurons or nerve cells) that causes temporary abnormalities in muscle tone or movements (stiffness, twitching or limpness), behaviors, sensations or states of awareness."
This is a pretty clear definition, but why do people have them?
There are many reasons why people have them. Some people are born with epilepsy, about 24,000 babies are born with epilepsy every year. But epilepsy can be developed at any point in a person's life. This can be due to genetics, metabolic causes, or autoimmune diseases.
Epilepsy is not contagious! That sounds crazy I know, but there are uneducated people around the world who think that epilepsy can be caught and to stay away from people having seizures (In a way this is good because you should never touch someone while they are seizing!!!).
So there can be genetic and disease related factors to having epilepsy, what if you don't have epilepsy, can you still have a seizure?
Yes! There are hundreds of causes of non-epileptic seizures (NES). Most of these are caused by emotional distress like major accidents, bullying, physical or sexual abuse, the list goes on. Seizures can also be caused by something that may seem insignificant, like dehydration. between 2-33 per 100,000 people have NES per year.