What do medications do to the body?

This is why we take medications, for a mission to be accomplished. The mission is to control the seizures and unfortunately there always could be collateral damage (side effects). So our ideal mission is to control the seizures (seizure freedom) without side effects. We cannot always accomplish that mission, but we should try very hard to do so.

• Mechanism of action: each medication has a different way of acting. The epilepsy specialist’s aim is to not combine two medications that act in the same way. He/she will try to use medications that act differently so they can combine efforts to stop the seizures.
• How do most of the medications work? Patients with epilepsy have a lower threshold for seizures than other people without epilepsy. AEDs elevate the threshold so it is more difficult for seizures to occur.