Update 2:  

It's been more than eight years since I wrote this article, more than three years since my last update. I'm proud to say that this piece continues to resonate: every month I receive calls from a new round of patients, a new set of families who want to know more about the Andrews-Reiter treatment. Sometimes I talk with them on the phone, lay out what I learned in the course of my reporting and what I discovered from first-hand experience.

In December 2009 I received an email from John Park, a Canadian healthcare executive, or as he put it, "a neurotic Jewish father looking to help his son with his epilepsy." Park's 25-year-old son Trevor had been blacking out from grand mal seizures since he was 13. Doctors had put him on a series of anticonvulsant medications. But the seizures continued, he said, and the medications left Trevor mentally hazy and sleeping more than 15 hours a day.

Park wondered: was the Andrews-Reiter approach a better way?

Two weeks later Park, Trevor and I met in the lounge of the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Manhattan. They had come to the U.S. seeking second and third opinions from American neurologists. Trevor did indeed seem out of it, but his father listened intently, his eyes intensifying as I laid out my research and personal experience. He left the hotel determined to meet with Dr. Andrews and Dr. Reiter.

Fifteen months later Park contacted me again. Soon after they left New York, he said, his son received treatment from Dr. Andrews and learned several unique Andrews-Reiter techniques to halt seizures. Now when Trevor felt the early signs of a seizure—lightheadedness, his words turning to gibberish—he would breathe slowly, deeply and use his right index finger to trace circles in the palm of his left hand. Soon Trevor's seizure count began to plummet. Doctors lowered his medication. And his thinking became dramatically clearer.

Park was now laying out a blueprint for an epilepsy conference in October at the University of Toronto, designed to draw attention to the Andrews-Reiter approach. "This will be a conference for neurologists and medical professionals, for patients and their families," he said. Across international wires I could hear the father exhale. "These techniques have made such a difference for our family," he said. "Other families should know about them too."

Park's words struck a chord. That thought was precisely what drove me to open up my personal life and share the story of Dr. Andrews and Dr. Reiter's impact on me. Over 2.6 million Americans have epilepsy, 50 million people worldwide. Every year 200,000 Americans are diagnosed with the condition. If they learned about the A-R approach, would it have the same impact on their lives?

Park asked me if I'd speak at the Toronto conference. Without hesitation I said yes. I also designed a comprehensive website for the conference, EpilepsyConference.com, which provides in-depth details on the A-R approach.

The conference is now four days away, the perfect time for an update on my own health. So how am I doing?


                                                                    


Short answer: very well.

In the three years since my last update, there have been long stretches where epilepsy was barely a factor in my life. As patients learn with Dr. Andrews and Dr. Reiter, epilepsy is a condition in which damaged neurons are prone to overfire. But if you handle your health correctly, care for your body and take commonsense preventative measures, those neurons can be prone to overfire for the rest of your life without ever overfiring into a seizure.

Then again, there have been times in the last three years in which I didn't exactly treat my body with care: staying up to 3:30 a.m. too many nights in a row; eating too many sugary foods, which triggers a surge of cerebral electricity; not exercising to deflate that electrical excess; or not pausing during strenuous exercise to let my elevated electrical levels fall slowly back to a healthy range. Other times I've stubbornly refused to get up in the middle of the night to walk to the restroom, leaving my body under prolonged physical pressure. And most commonly of all, I've mishandled the stress of botched first dates and the rage sparked during arguments with difficult family members. If I don't work through that rage before sleep—either by talking out the issue with the offending family member, walking around the block and talking it out with myself, punching my pillow, or going into the bathroom and screaming till I'm exhausted—that rage can still explode during sleep and cause a seizure.

I haven't had a seizure during my waking hours in years. That era is over. Occasionally I do still have complex partial seizures in my sleep: a little shaking, a little drooling in bed, in the middle of the night, while I'm half-asleep. In recent months those have come about once a month.

Annoying, for sure, and dismaying some days too. But a few occasional shakes during sleep—getting up, going to the restroom, dabbing off the saliva, heading back to bed—is light years away from the disoriented, fear-filled place I was in before I learned about Andrews and Reiter. Back then, seizures were completely random events, lightning that could strike now ... or now ... or now. The fear that created made happiness virtually impossible.

Today, with great friends, good health and a career I'm passionate about, I'm the happiest I've ever been. And if I want to be completely rid of those occasional, middle-of-the-night seizures, I know exactly what I need to do: go to bed on time, exercise regularly, and process any stress that crops up before bedtime.

As an investigative reporter, I face situations others might find nerve-wracking: interviewing high-ranking military officials, speaking to millions on live TV, testifying before Congressional panels that have convened to scrutinize my reporting. I complete each of these tasks with rock-solid confidence, knowing that every electrical surge that crops up I can shut down instantaneously by simply pausing, breathing and recentering myself.

I successfully use those A-R techniques six or seven times a day. After using them for so many years, they're second nature to me now, virtually a reflex. I deflate those electrical rises so fast—in the time it takes to have a quick sip of water—that no one ever notices.

I continue to take a low dose of epileptic medication (500 milligrams of Tegretol, 300 milligrams of Lamictal per day), so low that I experience no side effects at all. As my neurologist, Dr. Steven Pacia of New York University Medical Center, said to me recently, "You're living exactly the life you want to live. With good health, that's the place you aim for."

With this conference, with access to the A-R techniques, hopefully thousands more will reach that place too.

— Joshua Kors

October 10, 2011