Good morning. Seems you had quite the night. I must say… it’s probably better that you try and limit the number of times you wake up completely covered in blood. I would certainly prefer it if you only did it when you weren’t under NFL contract, you know. It means more paperwork for me when that happens, and that cuts into my Tweeting and golfing time.

That said, 37 seizures in an hour is a new team record, so I’ll make a note of it on your chart as well as on the Hall of Fame wall here on this side of the room. But I suppose they’ll probably want those stopped, I guess…

EPILEPSY, DEER AND MOON PHASES: HOW YOU CAN PROVIDE COVER FOR LATE-NIGHT SHENANIGANS?

What are the positives of this treatment?

Epilepsy has been known to humanity for over three thousand years, making it one of the oldest documented ailments anywhere in the world. For much of this period, sufferers were believed to be afflicted by “demons” of various types that caused their seizures – and with numerous differences in epileptic seizures as documented by Galen, the 2nd century Roman physician, this belief was common until well into the 19th century.

Epilepsy was considered by many to be a “sacred” disease due to this prevalence of supernatural beliefs, though the famous Hippocrates proposed in the 5th century BCE that it was likely a disease rooted in the brain. A century later, Aristotle proposed that sleep and changes in consciousness were both affected by “vapors” from eating food, which would rise and fall in a person’s bloodstream. As epilepsy was also an altered state of consciousness, to many in the Catholic Church, Aristotle’s beliefs went completely unquestioned.

When unusual electrical activity in the brain was confirmed through the late 19th and early 20th centuries to be the clear-cut cause of epilepsy, the religious aspects of the illness were finally put to bed – though like many other diseases throughout human history, stigma against sufferers persisted.

As epileptics were treated with distrust and fear by many, treatments varied widely across regions and time periods – and typically with very limited success. A Greek physician by the name of Alexandros of Tralleis (c. 605-525 BCE) suggested that epileptics could be treated by having their heads washed and then burning a ram’s horn under their nose, making them fall down. Slave buyers tested their purchases in markets by burning jet, a type of coal, under their noses; if they didn’t fall down, then they were good to go, according to folklore of this era. There are also the usual accounts of various herbs, acupuncture treatments, and other assorted folklore from cultures across the world.

However, in the 18th century, a rather novel treatment for epileptics was proposed in the Book of Phisick, a foundational text for emerging medical science in Western Europe: collect the hair of a strong man, cook it with the leg bone of a deer, crush it into a powder, and eat it in the days leading up to the new moon. The linking of the moon with epileptic seizures is a curious belief, but one that persisted through thousands of years, in part due to many cultures’ beliefs that full moons caused irrational, inhuman behavior. The words lunatic and lunacy are derived from the Latin luna, for moon.

The good news with the treatment proposed in the Book of Phisick is that it’s 100% holistic and natural, and shouldn’t cause any harm to the patient at all!

What are the negatives of this treatment?

The bad news, of course, is that it also doesn’t work. But that’s a minor quibble, really.

The two interesting points about this 18th-century treatment is that both significant aspects of it – the moon part and the deer part – are linked to other periods in history.

Human fascination with the moon is obvious; old wives have linked menstruation to the phases of the moon since prehistory, in part due to their similar time frames. Same, too, with the idea of werewolves and heightened criminal behavior in a full moon. 21st-century clinical studies have shown that there’s zero correlation of any effects the moon may have on fertility or behavior, but old habits die hard.

What’s more curious, however, is the other ingredient of this treatment… the deer leg. It’s possible that our late-Renaissance, early-Enlightenment doctors were onto something by using this ingredient, but in all likelihood, they probably picked the wrong part of the deer to use. Deer do not have particularly sturdy skeletons, in part due to the necessities of energy expended to grow antlers. But the antlers themselves might potentially be a fantastic treatment for various diseases at some point down the line.

What are some real-life examples of this treatment? 

Deer antlers are fascinating. When environmental conditions are just right, they can grow up to three-quarters of an inch a day. The antlers regenerate every year over a period of a few months, and serve basically no function other than a secondary sexual selection trait.  The antlers themselves, of course, are made of bone, but for much of the growing season from late March to early September, these developing antlers are covered with “velvet” – thin, fuzzy skin that allows for optimal blood flow to rapidly grow these appendages, unlike horns or tusks. When the antlers are grown, the velvet starts to die off, making the skin incredibly itchy – and deer will desperately try to scratch their antlers on anything to try and get rid of it. Finally, the exposed bone is left behind, and when mating season is over, the antlers will fall off and the cycle will start anew.

What makes deer antlers even more remarkable is the fact that it is possible to graft some of these fast-growing cells onto other animals, and still have them grow. Studies involving mice with cells injected into various parts of their body were able to grow somewhat similar appendages, and other studies saw deer growing antlers on other parts of their body when these cells were implanted elsewhere. Other studies show that when a deer is injured at its pedicle (the base of where the antler grows from), it can deform the antler growth – even for years after the injury has healed. Remember – not only is the bone growing at a remarkable rate, the accompanying blood vessels and nerves also have to grow as quickly.

As such, deer antlers present one of the most fascinating studies in bioelectricity – the connections between cells and their energy exchange that allows for bodies to grow and develop. As epilepsy is similarly electrically-triggered in human patients, more intensive research into adopting deer antlers for treatment is required.

Maybe deer antlers as an epilepsy treatment may not necessarily be readily available in current form, but deer antler velvet spray is already readily available on the market, particularly from supplement and holistic nutrition stores. Taken as an aerosol, deer antler velvet spray is billed as a relief for joint pain, muscle repair, libido and energy boosters, and more. It does contain insulin-like growth factor 1, or IGF-1 – which is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency – but it can’t be metabolized in any meaningful qualities. It also doesn’t contain very much of it. That didn’t stop Ray Lewis from crediting it for repairing a torn triceps muscle back in early 2013, though.

How can we improve this treatment for the future?

We have copious medications available for treating epileptic patients today. In some patients, they are wildly successful and allow them to live virtually normal lives. I would argue, however, that rather the pill format they are typically available in today, they would be better off as chewable tablets – preferably venison-flavored, in my professional opinion.

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Information for this article taken from here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.