The Experience Miracles Podcast

Empowering Families Affected by Epilepsy w/ Nancy Monica

Mar 26, 2024

Childhood Epilepsy and Seizures: Combining Expert Medical Care with Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic

Episode 13, Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Published: March 26, 2024 | Duration: 63 min

Guest: Nancy Monica, Co-Founder of CURE (Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy), Epilepsy Advocate & Director of Epilepsy Health Management

Key Takeaways

  • Stress is the single biggest trigger for seizures in children, physical, emotional, and physiological stressors all activate seizure pathways. Reducing nervous system stress through Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care directly lowers seizure frequency, as Nancy Monica’s daughter Megan demonstrated after a two-week intensive chiropractic program eliminated her aggressive behavioral episodes entirely.
  • Seizure pathways form with every seizure, the sooner intervention begins, the better the outcome. A neurologist described it this way: a child’s brain is like a field of untouched grass, and each seizure knocks more of it down and hardens the pathway. This is why early chiropractic care alongside seizure management can interrupt that progression before pathways become entrenched.
  • Not all neurologists are equal for epilepsy. A pediatric neurologist is not the same as a board-certified epileptologist at a Level 4 epilepsy center. Families managing childhood epilepsy need both: a credentialed epileptologist for medical care and a PX Docs-trained chiropractor to address the nervous system root cause.
  • Seizure medications come with serious systemic effects, they slow all brainwave activity, not just seizure-related activity. Nancy’s daughter Megan developed Stevens Johnson Syndrome, a life-threatening allergic reaction in which she burned from the inside out. This underscores why reducing medication dependence through nervous system care is a meaningful clinical goal.
  • Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic belongs in every NICU. Nancy Monica, who co-founded CURE and raised over $1 billion for epilepsy research, now advocates for chiropractic to be presented at national epilepsy conferences alongside the ketogenic diet and vagus nerve stimulation, because the earlier the nervous system intervention, the greater the neurological recovery potential.

Can Chiropractic Care Actually Help Children with Epilepsy and Seizures?

Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care can reduce the frequency and severity of seizures in children by addressing the underlying nervous system dysfunction, not by treating epilepsy as a drug would, but by removing the chronic stress load that makes a sensitized nervous system more likely to seize.

The mechanism centers on the Brainstem and Vagus Nerve. When Birth Trauma or other early neurological insults compress or irritate the upper cervical spine, the brainstem can become locked in Sympathetic Dominance, a chronic fight-or-flight state. This sustained neurological stress increases seizure susceptibility because the threshold for abnormal electrical firing is lower in a nervous system that is already overwhelmed. Specific chiropractic adjustments that reduce Subluxation in the upper cervical region can activate the vagus nerve and shift the nervous system toward the parasympathetic, or calm-and-heal, state.

What this looks like in practice: Nancy Monica’s daughter Megan, who had been living with daily seizures, extreme medication sensitivity, and aggressive behavioral episodes for nearly 30 years, entered a two-week daily intensive chiropractic program and has not had a single behavioral incident since. Her seizures also decreased. Nancy’s explanation is direct: “Her seizures are reduced because of it, because it’s taken the stress off her body.” For families navigating epilepsy, this is not a replacement for working with a board-certified epileptologist, it is a critical additional layer of care that addresses the root neurological environment driving seizure activity.

Megan’s Story: Birth, Stroke, and the Start of an Epilepsy Journey [01:14 – 11:52]

Nancy Monica: Megan was born in 1994, and if there’s something you should know about 1994, there was no worldwide web. There was no Dr. Google, there was no looking anything up. When Megan was born, she got an E. coli infection from the fetal monitor that was placed in her head, and she ended up having a stroke at 12 days old. She then began having seizures, and as she progressed, they called it infantile spasms. They never called it seizures. They called it infantile spasms. So there was no web for me to look at to find out what infantile spasms even was. I sent away to the National Institute of Health and asked for information on it, and I got a manila envelope in the mail that talked about seizures. I actually called them and said, “I’m not looking for information on seizures. I’m looking for information on infantile spasms.”

So I started going to the library, checking out medical books, and finally getting a little bit more understanding on epilepsy. Megan had some excellent doctors over the years, but whatever her pediatricians told me to do, I was doing it and believing it. And I realized after a while that there are different levels of care, different levels of hospital care, different levels of medications, and I started learning so much about that.

Megan went on the ketogenic diet when she was just two years old. That happened through a catastrophic case manager through Motorola Insurance who connected me with Jim Abrams, a film producer whose son Charlie was born with epilepsy. If you’ve heard of the Charlie Foundation, that’s where it started. Jim sent me a VHS tape of a Dateline segment with Meryl Streep, then called me and said, “I really, really think you need to try this diet.” So we put Megan on it on her second birthday because none of the medications were working. We had tried everything. By that point, we had gone to three different epilepsy centers and no one could do anything for her.

She was seizure-free on the ketogenic diet, and it was wonderful. But in the early days, this was 1996, way before keto foods at Costco, you needed a dietician and a very specific regimen. They limited her fluids, and her bowels had expanded to nine times the normal size. They wanted to do bowel reconstruction. After almost two years, we decided we couldn’t trade one problem for another.

“We can’t trade one thing for another.”

Dr. Tony Ebel: And that wouldn’t just be the keto diet, that would be the stress on her nervous system, all of it. Her whole system was burdened.

Nancy Monica: She was a mess. She was irritable. So we stopped the ketogenic diet. Then she started on this drug and that drug, and it just got worse and worse. One day she had a long grand mal seizure, and the doctor said to increase two medications at once. We did it. And she ended up with something called Stevens Johnson Syndrome, she burned from the inside out from those medications. You read about getting a rash with a drug. This is the rash taken to its most extreme. And you can’t stop it if your system is wired to go that far.

She spent several months in a burn unit. We were told she was not going to live. I remember laying on a bed in the Ronald McDonald House thinking: I’m from Michigan, my family is all here, where do I bury her? Do I bury her in Michigan? And she lived. She was in a coma, and they kept saying, “Talk to her, there’s still brain activity.” At that point she couldn’t speak on her own, she used a device to talk and could say only single words. We had promised her that if she came through this, we’d get her a Barbie car. When she finally came out of her coma, her first words were: “Me, my Barbie car.”

Dr. Tony Ebel: The most Megan thing ever.

Nancy Monica: She definitely got the Barbie car. But after that, she had extreme allergic reactions to medications. The journey just got harder from there.

Building the Medical Bridge: Why Board-Certified Epileptologists Matter [11:52 – 26:47]

After Megan’s Stevens Johnson episode, Nancy stepped back from national advocacy work with CURE, the organization she co-founded that has raised over $1 billion for epilepsy research, and began focusing on building local infrastructure for epilepsy families in McHenry County.

Nancy Monica: I realized there are different levels of medical care, and most people don’t know that. I thought the best you could do was a pediatric neurologist. That’s not the case. A pediatric neurologist is not board-certified in epilepsy. And you need someone who is board-certified. With epilepsy, you can really mess things up if you’re just throwing darts.

Dr. Tony Ebel: So there is such a thing as a Level 4 Epilepsy Center, an actual credentialed epilepsy center, and that’s very different from a general pediatric neurology practice.

Nancy Monica: Absolutely. And that’s what I had to learn the hard way. So I began working with Dr. Rossi, Marvin Rossi, MD, PhD, Epileptologist, and we co-founded the first epilepsy telehealth program in the U.S. in 2010. This model combined state-of-the-art subspecialty medical care, mental health support, pharmacist consultation, and community-based social services. The data showed healthcare cost savings by reducing local emergency department visits. It was monitored by the CDC with the goal of replicating it throughout the country.

That’s how I met Tony, we were both serving on the Options and Advocacy board here in the county. And when Tony showed up, a young chiropractor on a board full of medical doctors, I have to be honest with you: I was pretty skeptical. I thought, “This is not how you treat epilepsy.” I even had a little attitude about it. But we made plans to meet for lunch to talk it through. And then I got a text that Oliver was born.

“If neurological pediatric chiropractic would’ve been in the hospital when my daughter was born, there would be no problems. She wouldn’t have the lingering problems. It would’ve stopped it. Because that’s when the brain is most pliable.”

Dr. Tony Ebel: When I called Nancy from the hospital, Oliver had hypoxic brain damage, a brainstem injury from a fast birth, was on ECMO, and they had put him on phenobarbital. I wanted out of that hospital, I wanted a better neurologist, and I wanted him off phenobarbital. What Nancy helped me understand, and what the research had already established, was that phenobarbital studies coming out between 1994 and 2009 showed that it permanently reduces IQ. An actual epileptologist would not have chosen it. Nancy called her epileptology colleagues and got us connected.

Nancy Monica: Between 1994 when Megan was born and 2009 when Oliver was born, studies had shown that phenobarbital permanently reduces IQ, and it’s not reversible. So when I called the epileptologist I worked with and told him what was going on, and said, “And they put him on phenobarb,” he said, “Nancy, they don’t put anyone on phenobarb anymore.” But they did. They put him on it. Because that was not a credentialed epilepsy center.

Dr. Tony Ebel: The specific chiropractic adjustments that reduce and remove Subluxation and Sympathetic Dominance from the brainstem, if they not only take down the sympathetic activation but also activate the Vagus Nerve, that’s the access point. Vagus nerve stimulators were already being used in epilepsy treatment. That gave some of the epileptologists a scientific framework for what I was doing.

I adjusted Oliver in the hospital while he was struggling with oxygen. His oxygen saturation would be at 81, 78, 82, very low numbers. I would put my hands on him and adjust him while he was connected to the monitors, and within minutes it would go from 82 to 98, 99. His blood pressure would normalize. The nurses paid attention. The doctors dismissed it despite the evidence on the screen.

How Seizure Pathways Form, and Why Early Intervention Changes Everything [26:47 – 40:57]

Nancy Monica: Let me give you an analogy that I’ve carried for 30 years. I picked up a neurologist at the airport once, he was speaking at a conference, and he told me this. Think of a child’s brain as a field of untouched grass on a beautiful summer day. That first seizure comes and knocks down a little bit of that grass, but the grass is still there. It can stand back up. The second seizure knocks down a little more. Seizures cause seizures. When they continue, you’ve built a pathway. And it’s much tougher to stop them when a pathway exists.

That’s why with Oliver, he didn’t have a pathway yet. That was the beautiful blessing.

Dr. Tony Ebel: You told me that on that phone call from the hospital. And I needed to hear it so I didn’t back off. Because what adjustments do, step one, is stop the negative progression. Stop more bad pathways from forming. Then, step two, we actually go backwards. We repair. And step three, we reorganize, we plant new grass, water it, fertilize it, let it grow.

We call this the Three Rs: Release, Repair, and Reorganize.

My mentor Dr. Cody put it to me this way: “If you’ve helped 19-year-olds with seizures get from six medications to two, what do you think is going to happen with a brain that’s literally two days old? Get to work.” So that gave me the confidence. Nancy, Dr. Rossi, Dr. Smith, and Dr. Cody gave me the conviction to do what I knew I had to do, while not everyone in that hospital wanted me doing it.

Megan’s Aggressive Behaviors and the Breakthrough with Chiropractic Care [40:57 – 52:48]

Megan is now 29 years old and still has seizures. But what changed recently is significant.

Nancy Monica: Her seizures are no longer grand mal seizures. We can’t drug her up so much that she can’t function, there’s no quality of life there. But Megan had some really aggressive behaviors behind closed doors. She would just snap. She punched me. She punched my husband while he was driving. She picked up a large glass Yankee candle to throw at my head and the police had to grab her and pin her on the floor. And I thought: with everything going on in this world, what if my daughter gets shot someday because she throws something at a police officer?

The police were at our house two or three times a week. We were at a loss. We were living in a private hell.

And then Dr. Tony texted me. He’d been telling me for years to get Megan back in. I finally said yes, because of my own health, I wasn’t working anymore and I could drive her there. She started his intensive program. She was there every day for two weeks. That was September. We have not had a single incident since then. She is so easy to live with. And her seizures are reduced because of it, because it has taken the stress off her body.

Dr. Tony Ebel: Stress is the #1 trigger for seizures, period. Physical, emotional, physiological, stress in any form activates seizure pathways. When we reduce the chronic sympathetic dominance in the nervous system, we reduce the baseline stress load, and the threshold for a seizure rises. That’s exactly what happened with Megan.

“Stress is the number one thing, the number one thing, that will cause seizures. And by stress, I mean anything: an illness, a fever, emotional stress. Anything.”

Nancy Monica: One thing I want to say about seizures to anyone listening: if you don’t have a good doctor, a good Level 4 epileptologist who believes in this integrative model, turn the other way. You need someone who understands that reducing nervous system stress through chiropractic is part of the picture, not something to dismiss.

My three other daughters, who grew up alongside Megan, are now a speech language pathologist specializing in autism programs, a special education teacher with two master’s degrees, and an occupational therapist with a doctorate. Every one of them chose careers serving kids with special needs because they grew up with a sister like Megan.

Dr. Tony Ebel: You are best equipped to help the person you once were. That’s what Nancy’s daughters are living.

What Families Need Now: Chiropractic in the NICU and Building the Medical Bridge [52:48 – 1:03:11]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Here’s the big vision: there must be a bridge between the medical epilepsy world and the chiropractic neurological world. Right now that bridge doesn’t exist in any formal way. So Nancy, what needs to happen?

Nancy Monica: There must be pediatric chiropractic in every NICU. That’s not the reality right now. To get there, we need to start talking to the American Academy of Neurology and the American Epilepsy Society. There are annual conferences where treatment modalities are discussed. Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care has to be on that panel alongside the ketogenic diet, vagus nerve stimulation, and kangaroo care. All of those are valid parts of it. But chiropractic is not there yet.

And it has to take precedence when possible, before loading a newborn with drugs. Seizure drugs have their purpose, and thank God we have them. But there is no kind and friendly seizure drug. Number 34, 35, 36, 37 in the pipeline may be a little friendlier, but the purpose of a seizure drug is to stop those brainwaves. It doesn’t just stop the seizure-related waves, it slows everything down.

Dr. Tony Ebel: It’s like an antibiotic. An antibiotic doesn’t know to go only to the infected area. It spreads systemically. A seizure drug does that neurologically, it suppresses all brain activity, not just the aberrant electrical firing. So if you’re listening out there and you have a connection to any of those organizations or those conferences, connect them to this platform.

“No matter how many Olivers are out there, it might be 90% of newborns, it might be 10%, even if it’s one Oliver, it makes a difference.”

Nancy Monica: We now continue this work through what’s called Epilepsy Health Management. My daughter Anne is the director. We have Dr. Rossi on the board. There is never any cost to the family. We just want to help you get on the right track. Sometimes you just need someone to talk to, someone who’s been through it and knows how to connect you to the right people.

Dr. Tony Ebel: So here’s the bottom line as we close this out. This is what we live every day. It’s what I call “fix it forward”, a phrase my dad taught me. We can’t go backwards and change what happened. What we can do is fix it from here, and move forward. And the coolest thing about pediatrics, the thing that makes this work so meaningful, is that the potential these kids have to heal is actually immeasurably bigger than we know it to be.

Nancy Monica: Absolutely. God makes us resilient. And even for Megan, where her seizure pathways are formed and paved with blacktop at this point, we can still change things that improve quality of life. And that’s what we have to do. It has to be a part of care.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can chiropractic care reduce seizures in children with epilepsy?

Yes, according to clinical experience from Dr. Tony Ebel and the reported outcomes shared by Nancy Monica. Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care addresses Sympathetic Dominance in the nervous system, the chronic fight-or-flight state that lowers the seizure threshold. By reducing this baseline stress through specific adjustments targeting the upper cervical spine and Brainstem, children often experience fewer and less severe seizures. Nancy Monica’s daughter Megan had her aggressive behaviors eliminated and her seizures reduced after a two-week intensive chiropractic program.

What is the difference between a pediatric neurologist and an epileptologist?

A pediatric neurologist treats a broad range of neurological conditions in children but is not necessarily board-certified in epilepsy. A board-certified epileptologist at a Level 4 Epilepsy Center has subspecialty training specifically in epilepsy diagnosis and management. For children with epilepsy, Nancy Monica emphasizes that the standard of care matters: the wrong medical team can lead to medication errors, mismanagement of drug protocols, and worse outcomes. Families should seek out an actual epileptologist, not just any pediatric neurologist.

What is the biggest trigger for seizures in children?

Stress, in all its forms. Physical stress (illness, fever), emotional stress, and physiological stress all activate the nervous system in ways that lower the seizure threshold and can trigger episodes. This is why reducing the nervous system’s chronic stress load is a core goal of Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care for children with epilepsy. According to Nancy Monica, stress is the single most reliable seizure trigger she has observed across decades of working with epilepsy families.

How early should I start chiropractic care for my child with seizures?

The earlier the better. Every seizure carves a pathway in the brain that makes the next seizure more likely, neurologists describe this as pathways becoming “paved with blacktop” over time. Dr. Tony Ebel explains the Three Rs: first stop the negative progression, then repair existing damage, then reorganize the nervous system. With a newborn’s brain, which is at its most neurologically pliable, early intervention can interrupt that pathway-building process before it becomes entrenched. Nancy Monica stated directly that if chiropractic care had been available when Megan was born, she believes her daughter’s lingering problems would not exist.

What is CURE, and how can epilepsy families access support?

CURE, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy, is an organization co-founded by Nancy Monica and two other mothers that has raised over $1 billion for epilepsy research to date. Separately, Nancy runs Epilepsy Health Management, a community-based program that connects epilepsy families to medical specialists, mental health support, and advocacy resources at no cost to the family. Families can contact Epilepsy Health Management through the contact information in the show notes. If you need someone to talk to or need help navigating epilepsy care, reach out.

How do I find a PX Docs chiropractor trained in pediatric care?

You can search the PX Docs Directory to find a Neurologically-Focused Chiropractor trained in Dr. Tony Ebel’s clinical protocols near you. These are not general chiropractors, they are practitioners who have completed postgraduate training specifically in pediatric and neurological chiropractic care and are equipped to work alongside your child’s medical team.

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