Hi, this may be quite difficult for many to read as it was a very difficult decision for our friend a 21 year old girl that we had living with us who also showed every symptom of HKPP. We were convinced after reading a number of articles and website many of you too will have read with respect to HKPP. We were at the stage of begging specialist to perform the medical tests and they were refusing and putting unnecessary delays in the process. I now believe that in His grace God was ordering events in this way. Our friend suffered from HKPP in conjunction with some severe convulsions that seemed to only occur when she was seized. To cut a long story short, after about 5 weeks my wife and I had a long discussion about everything we saw and heard with respect to our friend with HKPP. We had a strong conviction that the convulsions were a result of her thought patterns. She had recently been through some traumatic circumstances but in general her life was riddled with a family history that was full of abnormal situations and relationships. I must stress at this point that at the time of HKPP she came across as a great Christian and from a Christian family that she claimed she had a great up-bringing. After sternly challenging our friend one night she was convulsing we (we did this with brutal honesty that we had concluded it was her thought life) she stopped convulsing overnight. Two days later after no communication between her and us we broke the ice and had another softer but frank conversation. The end result was that our friend realised the convulsions were entirely her own doing and they ceased overnight only to appear in a mild form twice since then again due to her thoughts of what 'might' happen in her life. This change paved the way to considering the possibility that HKPP was also due to her background and her thought life. We involved a specialist who after the first 1 hour meeting concluded that her HKPP was 90% psychological and 10% physical (maybe). We later found that it was 100% psychological. Again in brief, by the second visit to the specialist over a space of about 2 months our friend is now completely free from the torment of HKPP. So what did we learn from this? First, Psychologists are partly right. They had identified that our friends problem that she suffered for about 2 years was psychological. BUT, psychology can't offer the answers. The reality is that our friend was inward look and selfish. Her HKPP was a result of a self centredness rather than looking outward to meeting others needs. This is what the Bible says we all suffer from but it seems to be just that in the combination with other events in our friends life the result was suffering from HKPP. The people involved in her recovery where a very Biblical based counsellor (I can't stress enough the Biblically based part as many Christian counsellers have adopted a humistic approach rather than a Biblical approach), a man who had trained as a General Physcians (11 years) plus attempted a Psychology training but did not complete it, and also was a Psychotherapist and a self professed Mind-Body specialist. He has quite an education and a Christian background although he seems to have turned somewhat away from Christian Principles which is where the bible based Christian counseller was excellent. My hope and prayer for all who read this is two fold. Please contact me on Dave.n.Rae@gmail.com directly if you want to know who to contact for further help and secondly, that all who read this will understand that God gift to us is freedom from the sin (things that are contrary to God's nature or desire for our lives) that binds us (in this case with HKPP). I have been a Christian since 19years old and can say that there is great freedom in Christ compared with the so called freedom of not following Christ and being your own boss. Our friend is now back in the work force and now studying at a very good Bible College and has taken up swimming and kayaking and eating all the foods that she previously couldn't eat. What a miracle. Thank the Lord!

I am deeply offended by your message. To imply that anyone with Hypokalemic Periodic Paralysis is faking it or the cause is mental health problems is deeply insulting. I have had to deal with these accusations for decades. These kinds of accusations have caused me physical harm when people tested whether I was "faking it". You can't fake being paralyzed. If you think you can Dave, try it. When I am paralyzed, I can go without moving for HOURS. Nothing like people telling you to stop faking it when you can't respond to defend yourself, because you can't speak. The only trauma in my life is the Paralysis attacks. They have taken away my ability to work and drive. I have to deal with other people's hysterics when they find me lying on the floor somewhere, even though I can't respond. I am a very religious and good person. To tell me that my lack of religion is the reason that I can't get out of bed to the bathroom without falling is infuriating.

Hi Beck, I apologise for offending you. Our friend was in a similar situation as you (I qualify this by saying I will never know that it is the same as yours) - but it was also debilitating and horrific. My wife and I shed many tears seeing someone unable to cope with what are everyday activities for most of us. We had no medical answers and HKPP seemed to fit so well. We read many articles and searched the net which is how we got onto RareShare. The turning point was when we realised some of the issues our friend face were psychological and we were tough on her. The next key point was a good friend of ours (and like me, was a sceptic of psychologists) said to our friend "thruth is truth, no matter who says it", and he encouraged our friend to go and see the psychologist with an open mind, listening to everything he had to say, then consider it for herself. The final key to our friends recovery was her willingness to have a change of heart. For the previous two years she always said she was willing but would now say to you that she wasn't. She wasn't willing to look at the psychological. But when she had a change of heart she improved tremendously. This is written so simplistically but it wasn't easy for anyone nor a quick fix. Our friend still has lapses into the old ways but no longer is she seizing, not one bit. She still had skin discolorations and the odd twitching of the neck muscles. I realised my first writing may offend some (and perhaps all who have found themselves in this position), but I have hope that it may help some too. I look forward to your response. Kind Regards, David.

Stress can make the Periodic Paralyses worse. Actually they can acerbate any Chronic Disease. Sometimes people with Periodic Paralysis do need conselling to talk about life and its stressors. However, paralysis attacks can not be created by a disturbed mind if there isn't an underlying physical condition. Conversion Disorder is the diagnosis of a lazy doctor who is sick of dealing with an unknown physical condition. Same thing with several other throwaway diagnoses.

That was the very frustration we had. There were no doctors willing to test for HKPP altough all of our reading suggested that was the case. We even had potassium levels tested and all the potassium levels were miles outside of the normal regions - even the doctors acknowledged that but they were not willing to test further. A question for you, why do you think our friend has such unexplainable seisures? It started about two years earlier with a freezing of the hand. Later it developed into various limbs, and for the last year it was her whole body at times, even the neck and facial muscels. The only thing that would not freeze was her eyelids and we communicated trough the eyelids.

Seizures? Could you describe them in more detail? I have attacks that can be mistaken as seizures, called myclonic jerking. The standard trigger for this is cold. Anyone with suspected Hypokalemic Periodic Paralyis should check out the following web sites: http://hkpp.org/ http://hkpp.org/faq/periodic_paralysis.html http://www.periodicparalysis.org/ What were your friend's potassium levels, what was her state when the blood was drawn. I sometimes have full body paralysis attacks (none of my muscles moving or they are extremely weak and it is difficult to move them). Standard trigger is carbohydrates or it is too cold. When my muscles burn with the fire of a thousand suns, the cause is too much salt in my diet. If this is a problem, she should try to avoid eating salty foods as much as possible.

Our friends seizures were like jerking. Sometimes they would last an hour, sometimes shorter. Sometimes they were gentle and other times they were violent. Our friends potassium levels were lower than they should be at the time of taking samples. One sample was taken shortly after a paralysis attack. Our friend does not need to worry about diet now, nor even stress. High salt or low salt, high carbs or low carbs. I can say now that it is a year down the track that our friend has done extremely well. She has no more seizures or paralysis at all, and no more pain in her muscles or muscle weakness. She has been through some huge emotional trials and has come through them without any serious side affects. On a couple of instances we saw a twitch of the neck muscle but that was as bad as it got. Maybe what we are saying here is helpful to some. I pray that it is. Signing off.