Epilepsy is a chronic recurrent transient brain dysfunction syndrome. It is characterized by abnormal neuronal discharges in the brain causing recurrent epileptic seizures. Epilepsy is one of the common neurological disorders and is second only to stroke in prevalence. The incidence of epilepsy is age-related. The prevalence of epilepsy is generally considered to be highest within 1 year of age, followed by a gradual decrease from 1 to 10 years of age. There is no significant racial difference in prevalence. The seven myths closely related to epilepsy are recognized! Myth 1: Epilepsy is an incurable disease and is not curable. The majority of patients with epilepsy can work, study and live like normal people with reasonable medication. At present, about 20% of epilepsy is refractory epilepsy, mostly temporal lobe epilepsy, which is poorly treated with existing drugs, but this group of patients can be treated with surgical methods with very satisfactory results, and most patients can be cured. A middle-aged male epileptic patient, when the onset of epilepsy, unbuckle, undress, urinate and defecate anywhere, almost every day, the patient and family members are very painful, has been diagnosed as refractory epilepsy in Beijing, Shanghai and other large hospitals, taking Tolte, carbamazepine, sodium valproate have no effect, later by cranial magnetic resonance (MRI) examination, found the right hippocampal sclerosis, the diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy, the effect of surgery is very good. The patient has been seizure-free for 2 years of follow-up. This is why most epilepsies can be cured and are not “incurable”. The second misconception is that patients who have convulsions are epileptic and those who do not have convulsions are not epileptic. The main symptom of epilepsy is convulsions, but not all convulsions are epilepsy. Other diseases can also cause convulsions, such as hysterical convulsions, hypocalcemic convulsions, hypoglycemic convulsions, drug delayed dyskinesia convulsions, etc. are not part of epilepsy. Hysterical convulsions often occur in young women, mostly with a history of emotional stimulation, which can be called out and twitching of the limbs, but the patient’s consciousness is clear and can be relieved by comfort treatment; hypoglycemic convulsions are caused by diabetic patients who take a lot of hypoglycemic drugs when they vomit, have diarrhea or eat less, and their blood sugar is mostly lower than normal, and the convulsions can be relieved after the correction of hypoglycemia; students who come to the emergency room with sudden limb convulsions are often seen. The most common cause of these seizures is to stay up late playing games on the Internet, which is called epileptic seizures and is not epilepsy, and the seizures can be stopped without antiepileptic drugs by removing the trigger. Therefore, convulsions may not always be due to epilepsy. Convulsions should not be equated with epilepsy. On the contrary, many types of epilepsy do not present with convulsions. Some epileptic patients present with shouting, running naked, urinating and defecating anywhere, shopping, and night swimming, etc. This type of epileptic patients are mistaken for psychiatric patients and are seen in psychiatric hospitals. There was a middle-aged female patient who had a seizure onset, i.e., shouting, babbling, and sometimes getting on tables and climbing windowsills. She had been diagnosed with psychosis, and her family and she were in great distress, and finally diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, and no further seizures occurred after surgery. There was also a female college student who took out the clothes of students in the same dormitory to wash them at night when she had a seizure, and continued to sleep afterwards. At first, all of them thought that someone was playing a prank, and after several repetitions, her classmates found out that it was her, but she herself did not even know that she did it, and could not recall it afterwards. Other patients experience phantom smells, hallucinations, and dazedness. So it does not mean that it is not epilepsy without convulsions. The third misconception is that large convulsive movements are grand mal seizures and small movements are petit mal seizures. It is usually said that grand mal seizures are generalized tonic-clonic seizures and petit mal seizures are disoriented seizures. The size of the seizure is not distinguished by the magnitude of the jerking action. A grand mal seizure has generalized twitching of the limbs, while a typical petit mal seizure has only a brief (no more than 1 minute) loss of consciousness and no convulsive movements. Outpatients often encounter parents who bring their children to the clinic, saying that recently their children’s academic performance has decreased, they often wander off in class, sometimes mischievous, drop dishes and food on the floor during meals, etc. The examination reveals that the child’s intelligence and physical ability are normal, but through hyperventilation and electroencephalography, the diagnosis is typical aphasic seizures. This type of epilepsy is generalized epilepsy, which is benign and very well treated with medication. The clinician should make accurate typing and rational drug selection according to the patient’s medical history, onset symptoms and EEG in order to receive better results. Some patients or family members identify all forms of seizures other than generalized grand mal seizures as petit mal seizures, which is obviously incorrect. The fourth misconception is that patients have loss of consciousness when they have a seizure. The vast majority of seizure patients have loss of consciousness with their seizures. However, some types of epilepsy, such as limited seizures, myoclonic epilepsy and other patients are clearly conscious during seizures. Some patients have seizures with twitching and numbness on one side of the mouth, face and limbs, and some patients hear the sound of horses’ hooves, cicadas or smell aromatic odor or burnt odor at the onset of seizures, which are all partial seizures, without loss of consciousness, but they cannot control themselves. Therefore, the diagnosis of epilepsy should not be denied and treatment should not be delayed because the patient does not lose his or her consciousness. Myth 5: Primary epilepsy is related to genetics, while secondary epilepsy has nothing to do with genetics. A large number of surveys of epileptic patients and their blood relatives found that not only primary epilepsy is related to heredity, but the incidence of secondary epilepsy in the immediate family is much higher than in the general population. From a clinical analysis, patients who have had traumatic brain injury, had encephalitis, meningitis, or a history of birth asphyxia do not always develop epilepsy. This suggests that the occurrence of epilepsy depends not only on the strength of environmental factors, but is importantly determined by congenital genetic factors. The lower the threshold, the more likely epilepsy will occur. If the intensity of environmental factors exceeds the convulsive threshold, epilepsy will occur. This means that not only primary epilepsy, but also secondary epilepsy has a certain heredity. Myth 6: Epilepsy is hereditary and epileptic patients should not have children. Although epilepsy is hereditary, the effect on the next generation is not 100%. In general, only 5% of the children of epileptic patients have epilepsy, so epileptic patients can have children. There is no law in China that explicitly prohibits people with epilepsy from having children. However, from a eugenic point of view, it is best for epileptics to avoid marrying people with low convulsive thresholds (including epileptics and those with a history of febrile convulsions), and epileptics should have children after their condition has stabilized and their seizures have been largely controlled. Epileptics should be counseled at the appropriate specialist clinic before conception. Patients and their husbands should be aware that children born to mothers taking antiepileptic drugs are 2 to 3 times more likely to have malformations than the normal population. Antiepileptic drugs are only one aspect that contributes to this risk. The health status of the mother is also an important factor. Details should be obtained about the presence of genes for malformations in the family. More than 90% of women who take antiepileptic drugs have completely normal children. Myth 7. A normal EEG does not diagnose epilepsy. The EEG has a very important value for the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of epilepsy and is an essential auxiliary test for the diagnosis of epilepsy. According to statistics, 80% of epileptic patients have abnormal EEG, while about 5-20% of epileptic patients have normal EEG examination between seizures, and there are some people with abnormal EEG who never have seizures. Therefore, the diagnosis of epilepsy cannot be ruled out clinically because the EEG is normal, nor can the diagnosis of epilepsy be made because of an abnormal EEG. The doctor must combine the medical history and clinical seizure manifestations to make a comprehensive analysis in order to make a correct diagnosis.