"Having a chronic condition such as epilepsy consistently prevents individuals from participating in sport. For someone with epilepsy the fear of making the condition worse, sustaining injury or even dying (Kale, 1997) are regularly quoted as reasons for very low participation levels, known to be as low as half that of the general population (Han, Choi-Kwon and Lee, 2011).”

Ian Johnston was a very active football coach and runner before he started having seizures. Then, he became one of the 80% of people with epilepsy who are sedentary.

But such a dramatic change in lifestyle prompted Ian to go to university. He wanted to study the reasons why he, and others like him, stop doing exercise when they start having seizures. We spoke about his path towards a Master in Clinical Exercise Physiology, his research and  findings and how  study the psychology of epilepsy and exercise helped him get back to exercise himself.

In today's episode we talk about:

• Ian's life-long love of football
• Doing the Great North Run when he was 12 years old
• Being a football coach
• Having his first seizure when his was 48
• The physical effects of epilepsy and medication
• The psychological  problems returning to sports after seizures
• Deciding to do a Clinical Sports Physiology Masters when he was 49 years old
• The difficulties doing a clinical course with a sports background
• How his degree helped him understand his own epilepsy
• Learning to take blood samples and EEGs
• Why 80% of people with epilepsy are sedentary
• Developing an exercise programme for someone with epilepsy
• The results of his dissertation: "CAN A COACH INFLUENCE A RETURN TO EXERCISE FOR THOSE WITH CHRONIC CONDITIONS?"
• Plus, the footballer Leon Legge, Daniel Bedeau and more!

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW ON PATREON

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MUSIC:

Tick Tick Tick by Logic Moon| Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License

READ IAN'S FULL DISSERTATION on the website

GET IN TOUCH WITH IAN by email

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT at seizeyouradventure.com/transcripts

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This podcast is an independent production - costs of the show are covered by me (Fran) with the support of patrons. If you want to help support the show financially, head to patreon.com/seizeyouradventure. This will help me to continue telling stories of epilepsy in adventure.

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