View Full Version : ALS/MS? Or all in my head?
My left leg 'feels' weaker every day, I'm constantly doing strength tests such as standing on tiptoes etc. When I say feel I mean it literally aches with a weak feeling rather than being totally weak. I had a tremor all over body but now seems to just be located in left leg and arms, I had twitches all over that are now just in my left leg, aswell as a achy weak sensation in it. I'm having trouble swallowing and maintaining a sentence without getting the words wrong or slurring. I'm 23 and worried!
I have a history of health anxiety, so don't know if im having these symptoms because I googled them but they are very real. It all started 5 months ago with dizziness and gerd and seems to have progressed worse!
Hey i also worry i have ms i have dizzyness off balance n tingling n numbness in my face and limbs my mother already has ms so weather i bring on the symptoms i duno but ive been the docs n there sendin me to see a neurologist. im sure ur symptoms are just anxiety but if it helps put ur mind at rest why dont u go talk to ur gp? xx
I have, I went again today they think it's anxiety, I have to go see the neurologist soon but they are pretty sure it's anxiety as I have passed all his tests in his office. Still dOnt feel right though, he has prescribed 80mg beta blockers
The beta blockers will prevent palpitations in the event of a panic attack. Jelly legs or even just one leg is a classic anxiety symptom. Calf twitching is also common in anxiety state.
For what it is worth, there is a retired neurologist that occasionally posts on this board who has written so very long and valuable posts regarding ALS and MS and how it differs from what most of us go through. His user name is RLR. You can veiw all posts by him and see what he has to say. I hope you feel better.
Thank you, I think it's in my head as ppl with ms or ALS don't feel the weakness it just kind of happens from what iv read, where as my left leg literally feels weak and kind of like the feeling you get when youve been tickled. If that makes sense.
xvolatileheart
29-08-12, 00:00
I get similar sensations, feeling weak and tremors, forgetfulness, etc. I'll have a day or two of clarity, then back to this feeling, so I suppose that can't mean it's any disease as it wouldn't get better and worse all the time! Let us know what the doctor says.
I'm kind of in the same boat...with a weak feeling in my left leg...sometimes slightly numb and also arms get tired easily. I'm fearing ALS/MS also.
As you know ALS is very very rare. Today I found out a article about ALS (http://www.neurology24.com/lou-gehrigs-disease.htm) which does some statistical work:
If the incidence of ALS is 2/100,000, two in every 100,000 people are diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease each year. Comparing this number to the age distribution numbers shortly outlined will tell us that the chance of getting Lou Gehrig's disease any particular year, when you are younger than 38, is about 1:165,000,000. Yes, one in 165 million people a year.
If for young people the chance of getting ALS in a given year is 1:165 million so extremely unlikely. If you do some math the chance of getting ALS between 20 and 40 years is about 1:15 million which is still extremely unlikely.
---------- Post added at 12:09 ---------- Previous post was at 11:35 ----------
Also, here it's a blog http://elderfred.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/progression-of-my-als-journey of someone affected by ALS. As you can see the progress is fast and very noticeable. If you have some kind of neuro symptoms for months or years without deterioration you don't have ALS.
sparkle_1979
04-09-12, 16:03
I have most of these symptoms too x
sparkle do you have the symptoms all the time? If yes, for how long?
I have the "weakness" in my left leg for about 3 months and although it changes in intensity it never disappears :(
sparkle_1979
05-09-12, 18:54
I pretty much have had symptoms non stop for the last 3 mths. For the last 2 yrs I have had the internal buzzing that sometimes goes for a few weeks but it always comes back and lasts for weeks at a time and now my legs feel like they are buzzing and bubbly inside! :wacko:
I ache all the time, sometimes legs, sometimes arms, hips, you name it and it's hurt at some point this month.
I have the pulses all over my body and today I've started clicking ? I dont know what is bloody wrong with me. Im only 33 and it's since I have had my two babies in the last 3 yrs! "sigh"
I am in pretty good shape otherwise lol
I have developed shaking and trembling lately..I hadn't specifically put them to anxiety, even though I had extreme stress and anxiety in the last 2 months. Yesterday I had shaking in the morning, and a bit in the mid-day, but it had gone away. And I wasnt feeling bad..Then a couple bad things happened, and right when they really started the shaking came on.
I pretty much have had symptoms non stop for the last 3 mths. For the last 2 yrs I have had the internal buzzing that sometimes goes for a few weeks but it always comes back and lasts for weeks at a time and now my legs feel like they are buzzing and bubbly inside! :wacko:
I ache all the time, sometimes legs, sometimes arms, hips, you name it and it's hurt at some point this month.
I have the pulses all over my body and today I've started clicking ? I dont know what is bloody wrong with me. Im only 33 and it's since I have had my two babies in the last 3 yrs! "sigh"
I am in pretty good shape otherwise lol
It's 2 months for me also...now it's mostly numb feeling in the legs and arms...but also the weak feeling mostly in left leg. Probably time to check with a neuro...
sparkle_1979
08-09-12, 18:01
u should really. I bet it is anxiety but u need peace of mind
I hope so...but it's time to check really...
pAULspybeef
11-09-12, 19:41
I wanted to share a very detailed response with you all from a 92 year old neurologist to whom I wrote a detailed e-mail outlining my physical complaints. I've pretty much had everyone in the book, the main one being this "weakness" down my left side which has been present for about a year now without a break! This response has really helped me head in the right direction. A key message he shared with me and one I want to share with you is: THERE IS NOTHING TO RECOVER FROM, YOUR MIND HAS SIMPLY DISRUPTED YOUR SENSORY NETWORK & THE WAY YOU PERCEIVE YOURSELF. TIME WILL EVENTUALLY HEAL BUT IT DOESN'T HAPPEN OVERNIGHT!!!
Here goes:
Okay, I've read your posting and your concerns. One of the greatest challenges for persons experiencing anxiety with somatic features is that none of what they read or learn about with respect to the phenomenon seems to bring relief. There is a very important fundamental reason for this which is very often overlooked and yet it constitutes the actual underlying reason for persistence of the symptoms.
I italicized the word symptoms because in actuality, the sensorium being experienced is in all such instances merely physiological changes being induced by inappropriate stimulation of the central nervous system, universally misinterpreted by patients as classical symptoms of some type of disease. And in most instances, a neurological disorder is thought to be the cause and this is not entirely unreasonable since true pathological disease also impacts the same central nervous system. It's not the case in your instance, however, so let's talk about the actual cause for your difficulty.
The core of the problem rests within the genetic hardwiring of the brain and moreover, a very particular response by the brain to a specific type of fear. In other words, what is causing the persistence here actually has nothing to do with the symptoms themselves, or even the life-altering circumstances which very often cause the problem, but rather an innate process by the brain because it is being suggested that your survival is in jeopardy.
What is most confusing about the process is that it's not something that you can distinguish by higher level reasoning because it imparts influence at a very primordial level of the brain. Instead, this influence is detected as a gut feeling or urge that is adhered to in a most compelling manner.
It's very critical to understand that human life is first and foremost driven by the instinctual process of staying safe and distant from harm's way. It's how most all examples of life demonstrate an inherent resistance to extinction. These basic drives take precedence over absolutely all higher functions and only by awareness and understanding are you able to alter its influence.
Let's use a real-world example to illustrate the premise before discussing the matter in greater detail. Life consequence in modern man occur at far higher and more complex level than for lower animal forms, but the outcome is essentially the same in all instances. Losing a loved one, becoming a father to a child, experience strife within the family unit and experiencing occupational unrest are all examples of challenges to safety and the normal predictive nature of life which very largely determines the level of confidence and competency with which humans address daily life. It is the unavoidable confrontation with circumstances which cannot be avoided and their impact can have far-reaching consequences.
When a person experiences the common situational anxiety, there is a very recognizable set of physiological sensations which often accompany it. Surely you've felt these sensations, often described as butterflies in the stomach, tingling sensations, muscular tremor and tension, sweating, etc. But there is a higher order of anxiety that moves well beyond the basic form and it arises because an irrational fear has been established which ultimately comes to challenge a person's normal parameters of safety and security. It is at this juncture that a specific level of anxiety arises and with it, an entire host of strange symptoms that if persistent, result in health anxiety that compounds the fearful premise which originally set everything in motion.
When the brain senses a challenge to survival, it needn't be authentic to cause the response we're discussing here. In other words, in lower forms of animals, this response is entirely limited to direct instances of a challenge to their survival, ie being pursued by a predator animal. If you will study the reaction of the potential victim of these predators, you'll witness very consistent responses regardless of phylum or species. The response is usually captioned in either one of two actions, either aggression to overcome the attacker or alternatively escaping at a pace fast enough to outdistance the attacker's pursuit. It is known as the fight or flight response and it is critically central to what you are experiencing.
So in animals, we can readily see a very predictable response set that occurs regularly in nature. In humans, however, both the premise of jeopardy and the response set is far more complex in nature. In other words, humans have the singular advantage of awareness to the world around them and can interact with it on a far higher order of strategy than any other animal species. With such an advantage, however, comes the unwanted expansiveness of possibilities that the human brain must confront and process with respect to daily events.
With regard to the background circumstances you've provided, the collective impact creates a flood of circumstances often felt beyond one's control to impart normal influence and one's competency and self-confidence comes under challenge. It is at this juncture that fear of an unknown danger begins to take shape that causes anxiety to accelerate to a point that physiological changes take place, only serving to draw question of one's health status and safety from harm.
Person's so afflicted suddenly find themselves being compelled to search for the cause, most often in the realm of physical medicine because it is by both innate predilection and social training that humans directly associate physical symptoms with physical disease, a premise that in actuality bears no such direct link. Despite all tests to the contrary, these persons become persistent in their belief that something serious is wrong and that they must remain vigilant in order to prevent further escalation from jeopardizing their life. Do you begin to see how all of this works synergistically?
You are at a place where the brain's survival response has assumed dominance over higher function and logic, relegating you to feel constantly in danger and compelled to identify and overcome the cause. The reason that it becomes so cyclic for many persons is that they are being driven to identify a cause or source that in reality, does not exist. Diagnostic tests which are designed to detect such threats continually result in no finding consistent with the patient's belief. It's highly critical here to realize that as long as the fear status remains, the brain will literally continue to impart dominance until such time that safety and confidence are restored.
In order for you to reverse the process, you must force higher order logic to regain its rightful place in the normal patterns of human syntonic thought. You must employ logic to combat instinct. In other words, what feels to be the right course for you to proceed is in all actuality the primordial drive by your brain to resolve the fear that your survival is in jeopardy. This is not quite as difficult as you might think once you begin to separate fact from irrational belief.
By example, you must overcome the gut instinct to simply repeat your trips to the doctor in search of a cause that mysteriously can never be identified by diagnostic tests which are extremely accurate and reliable in the realm of medicine, a fact that cannot be disputed. Patients who fall prey to the instinctual drive merely overcome this obstacle by raising doubts about the test equipment, the procedure in using it or even the competency of the physicians themselves and their ability to both understand and diagnose your symptoms accurately.
Again, the sense that you are right and that the medical community and all its technology are somehow misguided or faulty is clear evidence that you are succumbing to instinctual drive rather than logic within the context of the real world.
In order to effectively deal with and overcome the actual underlying cause, you must effectively come to understand that your brain and its influence is functioning on more of an opposing plane than a collaborative one. By that, I mean that the primordial regions of the brain that guide the survival mode I speak of here react on a very basic level, hence the term primordial. It is the level of function that uses almost pure action to either fend off a threat or alternative escape from it, whereas the higher order brain function uses an extremely complex network of knowledge, experience, analysis and summation before acting.
So what happens in the instance of an individual who has unwittingly established the premise where jeopardy arises is that most higher order thinking becomes slave to the basic drive to protect survival and reduction of the associated threat.
There is nothing actually wrong with you physically and you certainly are suffering from a neurodegenerative disease such as Multiple Sclerosis. You feel compelled to believe in such a premise because it must be identified and overcome in order for you to attain safety once again. This is how the primordial brain functions. It will use whatever means at its disposal to carry out its singular mission in this instance, most typically resulting in patients who feel tied to a whipping post of sorts as they return time and again to the only source seemingly capable of defining the origin of the threat to their safety. The inability of the medical community to successfully accomplish the intended goal often serves to only accentuate the level of fear that their life remains in peril.
Your life nor your health is actually at risk. You must use the logical and higher order side of your brain as the means to quell the autonomous and instinctual region of your brain from making further response to what is nothing more than the establishment of an irrational belief that you are in danger. You are, in fact, very safe and no closer to actual jeopardy than you were before the life-altering events imposed their influence which ultimately has led you to the point where you feel trapped on a carousel.
So to sum up, you must understand that life circumstances can cause impairment of self-confidence and competency to the extent that uncertainty arises. The influence of anxiety capable of inducing fear will set in motion an innate response that acts upon the fear as if it were real rather than irrational. The result is an almost compelling life directed almost exclusively to the task of identifying and overcoming the object of fear so that safety and security can once again be restored to pre-incident status.
To alter the course, you simply need to trust once again in the firm and immutable logic of the real world and avoid acting upon what merely compels you and is highly distorted under the circumstances. In other words, therapy is of no value where changes to thought patterns are virtually being dominated by instinctual drive to extinguish jeopardy of one's survival. Only you can stand firm in the ability to distinguish misperception from reality and learn to control it until it finally yields to the fact that no such danger actually exists.
Many people have made this challenge and successfully overcame it, being able to simply re-engage their life which at some point seemed lost in the distance.
Incidentally, the odd sensations you describe are merely influence of anxiety imparting change to your sensory network as part of the nervous system. Realize that your perceptions of normal are merely based upon the accurate function of your body's sensory network and that distortions can sometimes produce extremes of variation that most often produce fear that something dreadful is occurring, but in actuality it is all merely a response to the distortions themselves. It is not an indicator that something actually physical is wrong. There is a tendency to become vigilant to one's physiological processes, checking one's heart rate or respiration, experiencing odd sensations and becoming frightened and helpless, or otherwise becoming singularly focused upon the premise that life as they once knew it is being lost and exchanged for constant peril and search for the underlying disease causing it.
You're going to be just fine. We'll talk more if you need to but for the time being, I'd suggest that you take some time to read this response several times over until you have formed enough of a foundation to help guide you to better understand the nature of your actual difficulty and that you can better focus upon reversing its influence with the knowledge that you are not sick and in no actual danger whatsoever.
Best regards,
Rutheford Rane, MD (ret.)
__________________
Best regards and Good Health
This is a great post...I'm in the same boat with "weakness" on my left side...mostly my left leg. It's going on non-stop for more than 3 months.
I see in your post that for you it's 1 year. Is this feeling all the time? In my case it is, but the intensity is not the same...
One thing which probably is not correct is that they say anxiety symptoms are not continuous...they come and go. In my case it's contiguous, so either that assumption os wrong or there's really something wrong.
ElectricAlice
11-09-12, 20:56
What a great post, glad to have read it.
I've been experiencing weakness and numbness in my left arm :( I'm pretty sure it's just anxiety though, it gets worse when I focus on it.
---------- Post added at 20:56 ---------- Previous post was at 20:45 ----------
Also sort of feel loss of coordination in my left arm/hand - anyone else get this? And the tingling.
pAULspybeef
11-09-12, 21:20
matrix and electric Alice....if you read the e-mail carefully, anxiety symptoms CAN BE PERSISTENT (i.e. all of the time)....re-read the e-mail....it is normal for symptoms to wax and wane (i.e. feel worse at times and not so bad at others)....the best thing you could do is get back to living....live with the feelings, stop questioning, fighting, looking for answers when the answers are here above. time is a great healer!
matrix and electric Alice....if you read the e-mail carefully, anxiety symptoms CAN BE PERSISTENT (i.e. all of the time)....re-read the e-mail....it is normal for symptoms to wax and wane (i.e. feel worse at times and not so bad at others)....the best thing you could do is get back to living....live with the feelings, stop questioning, fighting, looking for answers when the answers are here above. time is a great healer!
Thanx for all the info. Before I had issues with palpitations, shortness of breath, reflux, sweating, feeling like fainting and lots of others.
After the meds and all the checks for heart, chest, abdomen I do not worry anymore about them and the symptoms are gone.
On the other hand "neuro" symptoms, like numb feeling, weak feeling, etc are still there. At least I should have a examination by a neurologist and possibly MRI and if everything is fine (hopefully) the symptoms will go away...
ElectricAlice
12-09-12, 22:16
Maybe it's carpel tunnel syndrome, which is nothing to worry about!
Maybe it's carpel tunnel syndrome, which is nothing to worry about!
Certainly I hope so...in my case the feelings are mainly not in the hands, but in the forearms...maybe not carpel tunnel, but something similar with pressure on the nerves somewhere else (elbow I guess)
I too go through the same as you, my symptoms have been present for the last 9 months with just a 2wk let up in them.
I feel faint, dizzy, weak legs, heavy legs/arms/head, random pain all over, tingling, burning sensations, blurred vision, feel like i'm walking on sponge, spatial awareness non existent, random twitching, trembling feeling inside my body, visible shaking, my legs shake when i stand up. Memory problems, occasional slurred speech, pins and needles, numbness, loads of others which I can't remember. I've been walking with a crutch now for the last 3-4 months.
I've had balance tests and they have shown that my balance mechanism in my right ear is working 37% less than my left. I've also seen neuro & had an MRI on Friday.
The neuro & the psychiatrist that I have seen all believe my symptoms are MS related. I'm praying that they are not, I just want my results through now and want to be able to get on with my life. I'm so scared that this will be all I have for ever now.
I know its not a positive post from me, sorry, but to put your mind at rest ask to see a neurologist and let them do tests and rule things out & probably 99% of people it will be anxiety only. My GP has always told me that is all it is so I hope she is right.
Please Keep us Updated with the results and remember MS isn't that Bad. My father has MS and he lives a Great Life and is still working after being diagnosed 13 years ago . He can still walk but for no more than 30 minutes at a time GOOD LUCK !!! :)
Please Keep us Updated with the results and remember MS isn't that Bad. My father has MS and he lives a Great Life and is still working after being diagnosed 13 years ago . He can still walk but for no more than 30 minutes at a time GOOD LUCK !!! :)
After spending some time is MS forums (probably a bad idea) my understanding was that life with MS is not easy, but it's not the end of the world either. The really bad cases of MS are pretty rare. Most people can work normally for 15-20 years after diagnosis and about 25% never have to use a wheelchair.
I certainly hope that neither of us worried about MS have it, but if you know that MS is not THAT BAD it can be helpful...
---------- Post added at 10:09 ---------- Previous post was at 10:06 ----------
Regarding ALS (which is REALLY BAD) the statistics say that the chances to have it before the age of 40 are about 1 in 10 million which means that only 700 people in the World get it before 40...
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