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Thread: Fears of motor neurone disease

  1. #1
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    Fears of motor neurone disease

    Okay I'm sorry my first post on this forum has to be negative but I really need help, or some kind of reassurance from a level headed person, because my mind is wreaking havoc on me.
    So currently I'm in exam season and my anxiousness has risen to very high levels, it turned into a fear of cancer and now it's moved to Motor Neurone Disease. The reason why motor neurone disease seems to be something I fear so much is because there was a PE teacher at my school who sadly developed the condition despite being a very good footballer and seeing what has happened to him has kinda stuck with me and made me very fearful of this disease.
    Recently I've worried about my left arm being weaker than my right arm (I am right handed) and I've been using it more, I was playing tug of war with my dog and my arm has been aching, this has made me worry. Also I do light exercises with 4kg to help my right arm (I play darts and I have a ligament problem) and in the stress of exams I forgot about doing these exercises for about a week and a half, maybe 2 weeks and when I came back to doing them, I noticed the weight felt significantly more, which set alarm bells ringing, I feared my body had been wasting away. Generally I've been getting muscle aches in my left arm, I dont know if this is because I've came back to doing the light exercises and I've been using my left arm a bit more. Also, I've been doing the worst thing possible, I've been googling MND and I was looking at causes, and apparently head injuries can cause this, which also made me worry and think about any recent head injuries, I remember bumping my head off the wing mirror of a bus and getting a headache about 6-7 weeks ago, which made me worry about possibly causing this disease with head injuries.
    Surely a bump to the head can't trigger this illness could it? I'm really scared and need reassurances of some kind

  2. #2
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    Re: Fears of motor neurone disease

    Your left should be weaker then your right. If you are right handed.

  3. #3
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    Re: Fears of motor neurone disease

    This is true, I shouldn't worry, it's just the mind plays tricks on you when you see symptoms including a weak arm, and you have one arm weaker than the other

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    Re: Fears of motor neurone disease

    From what I have read ALS does not cause something to feel weak it just don't work. ALS is not feeling it failing.

  5. #5
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    Re: Fears of motor neurone disease

    Quote Originally Posted by Nzxt27 View Post
    From what I have read ALS does not cause something to feel weak it just don't work. ALS is not feeling it failing.
    Start worrying when you can't bring a mug of coffee to your mouth when you were perfectly fine doing it the day before. That's failure. Feeling weak and being weak are two completely different things. One is subjective, the other objective. And doctors look for true objective weakness in those cases.
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  6. #6
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    Re: Fears of motor neurone disease

    I don't understand how that can be the case, surely your muscles would slowly waste to the point where you can't pick up a cup of coffee so you'd feel weak before that happens? or is it simply because your brain is telling your hand to do something and it refuses to do it?

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    Re: Fears of motor neurone disease

    Alright, let me break this down for you. Als, or mnd, is not a muscular disease. It is a disease of the motor neurons. What happens in this disease process is motor neurons begin to die off in a specific muscle group, and then continue on through other muscle groups. When the connection is severed, there is no signal from the brain to that muscle. The brain is saying, "bring that cup of coffee to your mouth" but the muscle can't read or hear the signal anymore, so it stays where it is. Once that connection is severed, it doesn't come back. So basic actions, such as standing on your heels or on your toes, jumping on one foot, lifting something heavy in your hand, pinching things between your fingers and picking them up and physically NOT BEING ABLE TO SO THEM is considered true objective failure. It's not about these things feeling heavier, it's about them being impossible to do no matter how many times you try.

    You don't feel motor neurons die. They just do, gradually, over time. By the time you notice the weakness, the disease has already been doing its job for a good six to nine months without you or anyone else noticing. That's why patients always tell anxious peeps it's about failure, not feeling. You hear it all over the place: "one day I just couldn't open the can" and "one day I just couldn't turn my keys" and "one day, I dropped a mug of coffee for no reason and it kept happening". That's how it happens. There is no feeling weak. There is no gradual onset.

    There is onset and progression and that's it. The only symptom that is debated and happens in very rare cases is muscle twitching happening before weakness, but weakness follows soon after. The longest confirmed time span being six months and that was a rare case in an already rare disease.
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  8. #8
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    Re: Fears of motor neurone disease

    Quote Originally Posted by Hancock View Post
    Alright, let me break this down for you. Als, or mnd, is not a muscular disease. It is a disease of the motor neurons. What happens in this disease process is motor neurons begin to die off in a specific muscle group, and then continue on through other muscle groups. When the connection is severed, there is no signal from the brain to that muscle. The brain is saying, "bring that cup of coffee to your mouth" but the muscle can't read or hear the signal anymore, so it stays where it is. Once that connection is severed, it doesn't come back. So basic actions, such as standing on your heels or on your toes, jumping on one foot, lifting something heavy in your hand, pinching things between your fingers and picking them up and physically NOT BEING ABLE TO SO THEM is considered true objective failure. It's not about these things feeling heavier, it's about them being impossible to do no matter how many times you try.

    You don't feel motor neurons die. They just do, gradually, over time. By the time you notice the weakness, the disease has already been doing its job for a good six to nine months without you or anyone else noticing. That's why patients always tell anxious peeps it's about failure, not feeling. You hear it all over the place: "one day I just couldn't open the can" and "one day I just couldn't turn my keys" and "one day, I dropped a mug of coffee for no reason and it kept happening". That's how it happens. There is no feeling weak. There is no gradual onset.

    There is onset and progression and that's it. The only symptom that is debated and happens in very rare cases is muscle twitching happening before weakness, but weakness follows soon after. The longest confirmed time span being six months and that was a rare case in an already rare disease.
    Thank you for explaining this to me, I always wondered whether it was muscles being weak causing people to be unable to do normal actions or whether it was something blocking it instead. I suppose muscles wasting occurs after you notice the inability to do simple things?

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    Re: Fears of motor neurone disease

    Muscle wasting occurs when the connection has been fully severed. Since the muscle isn't getting a signal to move, it deadens and starts to atrophy due to lack of use or movement. So clinical weakness is noted prior to atrophy, but sometimes can occur along side it. You cannot have atrophy prior to clinical weakness, though.

    That bit of info was my saving grace when I picked up some medical texts and journals versus reading crap off google. I thought it was a disease of the muscles for a while during my first initial bout with this fear (sort of like muscular dystrophy) but it's a completely different beast with a completely different pathology.

    And it acts the same in all cases of limb and bulbar. Bulbar always begins with slurred speech or the inability to do normal things you could do the day prior (whistle, for example). Limb onset occurs in one limb (two in rare cases) and starts either in the feet or the hands, but cannot start at both areas simultaneously. It also cannot start in any midsection of the body (so for example, your thigh first becomes clinical weak, and then the rest of your leg and foot). It starts always at either the hands or the feet. That's why a notable first symptom for the foot is the classic foot drop, and a notable first symptom of the hand is the inability to do basic movement (like tap your fingers to each other, or create a "screw in the light bulb" motion).

    Google is a piece of crap when it comes to this particular disease. There's too much misinformation for people to interpret themselves and thus we have hundreds and thousands of people on health anxiety forums thinking they have als when they don't.
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  10. #10
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    Re: Fears of motor neurone disease

    Muscle wasting occurs after your have the inability to do things.

    Muscle wasting only occurs because those muscles can no longer be used either fully or being used correctly.

    Like Hancock says, ALS does not cause muscles to die. It kills the nerves that control the muscles and from then you get muscle wasting followed by twitching as the muscles are dying.

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