A multiple sclerosis (MS) self-assessment cannot diagnose MS, but it may help a person understand their symptoms and know when to contact a doctor. An MS self-assessment may focus on energy levels, physical sensations, vision problems, and more.
Blood Tests: Currently, there are no definitive blood tests for diagnosing MS, but they can be used to rule out other conditions that may mimic MS symptoms, including Lyme disease, collagen-vascular diseases, rare hereditary disorders and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).
What Does MS Feels Like? A lack of feeling or a pins-and-needles sensation can be the first sign of nerve damage from MS. It usually happens in your face, arms, or legs, and on one side of your body. It tends to go away on its own.
Those symptoms include loss of vision in an eye, loss of power in an arm or leg or a rising sense of numbness in the legs. Other common symptoms associated with MS include spasms, fatigue, depression, incontinence issues, sexual dysfunction, and walking difficulties.
Some conditions that doctors may commonly misdiagnose as MS include migraine, RIS, spondylopathy, and neuropathy. To accurately diagnose MS, doctors must rule out conditions with similar symptoms and look for signs and symptoms specific to MS. As such, the process of diagnosing MS may be lengthy and complex.
MS can appear at any age but most commonly manifests between the ages of 20 and 40. It affects women two to three times as often as men. Almost one million people in the United States have MS, making it one of the most common causes of neurological disability among young adults in North America.
Most symptoms develop abruptly, within hours or days. These attacks or relapses of MS typically reach their peak within a few days at most and then resolve slowly over the next several days or weeks so that a typical relapse will be symptomatic for about eight weeks from onset to recovery.
Your doctor will refer you to a neurologist. They will examine you to check how different parts of your nervous system are working. A combination of tests is used to diagnose MS. The best test is an MRI of your brain and spinal cord to detect areas of damage.
Characteristics of the MS gait pattern
You may walk more slowly, with shorter steps. You may lack in confidence when you walk – leading to hesitation and stumbling. You might feel unsteady when turning or walking. You might find placing your foot on the ground difficult.
Difficulty thinking. Fatigue. Pain, which may be acute or chronic, caused by the nerves that carry sensation "short circuiting." Types of pain can include band-like pain around the chest, or MS hug, caused by spastic nerves along with other types of painful sensations in the neck, arms, legs and feet. Sexual problems.
Healthy adults have a small amount of brain atrophy due to natural ageing, but in many people with untreated MS, brain atrophy occurs at a much faster rate. Current MS treatments aim to prevent new central nervous system lesions forming that lead to irreversible damage and brain atrophy.
There are no specific tests for MS . Instead, a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis often relies on ruling out other conditions that might produce similar signs and symptoms, known as a differential diagnosis. Your doctor is likely to start with a thorough medical history and examination.
These include fibromyalgia and vitamin B12 deficiency, muscular dystrophy (MD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), migraine, hypo-thyroidism, hypertension, Beçhets, Arnold-Chiari deformity, and mitochondrial disorders, although your neurologist can usually rule them out quite easily.
These pain sensations feel like burning, stabbing, sharp and squeezing sensations. In MS you can experience acute neuropathic pain and chronic neuropathic pain. Acute Neuropathic Pain is sometimes an initial symptom of MS or may be part of an MS relapse. Acute means it has a rapid onset and is of short duration.
Erythromelalgia is a painful MS symptom that affects the feet. The feet may feel tight or swollen and have a burning sensation. Some remedies for hot feet include: wearing pressure socks.
It is also known as neuromyelitis optica (NMO) or Devic's disease. Some of its symptoms are similar to the symptoms of multiple sclerosis, so it may be misdiagnosed as such.
Some people with MS find that their symptoms include changes to or problems with their toenails. MS can affect the toenails in a number of ways. Some are directly related to demyelination (damage to the myelin sheathing around nerves), while others are the indirect result of other MS symptoms.
Sjogren's syndrome is an autoimmune disease that can mimic some of the symptoms of MS such as fatigue and joint pain. However, Sjogren's syndrome is known to cause dry mouth and eyes, which are not associated with MS.
The 6 Minute Walk Test is a sub-maximal exercise test used to assess aerobic capacity and endurance. The distance covered over a time of 6 minutes is used as the outcome by which to compare changes in performance capacity.