Many people with MS experience dizziness, in which you feel light-headed or off-balance, notes the NMSS. A less-common MS symptom is vertigo. When you have vertigo, you feel as though your surroundings are spinning around you, Dr. Kalb says, or that you are spinning.
This is how MS-related head pressure feels to a few MyMSTeam members: “It feels as if my head has a tight band around it and is being squeezed very tightly.” “It's a weird pressure, tightness … almost fizzing, and a fuzzy, brain fog feeling.”
Altered sensations are fairly common in multiple sclerosis. You might feel pins and needles, burning or crawling sensations, numbness or tightness. These unusual sensations are a type of nerve (neuropathic) pain.
It could feel like a dull head pain, with pressure or tenderness in and around the forehead. Unlike migraines, tension headaches generally don't cause nausea or vomiting. Milder tension headaches are more common in people who have had multiple sclerosis for many years.
Headaches occurred more often in younger people with MS and in people on certain disease modifying treatments. They suggest that headaches may be a more significant part of MS than previously realised. Möhrke J, Kropp P, Zettl UK. Headaches in multiple sclerosis patients might imply an inflammatorial process.
A person with multiple sclerosis (MS) may experience various types of headaches. Triggers for MS headaches include stress, muscle tension, or certain foods. However, a range of medications and alternative treatments, such as relaxation techniques, may help relieve the symptoms. MS affects the brain and spinal cord.
The most common causes are headache, migraine, or infection. Most conditions that cause pressure in the head go away on their own or respond to over-the-counter pain medication. However, intense or persistent pressure in the head may indicate a severe underlying medical condition.
While it is true that almost all people with MS will have evidence of brain lesions on MRI, not all people with brain lesions have MS.
Extreme fatigue, clumsiness, weird prickly sensations, sluggish thinking, wonky vision -- these are classic and common first symptoms of multiple sclerosis, or MS. But the expected stops here. Damage to the central nervous system, aka your brain and spinal cord, is what causes these symptoms.
It is among the highest prevalence rates reported so far in patients with CIS or MS. Thus, headache, especially of a migraneous subtype, is a frequent symptom within the scope of the first manifestation of multiple sclerosis.
A brain MR imaging with gadolinium is recommended for the diagnosis of MS. A spinal cord MR imaging is recommended if the brain MR imaging is nondiagnostic or if the presenting symptoms are at the level of the spinal cord.
Early MS symptoms may include blurred vision, numbness, dizziness, muscle weakness, and coordination issues. MS is progressive and can worsen over time. Eventually, the disease can do damage directly to the nerves, causing permanent disability.
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.
Heavy-headedness can be caused by inner ear disturbance, motion sickness and medication effects. Sometimes it can be caused by an underlying health condition, such as poor circulation, infections or injuries. Panic attacks can cause heavy-headedness as well. Medical conditions like anxiety causes heavy-headedness too.
Anxiety brain fog happens when a person feels anxious and has difficulty concentrating or thinking clearly. Many conditions may cause anxiety and brain fog, including mental health diagnoses and physical illnesses. It is normal to experience occasional brain fog and anxiety, especially during high stress.
If the pressure or pain in the head is sudden and severe, seek emergency care. If you have recurring head pressure or pain, especially with symptoms like loss of balance or coordination, mood changes, fever, or nausea, you should call your healthcare provider or seek emergency medical care.
Surveys for patient pain indicate that the most common pain syndromes experienced in MS are: continuous burning in extremities; headache; back pain; and painful tonic spasms.
Cluster headaches have been linked to MS lesions in the brainstem, especially in the part where the trigeminal nerve originates. 7 This is the nerve involved with trigeminal neuralgia—one of the most painful MS symptoms.