You may feel the sensation of your limb being “asleep” with a pins and needles sensation. Numbness of the face, body or extremities (arms and legs) is one of the most common symptoms of MS. It may be the first MS symptom you experienced.
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.
Abnormal sensations can be a common initial symptom of MS. This often takes the form of numbness or tingling in different parts of your body, such as the arms, legs or trunk, which typically spreads out over a few days.
With MS, people can have chronic tingling and numbness related to underlying nerve damage, or as part of flares or relapses when people develop new symptoms, explains Dr.
Migraines are one of the most common mimicker diseases that can be misdiagnosed for MS. Migraine causes intense throbbing headaches, light sensitivity, and nausea. Many migraine sufferers have also experienced blurred vision similar to the kind caused by optic neuritis in MS patients.
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 tingling may last more than 24 hours and sometimes continues for days to weeks.
Sudden pains are common with multiple sclerosis (MS). You might get a shocking, burning, squeezing, stabbing, cold, or prickly feeling out of nowhere. Some people call them zingers or stingers. These zaps usually last only seconds or minutes.
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).
Tightness or stiffness of the muscles, called spasticity, is caused directly by MS. Spasticity, will alter walking and cause pulling on the joints. This can result in pain typically in the ankles, knees, hips and back.
Feeling weakness in one or both of your legs is called monoparesis or paraparesis and can be a direct result of MS. You can also feel weakness in your arms and other areas of your body, but to feel it in your legs often occurs more frequently.
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.
However, long lasting or unexplained numbness may be a sign of an underlying medical condition. Long-term numbness or a tingling feeling in the legs and feet may be due to conditions such as multiple sclerosis (MS), diabetes, peripheral artery disease, or fibromyalgia.
An MRI scanner uses a strong magnetic field to create a detailed image of inside your brain and spinal cord. It's very accurate and can pinpoint the exact location and size of any inflammation, damage or scarring (lesions). MRI scans confirm a diagnosis in over 90 per cent of people with MS.
Common symptoms include fatigue, bladder and bowel problems, sexual problems, pain, cognitive and mood changes such as depression, muscular changes and visual changes. See your doctor for investigation and diagnosis of symptoms, since some symptoms can be caused by other illnesses.
Common symptoms of MS flares can include feeling tired, pain, numbness, dizziness, muscle spasms, muscle weakness, brain fog, problems with going to the bathroom, or trouble seeing. Disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) can help reduce the rate of relapses and slow MS progression.
Multiple sclerosis, a chronic disease of the central nervous system, is notable for its erratic and unpredictable symptoms. The obvious symptoms can include difficulty walking, loss of coordination, muscle spasms, weakness and changes in speech. But, not all symptoms are easily visible.
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. Resolution is often complete.
In people with MS, nerve damage causes these sensations to occur randomly, most often in the hands, arms, legs, or feet – but occasionally in places such as the mouth or chest. Abnormal sensations may be constant or intermittent and they usually subside on their own.
How to self-assess multiple sclerosis symptoms. 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.
Nail problems are common, and they are not usually serious. If a person has multiple sclerosis (MS), nail problems can cause pain or discomfort. While nail issues are not directly related to the disease, determining the cause may help prevent a person with MS from experiencing further discomfort.
Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly referred to as ALS, are two other serious conditions that can be mistaken for MS. Like MS, ALS also affects your brain and spinal cord. The two conditions can be similarly difficult to diagnose since symptoms vary so much from person to person.