MS weakness feels like heavy, leaden limbs, like wading through mud or cement, making simple movements extremely difficult and draining, often worsening with exertion or heat, and can range from a faint feeling of "jelly legs" to total inability to lift a limb, impacting walking, balance, and fine motor skills due to nerve signal disruption. It's distinct from normal tiredness, being more profound, and often combined with overwhelming MS fatigue, a heavy exhaustion that doesn't improve with rest.
You may feel that you do not have enough strength or energy to move some or all of your limbs, or your whole body. Weakness and fatigue are closely linked and having one often makes the other symptoms worse. Weakness in one or both legs (called monoparesis or paraparesis) can cause problems with walking and balance.
MS Symptoms in Legs
Numbness or Tingling: A “pins and needles” sensation, or complete numbness, often starting in the feet and moving upward. Spasticity (Muscle Stiffness or Spasms): Tight or rigid muscles that make walking or bending the legs difficult. Muscle spasms, especially in the calves, are also common.
MS Fatigue Versus Regular Fatigue
Both lower limbs, usually asymmetrically, are most often affected, followed in frequency by weakness in only one lower limb and then weakness in one lower and one upper limb, usually on the same side. Weakness of one arm without leg weakness is uncommon.
Some of the most common symptoms include:
Spasms can affect any muscle, but they are most common in your legs, arms and back. They can feel uncomfortable, sometimes painful like a longer episode of cramp. They can also be embarrassing, annoying and tiring.
Invisible symptoms of MS – fatigue, pain, blurred vision, numbness, and brain fog – which often go unnoticed by other people, can also interfere with daily functioning and be just as debilitating.
Patients experiencing chronic fatigue related to autoimmune conditions often describe their symptoms as more than just feeling tired during the day. This is significant exhaustion that impacts quality of life and makes it difficult to function on a normal basis.
Fatigue in MS is not just an ordinary tiredness, like you might get at the end of a hard day's work. People describe it as an overwhelming sense of tiredness with no obvious cause.
Tests used to diagnose MS may include: MRI, which can reveal areas of MS on the brain and spinal cord. These areas are called lesions. A contrast dye may be given through an IV to highlight lesions that show the disease is in an active phase.
Some people with MS lose sensation in their tongue. Some health care providers refer to MS-related tongue issues as “MS tongue.” Loss of sensation or numbness can make it difficult to move your tongue when you speak, chew, or swallow. Tongue numbness may also diminish sense of taste.
The T25-FW is a quantitative mobility and leg function performance test based on a timed 25-foot walk. It is the first component of the Multiple Sclerosis Functional Composite (MSFC) to be administered at each visit.
The Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) is a 19 item observational measure used by physical therapists and other health care professionals to assess upper extremity performance (coordination, dexterity and functioning) in stroke recovery, brain injury and multiple sclerosis populations.
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.
It's believed that primary fatigue is due to interrupted nerve messages from the brain and spinal cord, damaged by MS. As a result, your body needs more energy to function which leads to a build-up of fatigue. Fatigue is often associated with muscle weakness, which also requires more energy.
Symptoms of myasthenia gravis may include:
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.
This kind of fatigue makes you feel that you are climbing a steep hill when you are really walking on level ground. It may resolve once the underlying organic condition is diagnosed and treated. Thyroid problems and anemia are both common among Sjögren's patients, but many other kinds of fatigue may be superimposed.
What are the early symptoms of multiple sclerosis?
Uncontrollable or inappropriate crying and laughing (Pseudobulbar affect) Pseudobulbar affect (PSA), also called pathological crying or laughing, is uncommon but not rare in MS. It occurs when the brain circuits that link emotions and facial expressions are disrupted.
5. Phantom of the MS Symptoms – Phantom symptoms are scarier than the masked phantom living below the opera. These are feelings of insects crawling, water dripping, wetness, pressure, and vibration living below our skin. These are invisible symptoms that we can't run or hide from.
MS can damage the nerves in your spinal cord or brain that control your muscles. That can cause painful muscle spasms. Nerve pain can also cause painful or unusual sensations on the skin. These types of pain can happen anywhere but are usually in the face, arms and legs.
Symptoms of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA)
Personal Independence Payment (PIP)
You can spend it on whatever you need, such as paying for support to remain independent during relapses, or to help with extra costs such as heating, transport or help around the house. Some people with MS assume they can't get PIP because they're 'not disabled enough'.