The early signs and
There is a long list of possible MS symptoms, and they vary from person to person. The most common symptoms of MS include fatigue, urinary and bowel issues and sexual dysfunction. Some patients may have problems with pain, walking, balance, blurred vision, slurred speech and swallowing.
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.
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.
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.
Here's where MS (typically) starts
Although a number of MS symptoms can appear early on, two stand out as occurring more often than others: Optic neuritis, or inflammation of the optic nerve, is usually the most common, Shoemaker says. You may experience eye pain, blurred vision and headache.
The early signs and symptoms of MS can be the same for women and men. One of the more obvious first signs of MS is a problem with vision, known as optic neuritis. This is often because it's a more concrete symptom as opposed to vaguer neurological symptoms like numbness and tingling.
How long can MS go undiagnosed? MS is usually diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 50, but it can go undetected for years. In fact, a 2021 study suggested that many people with MS experience disease symptoms several years before being officially diagnosed with the disease.
Factors that may trigger MS include: Exposure to certain viruses or bacteria: Some research suggests that being exposed to certain infections (such as Epstein-Barr virus) can trigger MS later in life. Where you live: Your environment may play a role in your risk for developing MS.
While there is no definitive blood test for MS, blood tests can rule out other conditions that cause symptoms similar to those of MS, including lupus erythematosus, Sjogren's syndrome, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, some infections and rare hereditary diseases.
Muscle spasms and stiffness: Formally called spasticity, this symptom can range from mild feelings of muscle tightness to severe and painful spasms, according to the National MS Society, and it most commonly affects the legs.
Therefore a careful combination of clinical examinations, MRI scans and lumbar punctures are required. To differentiate MS from other similar neurological conditions, most neurologists use what is called the McDonald criteria.
MS is a Silent Disease
For example, chronic pain, blurred vision, and sensory problems are only experienced by the individual with MS, and cannot be easily noticed by others.
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.
Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) is a rare chronic disease that happens when your immune system attacks specific parts of your central nervous system. Experts previously thought this was a rare type of multiple sclerosis (MS) but now recognize it's a separate condition.
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.
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.
Multiple sclerosis (MS).
When your optometrist detects optic nerve inflammation, that can indicate a diagnosis of MS. Patients with MS often also have double vision, blurred vision, or report pain when moving their eyes.
MRI is particularly useful in detecting central nervous system demyelination — that is, damage of the myelin sheath in the nervous system. This makes it a powerful tool in establishing the diagnosis of MS.