Overview. Dizziness is a common symptom of MS. People with MS may feel off balance or lightheaded. Much less often, they have the sensation that they or their surroundings are spinning — a condition known as vertigo.
One of the most uncommon symptoms of multiple sclerosis is vertigo, which occurs in the central nervous system and disrupts the patient's ability to maintain a steady‐state of balance. Multiple sclerosis patients with central positional vertigo as their first symptom are uncommon in the medical literature.
Problems with balance and feeling dizzy are common in MS, and can have knock-on effects on your walking. Like all MS symptoms, these issues affect people differently, and vary from day to day.
Dizziness has many causes, but MS-induced dizziness is typically more severe and lasts for at least two days. “With MS, dizzy spells can cause you to have trouble walking down a hallway, for example, because your sense of equilibrium is so off,” explains Dr. Bermel.
Balance: Balance problems typically result in a swaying and “drunken” type of gait known as ataxia. Sensory deficit: Some people with MS have such severe numbness in their feet that they cannot feel the floor or know where their feet are. This is referred to as a sensory ataxia.
Feeling fatigued is one of the most common and troublesome symptoms of MS. It's often described as an overwhelming sense of exhaustion that means it can be a struggle to carry out even the simplest activities.
People should consider the diagnosis of MS if they have one or more of these symptoms: vision loss in one or both eyes. acute paralysis in the legs or along one side of the body. acute numbness and tingling in a limb.
MS affects the nerves in the brain. And this can cause hearing problems and other MS symptoms related to the ears. When MS damages the nerve fibres, or the myelin sheath around the outside, it can affect messages going to and from the ear.
The most common causes of imbalance without dizziness are related to dysfunction of the muscles, joints and peripheral nerves (proprioceptive system), or the central nervous system (brain). People with bilateral vestibulopathy have balance issues but no dizziness if the damage affects both ears at the same time.
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.
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.
Multiple Sclerosis: It's in Your Head
Brain lesions are a hallmark of MS, but they're not the only way MS can affect your brain function. MS can also contribute to brain atrophy, or shrinkage, over time — a process that occurs in all people as they age, but typically happens much more quickly in people with MS.
What Is Autoimmune Inner Ear Disease? Autoimmune inner ear disease (AIED), is a rare disease that happens when your body's immune system mistakenly attacks your inner ear. It can cause dizziness, ringing in your ears, and hearing loss.
We also know that people with MS are particularly prone to a form of vertigo called benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, or BPPV. This causes symptoms of dizziness when you lay down in bed, roll over in bed or tip your head up in these kinds of positions.
Note that the development of tinnitus, as well as any sudden change in hearing or in the inner ear, may indicate an MS flare. If you're experiencing these types of symptoms for the first time, contact your neurologist. Your health care team can help you manage these and other symptoms of a flare.
In most cases, vertigo happens because of conditions that affect your inner ear. Doctors call this peripheral vertigo. When brain conditions like multiple sclerosis cause the condition, they call it central vertigo.
Hearing problems caused by MS are thought to be due to damage to the brainstem - the part of the brain that is also involved in vision and balance. Problems are often associated with other brainstem symptoms such as tinnitus and vertigo. Sudden hearing problems can show that you are having a relapse.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
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.
Devic's disease/NMO most often affects only the optic nerve and spinal cord at first. With MS, changes in memory, reasoning, problem solving and depression are also common. Vision loss with MS usually affects one eye at a time, but Devic's disease/NMO may affect both eyes at the same time.
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.
Brain fog can be a symptom of a nutrient deficiency, sleep disorder, bacterial overgrowth from overconsumption of sugar, depression, or even a thyroid condition. Other common brain fog causes include eating too much and too often, inactivity, not getting enough sleep, chronic stress, and a poor diet.