5 Warning Signs of Multiple Sclerosis You Shouldn’t Ignore

Your nervous system connects and routes a wide range of information, including sensory input, and transmits it to your brain. To perform these complex actions, your body has literally billions of nerve cells (neurons), with around 100 billion in your brain and over 13 million in your spinal cord. Your nerves are responsible for many functions in every part of your body.

Illnesses that affect nerve cells can make life very difficult, and multiple sclerosis (MS) poses many issues for nearly 3 million people globally. While numerous symptoms are often associated with the disease, nerve damage can present in different ways that you may not notice. Let’s take a closer look at this illness and find out what symptoms you may be overlooking.

Our team of doctors at Riverhills Neuroscience is dedicated to improving the lives of residents in Norwood, Anderson, and Westside, Ohio, and Crestview Hills, Kentucky, by treating many neurological illnesses, including multiple sclerosis.

Understanding multiple sclerosis

Several conditions fall under the term autoimmune illness, which occurs when your immune system mistakes something in your body for a threat and reacts accordingly. In this case, multiple sclerosis results from your immune system attacking the myelin that protects nerve cells, specifically in your brain and spinal cord.

This illness comes in four different types:

• Clinically isolated: when signs of MS appear but haven’t yet met the criteria

• Relapsing-remitting: the most common type, where the illness appears in flare-ups and goes into remission

• Secondary progressive: when the relapsing-remitting type worsens, the nerve damage accumulates and doesn’t go away

• Primary progressive: when the condition starts off gradually and worsens without ever going into remission

The exact causes of MS are still undetermined, but research supports the possibility of environmental triggers in people who have the genetic disposition for it.

MS risk factors

Various things are thought to raise your risk of multiple sclerosis, including low vitamin D levels in your blood, smoking, and childhood and adolescent obesity.

Various viral and bacterial infections can raise the risk in people with existing genetic factors, including the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6), canine distemper, Chlamydia pneumonia, and measles. This doesn’t mean MS is contagious, merely that some viruses can trigger the disease in people with the genetic makeup for it.

Early signs you might miss

Several symptoms are common in people with MS, such as dizziness, fatigue, clumsiness, bladder problems, cognitive issues, muscle stiffness, tremors, and mood changes. Both the exact signs you get and how often they occur vary from person to person, but some early signs may get overlooked, like:

1. Painful vision loss

Inflammation of the optic nerve (optic neuritis) can feel like a stabbing pain or dull ache, and happens in one eye, looking like you're wearing smudged sunglasses in the affected one.

2. Chronic limb numbness or weakness

That sensation you get when you sit on your leg for a long time, and it falls asleep? Imagine that going on for hours or even days, and you have a possible symptom of multiple sclerosis.

3. Severe, persistent dizziness

Nerve damage to your cerebellum and brainstem affects equilibrium (balance), and if you have severe dizziness that lasts for at least two days, get it checked out.

4. Facial paralysis

Also called facial palsy, this happens due to muscle weakness issues related to MS, and while it’s less common than some of the other symptoms, it should definitely be looked at by a doctor.

5. Body pain

As many as two-thirds of MS patients have dealt with pain in their arms, legs, abdomen, eyes, and face, so if you deal with this, you should find out your risks for this illness.

Multiple sclerosis changes your life and doesn’t have a cure, but it can be moderated, and if you make an appointment with our team at Riverhills Neuroscience, we can find the treatment to help. Call 513-612-1111 today to get started.