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Does it stick with you and gradually fade? Do you always have it? Does it ever just disappear entirely, almost instantly or does it get worse the more you bend your neck?

i used to have it but over time it went away.

in my case i had had vit b12 deficiency. my spinal lesions were textbook b12 deficiency lesions.

i changed my diet and started supplementing and gradually got better.

i felt it as a sort of electrical buzz or tingling [edit: in my torso] when i had to bend my head forward.

going back to '06/'07 or so, sometimes i felt something possibly related after say, walking across a parking lot to a car, then sitting down in the car and being able to feel my skin crawling a bit.

also sometimes i remember feeling something in my feet that was almost as if my blood were carbonated.

lots of weird stuff back in the day

Mine is like an electrical shock running down my right arm to my fingertips.
When I was diagnosed 18 years ago, it used to be down the back of my neck.
It doesn't happen all the time, I even went a long while without having it at all.
I thought it was gone for good, but then it came back.

Thanks for your responses, interesting how it is so different for everyone.

Did either of you ever find any way to provide quick or instant relief for it? Maybe a chiropractic treatment or exercises/stretches? Any sort of medication?

Jimmy did it run down your neck/back as well or was it isolated elsewhere?

I'm a bit ignorant as to why it happens, so forgive the possibly stupid questions. A friend of mine also had it when she was first Dx 3 years ago but it went away after some treatment.

hey no probs i edited above to clarify. i would feel the electric shock in my body, and i thought of the feeling as being more in the front than the back for some reason. just 'in my gut'.

the other things in my feet or skin etc may not have been true lhermitte's but because they might happen after some jolting while walking across pavement, or maybe it was elevated temperature from mild exertion? i thought perhaps those might be linked in some way.

personally i had a lot of nutrition problems. i had spent 15 years on a very limited and biologically inappropriate diet (don't believe the vegan hype, it has to be done *very* carefully to get it right.. and i am not certain it can be done truly right) and i am still working on restoring tissue stores of nutrients. since my lesions were in classic locations associated with b12 deficiency and i had a chronic b12 deficiency record on file, i started there. slowly over time i figured out a lot more nutritional issues associated with ms and compared the nutritional problems in ms to the nutritional gaps in my diet. then it was obvious.

my biggest single improvement (not specifically in lhermitte's but in overall functionality) was on the klenner protocol. i modified it so i only had to take pills. i took all the recommended b vitamins, the vitamin e (although now i disagree with the recommended form), the lecithin, and a multi. i am pretty sure i skipped everything else but now i would ensure that magnesium (citrate or glycinate form) and zinc were in the regimen. and fish oil. and vitamin d3 which is also missing from the klenner protocol, since it was developed in 1971, when the body of research on d3 and the immune system was basically still in the future.

i took my klenner regimen for only three days before seeing major improvements. it was great!!

I never tried to relieve the (lhermittes') symptom, I just thought I had to deal with it. I didn't know that a chiropractor could help. No questionns are stupid, we're here to discuss ms topics and help each other.
God bless!!

i don't know if a chiro can help, maybe. see all the misaligned atlas discussion. it's true that my dx attack followed a head trauma too. i was a house of cards and that crash was the straw that broke the camel's back. how's that for mixing metaphors..

i had an unsatisfactory attempt to try chiropractic therapy out in '06 but not since. i wanted only soft tissue work, not manipulation, for fear of spinal cord damage. but from one appt to the next they had me in some useless traction thing which did nothing but mash my teeth together!

Jen_1980 wrote:Did either of you ever find any way to provide quick or instant relief for it? Maybe a chiropractic treatment or exercises/stretches? Any sort of medication?

Jimmy did it run down your neck/back as well or was it isolated elsewhere?

I'm a bit ignorant as to why it happens, so forgive the possibly stupid questions. A friend of mine also had it when she was first Dx 3 years ago but it went away after some treatment.

Hi Jen, sorry you're dealing with this! I'll give you a couple links and a quote with definitions first, and then give my experiences. Although L'hermitte's is common in MS, it's not exclusive to MS.

http://www.mult-sclerosis.org/LHermittessign.html (this is a good MS site)

L'Hermitte's sign describes electrical buzzing sensations in the limbs and body brought on by movement of the neck. These sensations are known as paraesthesia and include tingling, buzzing, electrical shocks, partial numbness and sharp pains. L'Hermitte's is most often triggered by lowering the head so that the chin touches the chest. The sensations usually only last for a second or two. It has been called the "barber shop" symptom because it is often evoked when the hairdresser asks you to lower your head when he or she shaves the back of your neck.

L'Hermitte's is associated with a number of conditions including arthritis, cervical spondylosis, disc compression, pernicious anaemia, tumours and multiple sclerosis. In many cases, the cause cannot be found.

Because the cervical spinal cord is a frequent target for multiple sclerosis it is a very common symptom of MS. Aproximately two thirds of people with multiple sclerosis experience L'Hermitte's symptom at some point during the course of their disease.

In MS, L'Hermitte's is an indicator of lesions in the cervical spine (the part of spine in the neck). Movement of the neck causes the damaged nerves (the demyelinated neurons) to be stretched and send erroneous signals. The symptoms can occur anywhere below the neck and many people with MS find that it moves around their body from one day to the next.

And there's always wikipedia for definitions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lhermitte's_sign

I had a major bout of this that lasted for several months about 20 years ago. Along with every other weird incident at the time, I assumed it was due to a few whiplash injuries in my childhood (and maybe they were...). With me, when I bent my head down and to the right, I'd get an electric jolt down my left leg causing it to collapse out from under me.

Altho it lasted only a couple seconds at a time, it made crossing streets and parking lots pretty hazardous, while trying to look both ways. I would forget to keep my head up, and zap! I got to kinda dragging my leg so I wouldn't fall. I didn't know there was a name for it until the day I was dx'd with MS years later and read about it.

This is why I started my major diet/strenuous exercise routine 20 + yrs ago - to make it easier on myself, to get around, and it worked! Or it seemed to. The jolts eased up right away and for many years I've felt only a tiny twinge when I bend my head WAY down.

Losing weight always makes it easier on your joints, back, & muscles. And one of the things I always do when exercising lying on my back, is keep a rolled up dishtowel under my neck where a chiropractor had found issues years before.

The towel was the chiro's suggestion about a completely different issue - when I woke up with a roaring noise in my head even longer ago. I assumed that was whiplash, too, since it changed with position and left after neck adjustments.

I hope you find something that helps, altho I'm not sure if what you have is actually L'hermitte's if you're asking how to "provide quick or instant relief for it." With mine, it lasted 2 seconds at a time and stayed away as long as I wasn't moving my head. General, long-lasting tingling & stuff could be something else. L'hermitte's is a very specific symptom.

My MRI report says "no spinal lesions" ,but does point out "cervical spondylosis" throughout my C-spine. So for me, maybe it's MS, but maybe it's not.


Good luck!

Hi!


I can only presume that I had l'hermites, never had it offocially diagnosed.

But when I put my head forward and down had a tingly feeling running down from my neck approx 5-6 inces to in between top of shoulder blades.

Having chiropractic treatment re Atlas and knock on misalignments, but after 1st or 2nd treatment feeling went never to return yeah.

Fiona

fee001 wrote:Hi!


I can only presume that I had l'hermites, never had it offocially diagnosed.

But when I put my head forward and down had a tingly feeling running down from my neck approx 5-6 inces to in between top of shoulder blades.

Having chiropractic treatment re Atlas and knock on misalignments, but after 1st or 2nd treatment feeling went never to return yeah.

Fiona

Thanks! I don't entirely understand that last part - you're saying the chiropractor made your lhermittes disappear right away like that?

I have had L'Hermittes for 31 years, although I was only diagnosed with MS two years ago. When I bend my head down (well, I don't really bend my head, I bend my neck..lol), I feel a shocky pulling feeling down both legs and one arm, right into my hand and feet. It is worse sometimes than others, but I don't think it ever goes away.
I assume a chiropracter couldn't help ,as it is due to damage in the nerve pathways, not a mis alignment.

lemstar wrote:I assume a chiropracter couldn't help ,as it is due to damage in the nerve pathways, not a mis alignment.

all the nerves run down your spine so a misaligned spine can be putting pressure or damage on the nerves

Hi!

I presume I had l'hermittes never diagosed though, when I put chin to chest had a tingly feeling from top of spine than ran down about 5 - 6 inches.

This more or less immediately went when I had my first chiropractic adjustment to Atlas


Fiona

I didn't mean to say chiropractic cannot help L'Hermittes. L'Hermittes has many causes as well. I have "black holes" on my cervical spine (and in my brain), which indicates permanent damage to neural pathways. All the chiropractic adjustments in the world won't give me back my myelin that I need to conduct messages accurately.
I spent 8 months going to a chiropracter about 15 years ago, just for the L'Hermittes. This was before my diagnosis of MS, and he never suggested a visit to a neurologist. Knowing what I know now, if I was any kind of doc, chiro or otherwise, I would have suggested an MRI. I have been presenting my neuro symptoms, which include numbness and L"hermittes for 31 years. My first episode 31 years ago went undiagnosed as we didn't have MRIs, and I didn't want to pursue the dx for MS as there was no treatment at that time. In the following 31 years, NO doc suggested an MRI. AFter a flare 2 yrs ago, I insisted on MRIs, and they were downright conclusively MS.