Apuman wrote: I'm a little bit baffled by it, as I wouldn't expect the circulation in my toes to affect the neural pathways in my spinal cord, but who am I to know?
I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced things like this, namely, experiencing symptoms in body parts that have sitting in strained positions.
Hi Apuman,
Yeah, I get that stuff all the time, and mine is very likely to be from my other fun condition - HNPP (Hereditary Neuropathy with liability to Pressure Palsies). Which means that my peripheral nerves are demyelinating like my central nerves - 2 demyelinating diseases and a missing myelin gene. I write about it all the time, but my suggestions that many of our problems are just as likely to be peripheral nerve ones as CNS ones are often met with a resounding silence.
Anyway, the peripheral nerves are ALL the other nerves in one's body, like the ones to all your organs and your extremities, and there are a gazillion medical conditions and movements that can affect them besides HNPP. "Pressure Palsies" refers to the condition caused by excess pressure on a nerve. When MY nerves "go to sleep" from pressure like other people, it takes much longer for the feeling to come back, and the nerve damage is relapsing/remitting and progressive like MS as well. I would think that age alone, or years of use, would affect even a normal (ha-ha, like MS people are "normal") person's ability to come back from PN stress.
Example 1: I took yoga class in spring & summer semesters and it made all my fingertips completely numb. (NOT from MS) I know it was from HNPP (and the resulting carpal tunnel), because it gradually got worse through movement in the classes and gradually went away after each semester.
Example 2: About a month ago the skin around my left ankle (my MS side) went slightly numb for a week for no damn reason and then it disappeared as instantly as it came. But I figure it was a typical MS-type episode for me.
In my life, I generally attribute all my numbness after movement/position stress to HNPP, and very little of it to MS. In the cases you described, however, it almost sounds like a combination of issues, the way it spread so extensively. You might want to ask your doc about it, but personally, it doesn't matter to me the slightest bit whether my numbness is from one or the other, and I absolutely never refer to any of my weirdness episodes as "attacks' anyway.
Anyway, I'll add links to a couple of my PN posts here. Good luck to you!
http://www.thisisms.com/ftopict-8138.html
http://www.thisisms.com/ftopic-7757-day ... asc-0.html
And here's more PN info.
Peripheral Neuropathy Symptoms (from Mayo Clinic)
Your nervous system is divided into two broad categories. Your central nervous system consists of your brain and spinal cord. All the other nerves in your body are part of your peripheral nervous system, which includes:
■Sensory nerves to receive feelings such as heat, pain or touch
■Motor nerves that control how your muscles move
■Autonomic nerves that control such automatic functions as blood pressure, heart rate, digestion and bladder function
Most commonly, peripheral neuropathy begins in the longest nerves — the ones that reach to your toes. Specific symptoms vary, depending on which types of nerves are affected. Signs and symptoms may include:
■Gradual onset of numbness and tingling in your feet or hands, which may spread upwards into your legs and arms
■Burning pain
■Sharp, jabbing or electric-like pain
■Extreme sensitivity to touch, even light touch
■Lack of coordination
■Muscle weakness or paralysis if motor nerves are affected
■Bowel or bladder problems if autonomic nerves are affected
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Really.
