Less Common Symptoms -- National MS Society

the one thing I find about people living with MS is that we all want to be normal I mean I have it's a smorgasbord of symptoms and messes and I've had every symptom I think go for about two weeks I had completely lost the ability to taste sweet and then a year and a half later salt I was trained classically as a chef so that was that was a very serious symptom for me I had a seizure four years ago and as I was eating my lunch the seizure happened I don't have anything wrong with my eyes mine seems to affect my hearing in my right ear so when you find yourself with an a symptom that is relatively uncommon you feel like you're taken away from the class and then you're taken away from the group of the class that got taken away from the class for those of us who live with MS we may be all too familiar with common symptoms such as fatigue spasticity and numbness however there are less common symptoms that people with MS may also be experiencing hi I'm Kate Milliken and welcome to MS learn online to discuss some of these uncommon symptoms we have dr. Steven Krieger dr. Krieger is a neurologist at the Corinne goldsmith Dickinson Center for MS and an assistant professor at the Mount Sinai Medical Center both in New York City welcome to MLR non-line dr. Krieger thank you so I'm kind of interested I certainly am aware of symptoms that I've heard about that would be considered uncommon I'd love to throw a couple out at you and see your response I have heard that there are speech disorders in ms so speech disorders in ms are somewhat uncommon as I think all these things we're going to discuss will be when we think about speech problems in ms they are usually problems with speech articulation slurred speech problems with getting words out sometimes this can sound like a stutter for instance or sometimes it can sound like someone is intoxicated when they're not rarely very rarely NMS are their speech problems such as difficulty with word finding what we call aphasia the speech problems that we see in ms at times are dis are three a' which is the difficulty in enunciated or articulating this can be profound in a very rare minority of cases sometimes it's quite subtle and often the patient might not even be aware of it but if speech problems begin to develop we certainly would want to know about that and that would need to be pursued swallowing problems swallowing problems and speech difficulties in ms go together sometimes if ms has caused weakness or in coordination of the muscles of the face and throat it can be difficult to get food going down the right pipe and swallow effectively often speech problems from MS and swallowing problems from MS go together because it's the same muscles that are responsible for producing speech and for handling fluids and food and swallowing them carefully this can be a real concern in in your MS we're problems with swallowing can cause dysphasia where the food goes down the wrong pipe and can get into the lung causing what's called an aspiration pneumonia this is unusual it's only occurs it occurs most often in very severe and long-standing cases of MS but it's something that we have to stay vigilant about what about headaches headings are extremely common in the general population and headaches are perhaps even more common in young people and more common in women than in men basically more common in the people who get MS and who have MS so it's very difficult to attribute headaches to multiple sclerosis and what I generally tell my patients is that they may have MS and headaches headaches himself can take a lot of different forms as we all know tension headaches migraine headaches and many other types and headache in ms or irrespective of ms needs to be taken seriously and managed and there are many different medications and techniques that can be helpful for both stopping a headache and preventing them if they happen commonly one way that ms can cause not headache precisely but but facial pain is in something called trigeminal neuralgia trigeminal neuralgia is a situation where patients can experience very severe shooting pain in and around the face and head and this can occur both in MS and not in ms it's not precisely a headache but it's something that as neurologists we see and can certainly treat for patients who have MS what about hearing loss so hearing loss is felt to be very uncommon in multiple sclerosis there is a literature on subtle hearing changes in ms but what I would tell you is if a patient describes to me that they have significant hearing loss that always makes me question the diagnosis of MS there are conditions that can seem like MS and involve hearing loss that require a detailed workup but it's one of those red flags that neurologists think about as something that might reflect a different disease process that said there are many reasons for hearing loss and so patients who have MS may also get hearing for a variety of other reasons sinuses etc but uh but it's something that we would need to do a bit of a workup for and not simply ascribe it to ms without pursuing it further seizures so seizures are uncommon in the general population and uncommon in ms but slightly more common in ms than in the general population I think that seizures happen only a couple of times out of a hundred in multiple sclerosis so the vast majority of people with MS live their lives seizure free seizures themselves take many forms from the generalized convulsions that we think of when we think of seizures too much more subtle and mild events that are still seizure in nature because ms is a disease that affects the brain lesions can potentially irritate parts of the brain and give rise to seizures and seizures in ms are treated just like seizures without MS with anticonvulsant medications which can do a wonderful job at getting people to be seizure free or nearly seizure free and breathing problems so breathing problems are very unusual in ms especially in relapsing remitting or early multiple sclerosis but like trouble with speaking dysarthria or trouble with swallowing dysphasia breathing problems can occur in advanced in serious cases of MS where the muscles that are involved in breathing and respiration like the muscles that are involved in speaking and swallowing can be affected but it's quite unusual an MS sensory symptom the MS hug where patients describe a squeezing constricting feeling can sometimes occur around the chest and thorax and in those situations patients may feel that they have difficulty getting a deep breath because they feel a tight squeezing feeling but I think if this is more of a sensory phenomenon in multiple sclerosis rather than a true difficulty with breathing and respiration can you talk a little bit about why there are so many symptoms and all these different ones some common some not and whether there's any way of knowing the frequency of how these symptoms happen well you know ms is an incredibly varied disease and and as everyone who's watching this knows no two patients with MS have exactly the same story that can make it frustrating in a sense because it's hard to know for a given patient what to expect or what their ms is going to be like and it makes it challenging for the neurologist and for the physicians to know what is being caused by MS and what isn't so the common symptoms are common and those are ones that we all recognize are likely due to MS but I think it's important for physicians to be aware of and vigilant about making sure that if someone presents with an uncommon symptom that it gets properly pursued that it's not just written off as being part of multiple sclerosis I often tell healthcare professionals as we get better and better at taking care of people with MS they are going to live longer and more normal lives and therefore they're going to come down with things that affect everybody else and we have to be careful not to just say that's your MS so that's something that I think is important it's important that patients talk to their doctors about the symptoms that are they're experiencing and work with them to get to the bottom of them well that's what I was going to say on the flipside if a patient is having a symptom that could be MS or could not be MS how do they know that it's MS related well I I think that although we like to partner with our patients and work with them in a collaborative way I think the burden of figuring out what is MS and what isn't MS shouldn't be on the shoulders of the patient I think that needs to be on the shoulders of their doctors I think what the patient's need to know is that they ought to feel very free to talk to their physicians and their neurologists and their nurse practitioners about the symptoms that they're having to give them the information they need to figure it out it can sometimes be quite challenging but I think that if a patient is experiencing something that seems unusual or different particularly if it lasts for more than a day they should call up somebody who's taking care of them and discuss it and see if it gets up there concern but figuring out what is ms related and what's not ms related it's a bit of a challenge thankfully we have both the ability to examine patients and and look at them neurologically and see if the symptom is causing something that we can recognize and also workups including diagnostic imaging like MRIs and MRIs although not perfect can often show us if there are changes that ms is causing that are giving rise to particular symptoms and so frequently if someone's experiencing a new symptom they may merit to getting a new MRI to see if the MS is causing it dr. crater thank you so much my pleasure you would like to get more information on symptoms of MS go to national MS society org this is Kate Milliken for MS learn online thank you for joining us you

Channel: NationalMSSociety

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Rating: 4.7404761 out of 5

Keywords: MS, multiple, sclerosis, National MS Society, MS Learn Online, health, neurologic, autoimmune, nerve, disease, Society, learn, Symptom Management, less, common, symptoms

Id: ZI3vxqPwPnI

Length: 10min 49sec (649 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2011