JCVanilla4125
Well-known member
Hi Pole,
I agree with everyone else that you are scaring yourself for no reason. Hyper-irritability is a term used to describe EMG activity not muscle activity. The fasciculations you are experiencing can be and sometimes are described as peripheral nerve hyper-excitability, but that is not the same thing as hyper-irritability. Hyper-irritability is the EMG changes that occur on screen when the needle is first placed into a muscle. This is sometimes a pathologic sign, but not always!! You tell us that you have had a negative neuro exam and a negative EMG. That means that all of the evidence points to you having BFS not ALS.
How do you think the syndrome of benign fasciculation came to be? Do you think that doctors just decided to create a new entity? No, of course not! It was found that there were people that presented with complaints of fasciculations in the absence of weakness or progression that had no evidence of ALS. If these people were found to eventually progress to ALS, then BFS would never have been created. Since ALS (as a diagnosis) has been around much longer than BFS, the medical community has had ample time to follow the natural history of the disease. Clearly, there were groups of patients in sufficient numbers that varied greatly enough from NMDs (due to the lack of weakness or progression) that a new entitiy must be created to properly describe this group; hence BFS came to be!
Try to accept that and move on!
I agree with everyone else that you are scaring yourself for no reason. Hyper-irritability is a term used to describe EMG activity not muscle activity. The fasciculations you are experiencing can be and sometimes are described as peripheral nerve hyper-excitability, but that is not the same thing as hyper-irritability. Hyper-irritability is the EMG changes that occur on screen when the needle is first placed into a muscle. This is sometimes a pathologic sign, but not always!! You tell us that you have had a negative neuro exam and a negative EMG. That means that all of the evidence points to you having BFS not ALS.
How do you think the syndrome of benign fasciculation came to be? Do you think that doctors just decided to create a new entity? No, of course not! It was found that there were people that presented with complaints of fasciculations in the absence of weakness or progression that had no evidence of ALS. If these people were found to eventually progress to ALS, then BFS would never have been created. Since ALS (as a diagnosis) has been around much longer than BFS, the medical community has had ample time to follow the natural history of the disease. Clearly, there were groups of patients in sufficient numbers that varied greatly enough from NMDs (due to the lack of weakness or progression) that a new entitiy must be created to properly describe this group; hence BFS came to be!
Try to accept that and move on!
I am sorry if I have offended you.
I know that I should stop searching internet, but it is sometimes stronger than me.