Understanding Demyelinatory Disease

[Carrilicious]

It's carri the big whiner again.

Okay so I went to my neuro on Monday,who grabbed my shoulders and said, "Carri I am 100% certain you do not have als." BUT he did say he did want to order one more MRI of my cervical spine and on the referral it says "MRI Cervical Spine R/O Demyelinatory Disease." I don't even think I spelled it right because his writing is so bad.

Could someone enlighten me as to what he is trying to rule out? I promise I'm not freaking out.

Oh and one more question I never used to have parts of my body fall asleep till all this crud starting going on now my hands and sometimes parts of my legs and feet will fall asleep at night. Anyone else ever experience this?

 

[ytewestGo99]

Before you go reading this, don't start thinking you have MS OK? promise me that ... This is just a general definition of what Demylenation is from a web site...



Demyelination is the term used for a loss of myelin, a substance in the white matter that insulates nerve endings. Myelin helps the nerves receive and interpret messages from the brain at maximum speed. When nerve endings lose this substance they can not function properly, leading to patches of scarring, or ‘sclerosis’, occurring where nerve endings have lost myelin. It is these areas of scarring that give multiple sclerosis its name.

Demyelination is the root cause of the symptoms that people with MS experience. When it occurs the speed at which messages pass along the nerves is slower than normal. Even when the patches of scarring caused by demyelination have healed and re-myelination has occurred, the response time of the nerve endings tends to remain slower.

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So, if your Nerve Conduction tests were even close to normal, you should not worry about this at all...

I worried about this too when I had a slow sural sensory nerve response when I got my EMG, but it was actually due to the temperature of my skin and I was so nervouse my feet were sweating and that affected my nerve conduction test... I thought that was halarious ... Troy and his nervouse sweaty feet

 

[shanahan1]

Hi Carrilyn,

I also began experiencing my limbs falling asleep a lot more at night (and probably more often during the day, especially when there is any pressure applied to create circulatory changes) since the other BFS symptoms began.

Tanya

 

[Carrilicious]

Definitely when pressure is applied like when I lay on my side and my legs are pressed together or when I sleep with my arm under my pillow and head.