muscle spasms and pain
 

I have not been diagnosed with MS. I am under going testing. I have moved back to my home town and starting the process. I was wondering how many of you have muscle spasms and weakness, here lately I have had them a lot. They do come and go but have more than less. If so what do you do for it? Is there any particular exercises or stretches that you do. I use heating pads and muscle creams and massagers.

Spasms are fairly constant for me. I take Baclofen to control it some, especially at night; and also find that Epsom salt baths (not too hot) and yoga-type stretching helps.
Heat might make them worse if you put it on a large area or leave it on for longer than 20 minutes.

Hope that you get some answers.

With love, Erika

I've noticed that it helps lessen the leg spasms through the night,
if you do your stretching exercises before you try to sleep.

I hope you find this helps you.:hug:

Thanks Lady's I will try all of this. I was confused wondering if I have MS or MG but more and more the symptoms are like MS. Every time I google and issue it comes up MS. I am having muscle spasm which is not associated with MG. so I guess that I can rule that out. The eye problems, the thinking problems, the tiredness, the muscles spasms and pain, heat related problems all sounds like MS which is what my MD and eye doctor believes

Do you have a lot of spasticity and muscle tightness and are you able to exercise besides yoga. Does it effect the muscles in your mouth. I know this is a lot of questions and last one may seem odd but the muscles in my mouth at times gets tired when I'm chewing.

Severity of spasms, tightness and pain vary, but no matter what, I do exercise as much as possible. Even if I have to use crutches to do it, I will make the legs work as much as they can, even if it is walking around the house. If/when things are really acting up, I will still do self resisted exercises while sitting to get things going.

For arms and upper body, I do exercises with rubber bands and also use the hand/arm pulley system on a cross country ski machine. I use that for legs too when I can.
Its like they say, "If you don't use it, you'll loose it."

Some of the jaw muscles on the left side are paralyzed, so the alignment of my teeth is off by 1/4 of an inch. I still chew on that side but most of the food that is consumed is pureed to accommodate another issue.
For me, muscle fatigue is a sign to stop and rest that group of muscles for a while, as they tend to get inflamed otherwise.

With love, Erika

I use to be an exercise fanatic..lol and now it is hard. I got a new exercise bike for my birthday but when I exercise my legs gets too weak. I exercised one day and my legs got so tight and weak. Yesterday (walk video) I exercised and my legs got tight, painful and could not walk right. Today I just moved around the house and my walking and muscles are a little better. Are your jaw muscles messed up from MS? Today I was setting on the porch, watching the kids play and my right eye started hurting. My right eye is the one I have had blurred and double vision in. My left side of my body is weaker than my right but when I have eye problems it is in my right eye..go fiqure. though I have had vision changes in both eyes.

Yes, the MS was the cause of the jaw muscle problem. Good thing that I have another set on the other side :winky:.
Post esercise reactions like that are common. Try doing less, more frequently. That works for me when spasms are acting up.

With love, Erika

i don't have a lot of spasms but i do have tons of muscle pain; all over my body but especially my legs. sometimes meds help. other things i've tried are massage, heat and stretches.

don't do too much heat all at once. 15-20 min on and then off. you don't want to dry the muscle out. and, moist heat is better than dry.

i hope your dr works at dx'ing this for you.

I am so sorry to hear that. So meds didn't help the muscle of the jaw problem? yeah I want to exercise so bad but every time I do then I pay for it for a couple of days. Pain, tight muscles, stumbling. I did 20 minutes.

Thank for the advice, the only problem with wet heat is that it makes my legs too weak, pins and needle feeling even though I do it some still.

sham,

Everyone is different and you kind of have to experiment to see what works for you. Keep trying different things and please do share.

With love, Erika

Thanks so much for all of the advice...I was doing yoga a little before all of my major symptoms but I quit and started it again this morning and I feel better. It hurt while I was doing it because my muscles were so tight but I feel more limber and it does not hurt so bad to move about..

Things that help muscle spasm pain for me:

massage,
heating pad (have to be careful not to overheat yourself though),
tizantidine in small doses,
valium,
mmj if legally available
I've heard magnesium can help.

tizantidine is my last resort because it makes me very groggy.

best of luck to you :)

Not doing too much exercise at one time, as others have said, is a good idea--but doing a little almost every day. A short walk is good, in the clean air, in addition to the walking around the house to do things. But a long walk will sometimes cause spasm (such as the one of the upper lip I was discussing yesterday, if it was a spasm, and I now think it was).

I concur with Goldie that magnesium will help. Many years ago, so long ago I forget the year, a neurologist at Scripps put me on magnesium for spasm, after Baclofen and Zanaflex made it impossible for me to function (unless walking into walls with Baclofen is considered OK). This helped and has helped all of the years since then. I still have some pretty bad spasm making my legs twist and move at night, but they are not especially painful, just very irritating. The only way (in addition to magnesium) that I can deal with them is stretching before bedtime (you said yoga helped) and rubbing out the knots in my legs. My arms have always been weak, but they are less weak since I started rubbing out the knots, at the suggestion of my pcp's assistant, who has a degree in movement therapy. It may take a good long time to conquer the knots, but it can be done usually, not always.
I take 1000 mg of magnesium a day and 1000 of calcium (cal at a different time than mag) and have upped my D3 lately to 1600 a day.