Hello everyone! After writing a post about Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (click here to read) explaining the main things we should know, I come today to write about Symptoms and Diagnosis of this disease.
Symptoms
There are several symptoms in ALS, such as:
Muscle Weakness
This is the first symptom that characterizes ALS, usually begins by affecting the limbs such as the hands, arms and legs. Basically, this problem means that the patient doesn't have the strength needed to perform various basic tasks.
Muscle Apasms
They consist of the involuntary contraction of muscles, and they are accompanied by pain. Spasms act as a mechanism for protecting muscles in response to injury.
Dysarthria and Dysphagia
Dysarthria is the difficulty of using the muscles to speak and Dysphagia is the difficulty in eating (swallowing).
Breathing Problems
This is another of the symptoms that characterizes the disease, as the neurons that control the respiratory movements are affected, the breathing becomes difficult and therefore weak.In almost all cases machines are used to aid in breathing.
Increased Saliva
This problem arises in sequence from the previous two, because as there is difficulty in breathing, eating or talking, the production of saliva increases.
Cramps
Most people think that a cramp appears and after a few minutes it disappears is normal, but this may already be a factor that ALS begins to manifest.
Cognitive Alterations
This is a problem of some degenerative diseases, in the case of ALS it manifests as a frontotemporal dementia. The frontotemporal is an area of our brain responsible for the decisions we make and in this disease the pacients can't use correctly this part of brain. This problem can lead to complusive, impulsive, and emotional behaviors.
Spasticity
It consists of the involuntary increase of the muscular contractions, the muscles become tense and rigid and there is an inability to control them.
Emotional Instability
In patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, there is difficulty in controlling emotional expressions. It's very common the patients have episodes of uncontrollable laughter or crying.
Difficulty Maintaining Posture
With all these problems and in a more advanced level of the disease it's no longer possible to control any part of ours body and to carry out any type of movement. Therefore it's very difficult to maintain the posture.
Diagnosis
There is no specific test to diagnose Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.
There are some tests used for help to rule out the disease hypothesis or for serve as an indicator of the possibility of the disease.
These tests are:
- Electromyography (EMG)
- Magnetic Resonances;
- Blood and Urine tests;
- Muscular Biopsy;
- Symptoms Evident (indicated above).
