spasticity

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amyecpa

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Please forgive my ignorance. that being said, my calves are so tight. they feel like I've been having cramps, but with no cramps. just so tight. is this spasticity?
Amye
 
Muscles string from bone to bone, and contracting the right one moves your limb the desired direction, common knowledge, yeah? Well, it is only half the story! For a limb to move, one set of muscles contracts, but the other one has to stretch. In a normal human, these command "you tighten, you stretch" are sent in tandem, producing the lovely smooth movement of the average joe.

In spasticity, the "you tighten" command goes through well, but the "you stretch" command doesn't get there, or gets there with less power than the "tighten" command, so it doesn't stretch enough, leaving not enough slack, as it were. Now your formerly complementary muscle groups are fighting each other, and things are not so smooth.

That said, not all muscle tightness is spasticity, in fact most isn't. Spasticity is a few things:

Velocity Dependent: how stiff or resistant your limb is to motion (passive stretching by a 3rd party, for instance) changes with how fast the limb is moved - the faster it is pushed, the stiffer it is

Generally a functional problem - if your leg can do all the normal motions a leg can do, it is probably a benign kind of tight. Spasticity causes most folks, from what I've read, to have trouble pulling the ball of their foot up, leading to "foot drop", tripping when they walk, and the feeling that their toes are digging a new route to china. I started it the opposite way - the ball of my foot pulled up, but would not push down. So rather than tripping, I lost the ability to push off for a step. (This has the advantage that even though I have no strength at all to bend my knee, I can still waddle penguin style, swinging a ramrod straight leg from the hip, for 20 ft or so in an emergency, no tripping as my feet never relax enough to trip over!)

Clasp - there is a lot of jerk to it, once you get past the resistance it moves all at once. In unconcious movements, that can be a lot of trouble, like when a small movement of your leg to fix your balance jerks and actually causes the fall.

There are lots of other longer term signs of it, like having very toned looking muscles in unused or underused places. I have been a wheelchair user for 6 years now. A properly paralyzed person (not all spinal cord injuries are, many also have spasticity!) will often have skinny atrophied legs in less than a year, whereas mine are normal size, overly defined, etc.

Spasticity isn't a bad thing, necessarily. In people with any kind of spinal cord problem, it can come to be on the only strength available in a limb. That is why our anti-spastic dosages vary so wildy, since medicating it away can leave one person nearly fully functional, and another person too weak to do anything at all. It keep circulation going, preventing blood clots and subsequent strokes, and reduces swelling in weak legs. And, as Joel says, if it is spazzing, the muscle is alive!

I hope that helps. I have seen in many online discussion that trying to describe spasticity without being able to point at your leg is really, really hard, and even the experts muddy the waters by accident all the time. It is something best evaluated by a doctor or PT in person.
 
well done beky,very informative and well put.
even i learned something new about types of spasticity.
 
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