Increase of twitching

[Danijela]

Good to read everybody's experiences. With my partner there has been twitching in all extremities since his diagnosis (and who knows how long prior to that, we just did not think anything of it), but his weakness and atrophy is still confined to upper limbs. There seem to be two separate issues here: those without ALS diagnosis who twitch, and those with ALS diagnosis with variety of twitching patterns.

 

[Erica]

I wonder if there are two patterns of fasciculations with ALS:
One with limb onset, where it's start in one limb with spreading of fascics from limb to limb predicting the progression of ALS.
And the other one with bulbar onset, where fascics might be widespread from the onset of disease.
Would be interesting to analyze this.

 

[AndyDJX]

I think there is no clear consensus on what makes a twitch "good" or "bad" other than the other symptoms that come with it. The people on the BFS boards have twitched in every possible way and haven't gone on to a diagnosis of anything other than BFS. Local, diffuse, fast, slow, hard, soft, ones that you can see but not feel, ones you can feel but not see, etc. The big question is whether or not your twitches are accompanied by atrophy, weakness and evidence of MND on an EMG.

 

[RoadKill]

Good to read everybody's experiences.

Thank you. I appreciate your saying that.

“Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness, and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.”

-- Og Mandino

 

[Naeco]

I was reading an ALS book when I was waiting for my next appointment at the Mayo Clinic today and it said that it was rare for twitching to be the fisrt symptom of ALS. Weakness was the first symptom in the majority of cases. Just thought that might be helpful to this topic.

 

[Zaphoon]

Rocmg,

The PLS is a differential diagnosis that has stuck through at least 3 visits to the neuro that has made the call. He states that a possible reason for the fasciculations he has seen on me could be muscles being excited by UMN activity.

I have read some data that lists fasciculations as a possible symptom for both ALS and PLS.

Oh, I can't do the bowling thing very well anymore. I'm just too stiff (not much Gumby left in me...)! My hands are getting weaker, too. A 2 pound ball would help.

Zaphoon