Symptoms

[Alejandro]

Since September 27, I have had small cramps, mainly in my legs, all day long for 3 weeks. They appear when I am lying down and they also appear in my thighs, abdomen, and arms. And with atrophy in the hand and I still have strength, can atrophy appear before clinical weakness?

 

[lgelb]

You are not describing ALS. See a doctor to determine if there are any concerns, and, if not, you may want to reconsider your diet, sleep, exercise, etc. If your legs feel strange at rest and moving helps them, you might ask your doctor about Restless Leg Syndrome, which can affect other parts of the body as well.

What you may think is atrophy may not be, so let a doctor look at your hand. But we would not expect significant atrophy to be followed by weakness in ALS.

 

[Alejandro]

Thanks for the answer but if it were ALS you can have atrophy in the right hand and the left leg at the same time

 

[ShiftKicker]

Alejandro-

Please visit with your doctor first for a proper assessment. Please also read here: Read Before Posting. It provides answers to many of the questions that bring people here. Atrophy can only be assessed for by a medical professional.

 

[Alejandro]

I was referring to clinical weakness by failing, right?

 

[ShiftKicker]

From the "Read Before":

Clinical Weakness—ALS is about failing, not feeling.
ALS is about failure—falling down, being unable to stand on your toes or heels, being unable to button your shirt, being unable to lift your hand, being unable to open a ziplock bag, etc. It is not about these things becoming more difficult. It is about these things being impossible… no matter how hard you try. If you can do normal things, but it is more difficult, you do not have ALS. If you used to be able to do 100 curls and now one arm can only do 50; that is not ALS. If you used to run 2 miles and now you can only run 1; that is not ALS. If you used to run 2 miles and now you can’t lift up one of your feet, you may have clinical weakness.

It really does happen that something stops working all of a sudden. It is generally one muscle so it will not be a whole limb, but the movement done by that muscle is suddenly gone. An example is a calf raise. It won't happen. Think of it like your wifi signal. You are surfing the net, then signal is lost and you can't do anything online no matter how hard you try or how long you wait for a page to load. This is what happens to a muscle in beginning ALS it has lost the signal from the nervous system that tells it to work. First it is one muscle, then another ,then another so the things you can’t do increase. This is why you see progressive weakness mentioned

Please visit with your doctor if you have further questions.

 

[Alejandro]

Following the thread, on November 15, I went to the neurologist because of the atrophy of my right hand, and I think I also have atrophy in my left leg, and he did all kinds of strength tests on me, walking on tiptoe, walking on heels, walking normally, but the reflexes in my legs They were enlarged without clonus but he told me that he didn't see anything strange, he just put md in case of EMG recurrence of the lower limbs. I should continue to be worried or if he had seen something he would have done it to me right away. emg?