I'm sure you would know by now especially it is far from beng a monkey scrotum! Muscles, muscles, muscles. What would we do without them? Or what if they didn't work as we plan to use them? The final more specific muscle related symptoms to be discussed, though just like our nerves, muscles are involved in most things in life and another part of the body that is an avenue to the long list of symptoms associated with MS!
Muscle spasticity/ neuro spasticity being an increased tone (resistance or tension in the muscle) due to the damaged or dead nerves along the signal pathway(s) to area involved. But simply meaning when the muscles are used, there is more resistance to the movement and the muscles feel more rigid.
Stiffness being pretty much a similar thing where due to muscle resistance they are slower to relax so simply put it can make fine movements more difficult to perform, like lifting your leg up to get in or out of a car or straightening your legs to stand up from a chair. Other more explicit movements like walking can also be affected by the stiffness, as you can probably imagine it would lead to walking a bit like a robot in the sense that the muscles would keep straight and not follow a normal walking pattern.
To give more of a understandable example; if a healthy person were to lift their fist towards their shoulder almost like to show off your muscles, the muscles on the front of the arm will tighten and the ones on the back would relax. However a person suffering with spasticity did the same when this is done the muscle in the whole arm would tighten and the same time, so the muscle thus is very 'rigid'.
Another example to show the effects of this symptom, if a person where to stretch for a training session, when stretching the tendon ( the muscle on the other side of the shin [the back] they would be able to feel a stretch happening so to speak, but with this symptom the motion can be carried out but there be no feeling of any changes at all.
Spasms being random jerks in uncontrollable ways, somewhat similar to tremors however a different bodily function involved and more random than that of the tremors. These can be minor like a constant tapping of the foot which is known as 'clonus' or quite major where the whole limb or two may suddenly jerk resulting in a bit of pain and embarrassment if around other people! Though me being me, I have warned a few of my close friends that if they do frustrate me, I'd give them a good slap and blame it on the spasm effect!
Clonus:
Though thankfully I do not suffer so severely this symptom but recalling a discussion in a meet up group of MSers, where a gentleman with SPMS and his wife, told us their stories of the wife waking him up at 3am in the morning to tell him off for giving her a hurtful kick whilst fast asleep!
Spasm examples:
A lot more extreme example. watch with caution:
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