MS Numbness in Legs - Living With the Numbness

Numbness is considered to be an early symptom of multiple sclerosis. In many cases the first symptom of MS is numbness in the legs or arms and is often what causes a patient to seek a diagnosis. The numbness can affect very small areas of the body such as spot on your face or large sections of your body such as an entire half of your body, a leg, an arm or any combination of these. This numb feeling can be short lived or it can last for hours or days.

Living with MS Numbness in the Legs

Whether or not the numbness is transient or long term, whenever you have to live with MS numbness in the legs, it can adversely affect your life. In the early stages the pain can cause you to lose sleep at night and spend your days in pain and discomfort. As your multiple sclerosis progresses it is possible for you to begin losing all feeling in the affected extremities. If this happens to be your legs, it can lead to temporary or permanent disability as you find walking difficult or in extreme cases impossible.

When most people think of numbness, they tend to think of not being able to feel anything. This is actually a later stage of MS numbness in the legs. Earlier stages are actually quite painful at times as they include the pins and needles feeling most people experience when their extremity "falls asleep" and a burning sensation that can run the entire length of the nerve in a limb. Pain like this can be hard to ignore and seriously affect the quality of your life.

Therapy for MS Numbness in Legs or Other Extremities

In many cases the pain and numbness in the legs from MS is caused by inflammation of the nerves that is a result of the lesions that are attacking the myelin sheath and the nerves it is protecting. Some doctors will use a corticosteroid as an anti-inflammatory that will reduce the inflammation and in turn reduce or eliminate the pain and numbness.

While this type of therapy can work, why would you want to keep pumping your body full of steroids when you don't have to? Holistic medicine recommends a much more natural and gentler treatment for MS numbness in the legs. Research is finding that eating a healthy diet and taking better care of your overall health can actually reverse some of the damage done to your body by this disease including helping with the numbness.