Vertigo is a condition where a person feels as if they or the objects around them are moving when they are not. Often it feels like a spinning or swaying movement. This may be associated with nausea, vomiting, sweating, or difficulties walking. It is typically worsened when the head is moved. Vertigo is the most common type of dizziness. Vertigo cause by labyrinthine disorders (ear problem) is usually short lived, though it may recur, whilst vertigo arising from central (brain stem) disorders is not persistent and accompanied by other signs.
Alzheimer's disease is a progressive Neuro degenerative disorder in which a gradual decline in the memory along with one area of higher intellectual function is involved. Although Alzheimer's develops differently for every individual, they share some common symptoms. Early symptoms are often mistakenly thought to be age related concerns manifestations of stress. In the early stages, the most common symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events, known as short term memory loss. As the disease advances, symptoms can include confusion, irritability, aggression, mood swings, trouble with language and long term memory loss. Declining of health condition leads a person to withdraw from family and society. Alzheimer's disease often shows the following symptoms:
Ataxia is a condition where the coordination of muscle movements is lost that includes 'Abnormality in Walking'. Ataxia is a non-specific clinical manifestation that shows the dysfunction of the parts of the nervous system that coordinate movement, such as the cerebellum. Ataxiameans Loss of control of body movements, thus lacking coordination.
Conditions shown by persons with Ataxia are :
Peripheral neuropathy is disorder of nerve apart from the brain and spinal cord. Oftentimes, the symptoms are symmetrical and involve both hands and feet. Because the symptoms are often present in the areas covered by gloves or stockings, peripheral neuropathy is often described as having a "glove and stocking" distribution of symptoms. The condition is caused by diseases like Diabetes, Hypothyroidism, Kidney disorders, High blood pressure. Persons with peripheral neuropathy may have symptoms like
Bell's palsy is a type of facial paralysis that results in an inability to control the facial muscles of one side of face. Symptoms may vary from mild to severe. They may include muscle twitching, weakness, or total loss of the ability to move one or rarely both sides of the face. This condition can be due to conditions like Diabetes, Stroke, and Brain tumor.
Seizure is a sudden surge of electrical activity in the brain. A seizure usually affects how a person appears or acts for a short timeEpilepsy is a neurological disorder marked by sudden recurrent episodes of sensory disturbance, loss of consciousness, or convulsions, associated with abnormal electrical activity in the brain. The conditions shown by the person can be categorized into two:
1. Symptoms that occur before the seizure
2. Symptoms that occur after seizure
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a condition by which the myelin sheath of neurons (nerve cells) which is the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged.This damage disrupts the ability of parts of the nervous system to communicate, resulting in a range of signs and symptoms, including Physical, Mental, and Sometimes Psychiatric problems.Specific symptoms include
Throughout the course of the illness, an individual may experience any/all of the following symptoms, to a varying degree:
Parkinson's Disease is the second most common neuro degenerative disease, exceeded only by Alzheimer's Disease. The mean age of onset is about 60 years. Men are affected by the disorder slightly more than women. While motor symptoms are the most common presenting features; non- motor symptoms like cognitive impairment, depression, and anxiety become increasingly common as the disease progresses and significantly reduce quality of life. Parkinson's disease cases (85-90%) are of unknown cause. About 10-15% cases are of hereditary in origin. Parkinson's disease is associated with degeneration of the basal ganglia of the brain and a deficiency of the neuro transmitter Dopamine. Parkinson's disease is characterized by four main symptoms:
Stroke (Brain Attack) - Stroke, also called brain attack, occurs when blood flow to the brain is disrupted. Disruption in blood flow is caused when either a blood clot or piece of plaque blocks one of the vital blood vessels in the brain (ischemic stroke), or when a blood vessel in the brain bursts, spilling blood into surrounding tissues (hemorrhagic stroke).
Symptoms may be sudden and include:
Motor Neuron Disease is a progressive condition characterized by degeneration of upper and lower motor neurons. Weakness is the primary symptom of MND and is usually first noticed in the extremities. It is also manifested as difficulty in speech and difficulty in swallowing. The course of MND is unremittingly progressive and in some cases the course of progression may be prolonged.The motor neuron diseases (MND) are a group of neurological disorders that selectively affect motor neurons, the cells that control voluntary muscle activity including speaking, walking, swallowing, and general movement of the body. They are generally progressive in nature, and cause increasingly debilitating disability in the body.
Hyperreflexia is defined as overactive or overresponsive reflexes. Examples of this can include twitching or spastic tendencies, which are indicative of upper motor neuron disease as well as the lessening or loss of control ordinarily exerted by higher brain centers of lower neural pathways (disinhibition).The most common cause of Hyper reflexia is Spinal cord injury.
Sciatica is a kind of neuralgia characterized by intense pain and tenderness extending from back to the thigh down to calf region then down towards foot and toes. Sciatica is nerve pain from irritation of the sciatic nerve. The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve in the body. Sciatica can be occurred suddenly or gradually. The pain can be associated with numbness, burning sensation and tingling sensationfrom the lower back and upper buttock down the back of the thigh to the back of the leg. The result is lumbar pain, buttock pain, hip pain, and leg pain. Sometimes the pain radiates around the hip or buttock to feel like hip pain. While sciatica is often associated with lower back pain (lumbago), it can be present without low back pain. Severe sciatica can make walking difficult if not impossible. Sometimes the symptoms of sciatica are aggravated by walking or bending at the waist and relieved by lying down. The pain relief by changing positions can be partial or complete.
Brachial neuritis is a term used to describe an inflammation of the brachial plexus that causes shoulder and arm pain, followed by weakness or numbness over the concerned area. Usually the pain is severe in character, and characterized by one or more of the following:
In normal walking, toe strike follows heel strike on ground. Weakness of ankle dorsiflexion disrupts this pattern. This results in less controlled descent of foot making a slapping noise.Foot drop is a walking abnormality in which the dropping of the forefoot happens due to weakness, irritation or damage to the common fibular nerve including the sciatic nerve, or paralysis of the muscles in the anterior portion of the lower leg. It is always an indicator of an underlying greater problem, . It is characterized by inability or impaired ability to raise the toes or raise the foot from the ankle. Foot drop may be temporary or permanent, depending on the extent of muscle weakness or paralysis and it can occur in one or both feet. In walking, the raised leg is slightly bent at the knee to prevent the foot from dragging along the ground.
Delirium, also known as acute confusional state, is an organically caused decline from proper mental functions. This usually takes the form of drowsiness with disorientation, perceptual disturbances with muddled thinking. It often has a fluctuating course, attentional deficits, and disorganization of behaviour. It may result from an underlying disease, over-consumption of alcohol, from drugs administered during treatment of a disease, withdrawal from drugs or from any number of health factors. Delirium may be caused by a disease process outside the brain orby drug effects. Persons typically fluctuate, confusion being worse at night and there may be associated emotional disturbance (eg. Anxiety, irritability or depression) or psychomotor changes (eg. agitation, restlessness or retardation).
Dementia is a syndrome that causes a long term and often gradual decrease in the ability to think and remember that is great enough to affect a person's daily functioning. Person's consciousness is usually not affected in dementia. It is referred as a neuro cognitive disorder. The common symptoms of dementia include
1. Emotional problems,
2. Problems with language,
3. Decrease in motivation.
The main causes for dementia are Alzheimer's disease, Stroke, Normal pressure hydrocephalus, Parkinson's disease, Syphilis, and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Efforts to prevent dementia include trying to decrease risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, and obesity.
