Healing Naturally, Restoring Balance

What Is Paralysis?

Paralysis is when you can’t move certain parts of your body after something goes wrong with their connection to your brain. It comes in many different forms and can be temporary or permanent, or even come and go. Someone who is paralyzed because of a sudden injury often can’t feel or move anything at all in their affected body parts.
Someone paralyzed by a medical condition, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), might feel tingling or muscle weakness.
Paralysis can cause problems with blood flow, breathing, how your organs work, speaking or swallowing, sexual responses, or controlling the urge to go to the bathroom, depending on where you’re paralyzed and how bad it is.

What is temporary paralysis?

Some people with paralysis regain their ability to move the muscles involved. So, their paralysis is temporary. For example, that happens with Bell’s palsy, a type of facial paralysis. There’s also a rare condition called periodic paralysis that causes sudden repeated attacks of muscle weakness, stiffness, or paralysis. The symptoms go away between attacks.
  • Complete paralysis is when you can’t move or control your paralyzed muscles at all. You also may not be able to feel anything in those muscles.
  • Partial or incomplete paralysis is when you still have some feeling in and possibly control over your paralyzed muscles. This is sometimes called paresis.
  • Generalized paralysis is more widespread in your body and is grouped by how much of your body is affected. The type usually depends on where your brain or spinal cord is injured. These types include:
  • Monoplegia, which affects just one limb Diplegia, whichaffects the same area on both sides, like both arms, both legs, or both sides of your face
  • Hemiplegia, which is on just one side of your body and is usually caused by stroke damage on one side of your brain
  • Quadriplegia (or tetraplegia), which is when all four limbs are paralyzed, sometimes along with certain organs
  • Paraplegia, which is paralysis from the waist down Locked-in syndrome, the rarest and most severe form, where a person loses control of all their muscles except the ones that control their eye movements

Spastic paralysis vs. flaccid paralysis

Paralysis can be stiff, or spastic, when your muscles are tight and jerky. Most people with cerebral palsy have spastic paralysis.
Or it can be floppy, or flaccid, when your muscles sag and eventually shrink. Polio was once a common cause of flaccid paralysis.

Causes of Paralysis

Paralysis is most often caused by strokes, usually from a blocked artery in your neck or brain. It also can be caused by damage to your brain or spinal cord, the kind that can happen in a car accident, fall, or sports injury, or as a result of a gunshot wound.

Some people are paralyzed by a condition present at birth, such as spina bifida. Brain injuries before, during, or shortly after birth can lead to the movement disorder known as cerebral palsy.

Some kinds of paralysis are caused by health conditions or diseases, including those linked to specific genes.

Paralysis Symptoms

If you have paralysis, you are partly or completely unable to move the affected parts of your body. You might also lose some or all the feeling in those parts. This happens suddenly with strokes and spinal cord injuries.
But in some cases, symptoms can develop more gradually. You might experience:

  • A steady loss of feeling
  • Trouble moving parts of your face or body
  • Weakness or floppiness
  • Muscle cramps
  • Numbness or tingling
    Stiffness
  • sudden signs of paralysis after an injury to the head, neck, or back, or shows the following symptoms:

Trouble speaking, breathing, or swallowing
Loss of feeling or movement on one side of the face or one arm
Tingling and a loss of feeling anywhere in the face or body

Paralysis Diagnosis

To understand what’s causing your problem, your doctor will examine you and ask about any recent injuries. If your symptoms came on gradually, they’ll ask when you first noticed them.

You might get several tests, such as:

  • A myelogram, to get detailed pictures of your spinal cord, using a special dye injected in the spinal column
  • An EMG (electromyogram), a test of the electrical activity in your nerves and muscles
    A spinal tap (lumbar puncture), a test in which some cerebrospinal fluid is taken from your spine and tested for infection, inflammation, and signs of certain diseases.

Depending on the type of paralysis you have and its location, you might develop complications such as:

  • Trouble breathing
  • An increased risk for
  • pneumonia
  • Blood clots
  • Speech problems
  • Swallowing problems
  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Trouble getting and
  • keeping an erection
  • Other sexual functioning problems
  • Very high or low blood pressure
  • Trouble controlling when you pee or poop
  • Pressure sores (bed sores) Blood infections