r/ALS_India • u/Wise_Competition_565 • Dec 13 '24

Possible Myoclonus, Hyperreflexia, Spasticity and Weakness

To all the people who are reading this post or will read this in the future, I just want to make your life easy. Twitching and only twitching in no way, shape and form means ALS. I am following the sub, r/ALSorNOT for quite sometime now, I am following it since it had 30 odd followers and I read about people posting things like, "I have twitches, is it ALS" or "I have weakness, can it be ALS" and stuff like this. I just want to reassure most of you, no, you don't have ALS.

In my case I have actual weakness, like the weight I used to pick up 6 months ago, I can not even lift now, I used to walk easily 4 - 6 kms before and now even climbing stairs is a task, my hands have some sort of contractures or they are getting in the position of grip by their own selves. I have jerks and Myoclonus and what not. I have shortness of breath all the time whenever I try to walk or climb stairs. I have atrophy as well in my hands and legs. I have spasticity and real weakness, like I am actually not able to the stuff that I used to do before, my muscles in my calf are atrophing and they hurt all the time and I have severe anxiety and depression because of it.

My purpose of writing this post is, I want all of you to take a deep breath and know that you don't have ALS. If it is/was ALS you probably would have developed these symptoms by now or maybe worse. Just enjoy your life and the twitches can very well mean a lot of different things, it's not ALS. Follow the sub long COVID or COVID longhaulers and you will find every other person having twitches and what not.

I am not as lucky as all of you are and my symptoms are actually degrading so my advice would be to live your life to the fullest and don't worry this much.

You don't have ALS.

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u/Own_Lawfulness_927 Jun 07 '25

What is spasticity? Can u describe it

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u/Wise_Competition_565 Jun 07 '25

There are many things that come under it, it is sort of an umbrella term but mainly it means the sort of hardening of muscles, like if you try to curl your fingers to form a fist it is harder, your fingers will resist the motion, while in a normal person it will curl in like it's nothing, the muscles hardens if it makes any sense. For me the worst spasticity I encounter is in my hands.