Medical Questions » Muscles, Tendons, Ligaments Questions » Question No. 705
| Question: | What can cause muscle stiffness? I am elderly and it is not due to overuse. |
| Answer: | You do not give me any further clues about your symptoms, so I will run through all the possible causes of this problem.
Nerves run from the brain down the spinal cord to connect with a nerve to a muscle at the point where the nerves leave the spinal cord between each vertebra in the back. If the nerve from the brain is damaged by an injury, tumour, abscess or other disease (an upper motor neurone lesion), the brain will be unable to control the contraction and relaxation of the muscle, and it will go into a mild spasm to become stiffer and more rigid.
Damage by an injury, stroke, tumour, abscess or infection to the parts of the brain that control muscle movement will have the same effect as an upper motor neurone lesion.
Parkinson' s disease is caused by degeneration of part of the brain that coordinates muscle movement. The usual symptoms are tremor, shuffling walk and increased muscle stiffness.
Steele-Richardson-Olszewski syndrome is a variation of Parkinson' s disease that usually affects elderly women, and is characterised by muscle rigidity in the back, chest and belly; dementia; difficulty in swallowing; inability to look downwards; and frequent falls.
Multiple sclerosis is a nerve disease that can affect any nerve in the body in a random and intermittent way. The covering (myelin sheath) of the nerve degenerates and it ceases to function. The myelin sheath may then regenerate to allow nerve function to return, but then another nerve is affected. Abnormal signals reaching muscles through the damaged nerves may result in rigidity. Treatment is very difficult.
There are numerous rarer possibilities, including an underactive thyroid gland, the neuroleptic-malignant syndrome (usually a side effect of the excessive use of tranquillising medication in psychiatric conditions) and the Shy-Drager syndrome (a form of progressive brain degeneration).
The bottom line is that vou should have your muscle stiffness assessed by a doctor to determine its correct cause.
|
|
|
