Nervous system helps in regulating and coordinating complex body mechanisms and has been broadly classified into:
- Central Nervous System: it is a processing unit and mainly consists of brain and spinal cord.
- Peripheral nervous system: all neural elements which include all peripheral and autonomic nerves, helps in transmission of the sensory information from the skin, muscles, joints and other parts to the brain
Apart from central and peripheral system, there are other organs of the nervous system i.e.
- Eyes
- Ears
- Sensory taste receptors
- Sensory smell receptors
- Sensory receptors of skin, muscles, joints and other parts of our body
Whenever there is any disruption in the processing or the transmission, neurological symptoms develop.
What are the causes for the Symptoms?
As nervous tissue is fragile, they are very vulnerable and susceptible to any kind of injury.
- Trauma: head injury, spinal injury, fractures of the skull and spine, peripheral nerve injury crushing injury, burns, gunshot, assault or electric shock injury.
- Infection: Tubercular or pyogenic abscess, spinal tuberculosis, epidural abscess, meningitis or encephalitis
- Degeneration: Parkinson disease, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Huntington chorea, and Alzheimer disease
- Neoplastic: Metastatic tumors from different parts of body, Primary tumors of brain and spinal cord, tumors of skull and vertebrae, tumors arising from the nerves, tumors arising from duramater
- Vascular: Stroke, Transient ischeamic attack, subarachnoid hemorrhage, hypertensive intraparenchymal hemorrhage, extradural and subdural heamorrhage.
- Autoimmune: Guillain-Barré syndrome, lupus, secondary to HIV or EBV infection
- Systemic: Diabetes induced peripheral neuropathy
- Functional : headache, epilepsy, neuralgia, hemifacial spasm, dizziness
Symptoms :
- Persistent or sudden onset of a headache
- Nausea with or without vomiting
- Altered taste or smell sensation
- Loss of sensation or tingling or numbness or burning sensation
- Confusion, lethargy, fainting or loss of consciousness
- Weakness or loss of muscle strength
- Involuntary movements of muscles
- Loss of sight or double vision
- Memory loss
- Impaired mental ability
- Lack of coordination
- Muscle rigidity
- Loss of bladder bowel control
- Tremors and seizures
- Back pain which radiates to the feet, toes, or other parts of the body
- Muscle wasting and slurred speech
- Difficulty in swallowing or facial weakness (facial asymmetry)
- Unequal pupillary size
- New language impairment (expression or comprehension)
- Paralysis of one side of body
Risk factors for neurological diseases:
Not all people who has these risk factors develop the symptoms, but these patient are more at risk to develop them
- Alcohol or illicit substance abuse
- Diabetes
- Exposure to toxic substances or poisons
- Family history of degenerative neurologic conditions
- High blood pressure
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Repeated physical motion or stress
So, whenever you come across such symptoms, one should always try to seek help from the general practitioner and if required should get himself thoroughly examined from a neurophysician or neurosurgeon.
