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VSI Regenerative Medicine

The nervous system can be a complex and confusing part of your body. It includes the brain, the spinal cord, the muscles, and all the nerves connecting them. A problem with any part of this pathway can cause you to have neurologic symptoms, which can include weakness in the arms or legs, numbness and pain in the arms or legs, headaches, confusion, nausea, vomiting, abnormal movements like tremors, and even difficulty with speech, language, and vision.

If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, please call to schedule an evaluation with our neurologist, who will perform a detailed history and physical examination. Extra testing, such as with MRI or EMG, might be necessary to help make a diagnosis and get you the treatment you need. When you choose VSI, you can expect to experience the best in class specialists, who will devise a custom treatment plan to get your living the life you want to live.

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When to Seek Care

For Your Neurological Symptoms

  • Weakness in the arms or legs
  • Numbness and pain in the arms or legs
  • New headache
  • Loss of vision or changes in vision
  • Tremor or other abnormal movements of the hands and legs
  • Seizures
  • Dizziness
  • Confusion or other memory problems
  • Problem with sleep
  • Any of the above symptoms after a blow to the head, car accident, or other traumatic event

Common Neurological Conditions

If the brain absorbs a severe enough impact, its activities will be similarly disturbed. Because of this disruption, the brain cannot focus on giving the rest of your body the right signals, and it displays symptoms of a concussion. A concussion can happen from a direct blow to the head or from a sudden start or stop that causes the brain to crash into the skull.

A migraine is more than just a headache; it is a complex neurological disorder that happens to be the sixth most disabling illness worldwide. The pain, rather than the dull ache of a typical headache, is more of a sharp, throbbing sensation that can last hours to several days.

To understand neuropathy, think of the nerves in your arms and legs as electric cords connecting your extremities to your spinal cord. Not only do they carry sensation from the arms and legs to the spinal cord, but they also carry directions on how to move from brain and spinal cord to your muscles. Just like electric cords, the nerves have a wire in the center and insulation around the wire, both of which are needed to transmit the signals. Neuropathy is when damage occurs to these electric cords, whether to the wire, insulation, or both.

The brain has many nerve cells that communicate via electric impulses. A seizure results when an abnormal surge of electric activity causes our awareness of the world around us to “crash”, just like a computer does. A “crash” for our brain may lead to loss of consciousness, along with abnormal actions. Once the abnormal activities end, the brain, just like the computer, needs a good restart. It can take a few hours after for the brain to return to its normal settings, and during this time the person who had the seizure may be confused, tired, sore, or even weak.

Tremors, also occasionally known as physiologic tremors or familial trenors, are the most common movement disorder, affecting approximately one in every twenty people worldwide. While it most commonly involves the hands, a tremor can affect the face, the legs, the voice, or the trunk. It is most often caused by a genetic mutation but can sometimes occur without one even if the brain looks completely normal on imaging.

Neuropathy

Treatment Options

The treatment of neuropathy depends on the cause. Neuropathy is often a sign of another condition rather than a disease on its own, and treating the condition that is causing it is usually the best way to treat neuropathy.

Possible treatment options for neuropathy:

  • Treatment of the disease causing neuropathy — control blood sugars, limit alcohol use, limit kidney damage, treat any autoimmune disease, etc.
  • Medications for nerve pain — gabapentin, Lyrica, Cymbalta, etc.
  • Physical Therapy
  • Vitamin supplementation

How do we treat seizures?

  • Anti-epileptic drugs
  • Epilepsy surgery
  • Avoidance of seizure triggers

How do we treat epilepsy?

Anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs) are the main treatments for epilepsy. For patients who do not have improved with the first AED, switching to another AED or trying two or more AEDs together is warranted. Patients who continue to have seizures despite two or more AEDs on maximum doses are candidates for epilepsy surgery. Epilepsy surgery is a procedure in which the part of the brain thought to be causing the seizures is removed with the goal of reducing or eliminating the number of seizures.

Seizure & Epilepsy

Treatment Options

Tremors

Treatment Options

A skilled neurologist can usually differentiate an essential tremor from a more serious cause of tremor, such as Parkinson Disease, on the basis of history and physical examination. Therefore, if you notice a tremor, it is important to have a neurologist assess it. Essential tremor, while not life-threatening condition, can interfere with your ability to do anything with the body parts involved.

Occupational therapy can often be helpful as a first step in helping patients learn strategies to work around their tremors. If the tremors continue to be a problem, there are several medication options available to try. Patients who continue to have difficulty with day-to-day tasks despite high doses of these medications may be candidates for deep brain stimulation, a surgery in which a pacemaker-like device is introduced into the brain to regulate the electric signals in parts of the brain involved in generating the tremor.

Possible treatment options for neuropathy:

  • Occupational therapy
  • Tools to help with day-to-day tasks — button hooks, slip on shoes, weighted utensils, etc.
  • Blood pressure medications that reduce tremors
  • Seizure medications that reduce tremors

Frequently Asked Questions

Neurology

  • Headache, neck pain
  • Blurred vision, light sensitivity, double vision
  • Difficulty concentration, loss of memory
  • Depression, anxiety, irritability, lack of sleep
  • Difficulty maintaining balance, nausea, vomiting

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The pain associated with a migraine is a sharp throb that tends to be more bothersome than the dull ache associated with more mild headaches. Additionally, other neurologic symptoms such as light or sound sensitivity, difficulty concentrating, dizziness, vision changes, nausea, and vomiting, all suggest that it is a migraine rather than an ordinary headache.

If you’ve had a previous EMG, our specialists will review this study. Often, this may need to be repeated based on the quality of the EMG or when the study was done. Sometimes EMG studies are repeated to monitor for any progression of neuropathy.

There are several different types of neuropathy based on the underlying cause. Some may progress quickly whereas others may gradually worsen over months and years. Evaluation with a neuropathy specialist is vital as the diagnosis will be made and treatment options can be discussed to help avoid any progression.

Most people make a complete recovery after a seizure. Many people who have one seizure may never have another one. Others may have a seizure disorder that requires treatment with medications. Some people, although rare, may have seizures that are life-threatening. It is important to determine if the seizure was provoked or unprovoked.

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