My appologies for all the questions of late but trying to learn whats happening , with regards to heat can anyone tell me how this effects MS as i believe it or not burned myself with a hotwater bottle and didnt even realise it until the next day when i was getting dressed i noticed wavy lines on my legs and stomach which is where i always put the hot water bottle to ease the pain , i thought it was a 1 off but had it several times also wheen i have a bath the water seems to really take it out of me i did see someone had posted about baths & heat but i cant find it , maybe someone knows of 1 of the publications that describes it for me many thanks
this has been discussed a few times here on other posts today,for most people with ms heat is no good at all, hot showers and baths are really bad,making you feel drained or really ill,or both,
i have had ms 22 years now,and it took ages for me to realise that having a hot bath left me unable to function much at all,for at least a few hours,until my core temperature had gone to normal.just google hot baths and ms,and it will explain it for you.
Can’t help with publications I’m afraid, but my MS Nurse told me that even an 0.5 degree rise in body temperature can exascerbate MS symptoms (it’s called Uhthoffs Phenomena if you want to Google it).
I hope you didn’t burn yourself too badly hun, I find it difficult to feel ‘applied heat’ due to numbness, so please be careful eh?
Thanks folks yep Mags maybe this is the reason i dont feel it , its weird cause when all the famly is cold im still warm and when they are warm i am roasting , will google the above and let my nurse know when i see her next
I don’t know if you have suffered a very hot day; yes we used to get them. Luckily I don’t anymore but here’s a few things that could help http://www.coolingvests.com.au/
I have to be really careful when I’m cooking as my hands don’t have much sensation. After a couple of little burns and a warnings from my neuro I now pay very close attention to hot pans and ovens. Tracey x
Hi Sheep, There are two different issues here. One is heat generally making things worse for many people with MS (but not all of us - I’m one of those who dreads cold more). But a completely different issue is losing the ability to distinguish hot and cold, like Tracey says. We tend to think of touch as basically just one sense, but in fact, it’s made up of several different aspects, and MS can cause you to lose just one of them, or any combination. So you can lose sensitivity to e.g. vibration, temperature, or even pain, or any combi. It sounds like your ability to detect temperature has been damaged, and so you couldn’t tell the hot water bottle was too hot, even though it was scalding you. When I had the relapse that led to my diagnosis, I lost almost all sensation in my feet, including temperature and pain. So I had to be very careful not to step into a scalding bath, as testing with a toe just couldn’t be relied on. I had to test with fingers, or even an elbow, like you’re supposed to for babies. And insensitivity to pain isn’t at all as fantastic as it sounds. At first I was delighted my feet stopped hurting, when the pain circuits suddenly flipped out, because thanks to MS, they’d been hurting for years. But then I found out it really wasn’t such a great idea, because I’d no idea if I’d injured myself, other than visually inspecting my feet. I couldn’t go without shoes, because I couldn’t tell if I was treading on anything sharp. There would be no clue unless I noticed blood. So I learnt that it does matter to be able to feel pain, otherwise you injure yourself without noticing, like you’ve done with the HWB. Not good. Tina x
During my big first relapse I had Utthophs, I had to let my food cool down otherwise it made feel worse. So I had to eat soup luke warm and rooasts dinners the same. I also became heat intollerant and had to sleep with my bedroom window open and a thin blanket on and it wasn’t hot summer…
folks i cant thankyou enough i really appreciate your replies and the bath and feeling ill after makes alot of sense to me , Anitra thanks everso much it seems that just maybe ive lost the ability to feel extreme heat in my stomach and thighs area as this is where the scalding occured ive always had a high pain threshold as i once scalded myself when the radiator cap blew on my boat and caught me in the face and arm , the arm was the worst part of the burrn being black and deep , i steamed all the way back to harbour and then on into A&E in the car the nurse there said it must be agony but to tell the truth it hurt yes but not agony and as i was then approx 8yrs into what they said was parkinsons it seems that that may have been the 1st alarm bell i missed.
hooks in hands etc etc never hurt perhaps as much as it should of and maybe this answers alot of questions , i will definately let my ms nurse know of the hwb incident but more importantly keep checking things when im near heat hazards.
Before MRIs were invented, putting a person in a hot bath for a bit to see what would happen next was a way of figuring out whether she had MS. Nothing like elevated core temperature to show up any tattered bits of wiring in the central nervous system!
It is perfectly normal for every bit of MS damage you have ever had to become temporarily much worse than usual when you are overheated. Overheating slows down nerve conduction generally, and you notice it first where there is MS damage already. But getting back to normal body temperature should mean a quick return to whatever passes for ‘normal’ these days, MS wise!
Alison
p.s. May I suggest a hot water bottle with a knitted cover? Very comfy!
xx