10 Nerve Damage Symptoms
Symptom #10: Muscle Atrophy
Muscle atrophy occurs when the muscles start to waste away due to lack of physical activity. It can occur when there is sedentary lifestyle, disease, or injury that causes difficulty with movement. Muscles that have atrophied will appear smaller compared to normal. This can be best seen when it affects one of the limbs as the normal limb can be used for comparison. Besides appearing smaller, atrophied muscles are also weaker.
Some conditions that can cause muscle atrophy include spinal cord injury, peripheral nerve injury, stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, and muscular dystrophy. In nerve injury, when there is loss of continuity of the nerve, the muscle it supplies can no longer move as it is not receiving a signal from the brain. The lack of movement and activity in the muscle causes it to atrophy.
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