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Does anyone else get numbness if you're anemic? I'm anemic and p apparently numbness in your feet and hands are a symptoms of anemic. How do I differ its its ms related or anemic? Not sure if I need to call my neuro about this or not!
@A MyMSTeam Member I'm sorry, I didn't realize the anemia was a new diagnosis.
Okay, let's try this a different way. Start by tracking your symptoms. Many people have baseline symptoms (symptoms that you have almost all the time, even when you're not having a flareup) that may worsen during a flare up, and they may get new symptoms during a flare up. So for me, common baseline symptoms are things like fatigue, cognitive symptoms like memory difficulties and poor concentration, and dizziness, and some symptoms that I get during a flare up are neuropathy in my feet and hands (tingling, numbness and/or pain), and my baseline symptoms worsen, so I become even more fatigued, and I get so dizzy I fall down. But some of those symptoms overlap with the fibro symptoms. Cognitive symptoms and fatigue are common in fibro, but it's also accompanied by specific types of body aches. So, if I find myself with worsening fatigue and worsening cognitive symptoms I do an assessment. Have my body aches worsened, or have I been falling down a lot and my fingers feel numb? This can help me determine whether the worsening fatigue and cognitive symptoms can be attributed to MS or to fibro.
So, start tracking your symptoms, all of them. There's actually a really great symptom tracker you can use here: https://youtu.be/PRIAh80ZnIwTrack all of your symptoms each day so that you can get a good picture of what your baseline symptoms are. After that you can gain insight into which symptoms are caused by which diagnosis. Since the neuropathy can be caused by either MS or anemia, when you start experiencing that symptom you can do an assessment and determine if you have more worsening MS symptoms, more worsening anemia symptoms, or it's possible it could be both. You can even present your symptom tracker to your Drs so they can help you determine which symptoms may be caused by which diagnosis. I hope this helps.
Having multiple diagnoses with overlapping symptoms is never easy. Sometimes it's helpful to know which symptoms are unique to each diagnosis, so if you get tingling or numbness with multiple MS symptoms, or tingling and numbness with with symptoms of anemia, it's a bit easier to determine what's causing the overlap symptom. Of course, it's not always that simple. Sometimes you might be having symptoms from both diagnoses, and sometimes only the overlap symptom and nothing else. I would discuss the issue with each doctor involved in treating the two conditions and determine the best course of action for testing which diagnosis may cause the symptom. There may not be a simple way to do this, you may just have to count it as one of your list of symptoms. I have fibromyalgia as well as MS and common symptoms of both are fatigue, achiness, memory and cognitive issues, and lack of concentration. It's nearly impossible to distinguish each of these symptoms as being caused by one or the other. I just try to look for some of the symptoms that are definitely MS symptoms so that I'm not blowing off an MS flare up as being fibro symptoms. Heh
hi. I have both also. for me difference is....fibromyalgia...feels like a bad flu, dull aches, and mild temp. multiple scaled flare is a Neuromuscular pain...is quite different, fatigue level and ability to bounce back is how long you're down and then ability to get back up again. hugs.
@A MyMSTeam Member thanks!
@A MyMSTeam Member It is and I've been on iron supplement for a year now.
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