What muscles are affected by dystonia?

What muscles are affected by dystonia?

Cranial dystonia affects the head, face, and neck muscles. Oromandibular dystonia causes spasms of the jaw, lips, and tongue muscles. This dystonia can cause problems with speech and swallowing. Spasmodic dystonia affects the throat muscles that are responsible for speech.

Does dystonia affect smooth muscle?

Dystonia affects muscles that can be controlled voluntarily mostly the skeletal muscles. Dystonia does not affect smooth muscles, such as the heart. However, dystonia can affect breathing in several ways.

Does dystonia cause muscle weakness?

Dystonia causes varying degrees of disability that ranges from mild symptoms that come and go to severe, debilitating symptoms that can significantly affect a person’s quality of life. Only in some cases pain can be present. Usually there is no weakness in the affected muscle groups.

Do muscle relaxers help dystonia?

Muscle relaxants are sometimes used to treat cases of dystonia that fail to respond to other types of medication. They work by increasing the levels of a neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which helps to relax affected muscles.

What vitamins help with dystonia?

Dystonia has been reported to improve in two patients,3,5 and most patients with dystonia as a feature of their disease had stabilization or improvement of their other symptoms on high dose vitamin E (Table 1). One patient, however, experienced progressive dystonia despite escalating doses of vitamin E supplementation.

What is the best muscle relaxer for dystonia?

The most commonly used muscle relaxant in dystonia is baclofen, but other muscle relaxants include tizanidine (Zanaflex) and cyclobenzaprine (Flexeril), with limited benefits reported in some patients. Adverse effects are common and include sedation and dysphoria.

Does magnesium help dystonia?

Magnesium is used to treat Restless Leg Syndrome as well as slight muscle cramping, Charlie horse or strains from over exercising. Doses of magnesium will likely NOT put a stop to your dystonic symptoms. There are many ways to add more magnesium to your diet, if you wish to.

How do you treat dystonia naturally?

Lifestyle and home remedies

1. Sensory tricks to reduce spasms. Touching certain parts of your body may cause spasms to stop temporarily.
2. Heat or cold. Applying heat or cold can help ease muscle pain.
3. Stress management.

How do you reverse dystonia?

Anticholinergic agents and benzodiazepines are the most commonly used agents to reverse or reduce symptoms in acute dystonic reaction. Acute dystonic reactions are often transient but can cause significant distress to the patient. Although rare, laryngeal dystonia can cause life-threatening airway obstruction.