Learned from an MS patient that she suffers from the most severe neck pain in the wake of laughing fits.
All I could find written in this respect is that, like many other forms of bodily activities, so also laughter can provoke "paroxysmal MS manifestations".
Could this be due to an escalation of CSF shifts provoked by a repeated alternation of pressures surging up from jugular to intracranial veins on the one hand, and such pushing back from abdominal into epidural spinal veins on the other?
Couldn't this question be answered by real-time MRI studies of CSF dynamics?
I don't see why you can't get a Lhermitte sign from just laughter. As you know it's generally associated with coughing. I would be very surprised if a dynamic MRI could show the CSF flow or disc prolapse in real time, I think that there would be inadequate resolution in space and time.
Did you see anything comparable, Chris Oliver?
Had this only once: middle-aged MS patients, worst complaint a pain in the neck, persisting for hours. Provoked by nothing, also no coughing, but only by peals of laughter.
It's a pity no expert in Time-SLIP MRI could be found for examining her CSF dynamics.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Thermodynamics
- Pressure