What's causing my symptoms?
Multiple sclerosis can cause a wide variety of symptoms, listed below. All of these symptoms can be experienced in other conditions.
In MS, the exact position of the damage to your nerves relates to the symptoms you experience, which means that each person’s experience of MS is different. Most people will only experience a small number of all the possible symptoms.
To find out more about a particular MS symptoms, click the link to take you to our A-Z page on that symptom. To see symptoms grouped by type or the part of the body they affect, click a box on the left. This will narrow down the list to the topics you’d like to know more about.
- Altered sensations
- Anxiety
- Ataxia
- Balance
- Bladder problems
- Bowel problems
- Breathing problems
- Constipation
- Depression
- Dizziness (vertigo)
- Double vision (diplopia)
- Dysarthria
- Dysphasia
- Erectile dysfunction
- Fatigue
- Foot drop
- Hearing problems
- Lhermitte's sign
- MS hug
- Nocturia
- Nystagmus
- Optic neuritis
- Pain
- Paroxysmal symptoms
- Pseudobulbar affect (pathological laughing and crying)
- Sexual problems for men with MS
- Sexual problems for women with MS
- Sleep
- Spasticity and spasms
- Speech problems
- Swallowing
- Temperature sensitivity
- Thinking and memory problems
- Tremor
- Trigeminal neuralgia
- Urinary tract infection (UTI)
- Visual problems
- Visuospatial problems
- Walking difficulties
- Weakness