Ataxia means you’re experiencing a loss of muscular coordination and poor balance because of some damage to your central nervous system, usually in the brain. Ataxia may affect your fingers, hands, arms, legs, body, speech and eye movements.
Ataxia may develop over time or cause you coordination problems suddenly. Some signs and symptoms of ataxia are:
- clumsiness
- inability to run
- unsteady walk
- speech changes
- frequent stumbling
- swallowing difficulty
- poor balance & coordination
- difficulty with eating, writing
Typically your balance and coordination are lost first.
Ataxia’s poor balance and loss of coordination can be brought on by an injury, infection or some other health condition affecting your central nervous system, for instance:
- stroke
- syphilis
- trichinosis
- alcoholism
- head injury
- chickenpox
- brain tumor
- encephalitis
- cerebral palsy
- celiac disease
- Refsum disease
- Whipple disease
- multiple sclerosis
- serotonin syndrome
- Legionnaires disease
- toxins ~ lead, mercury, cadmium
- vitamin E, vitamin B-12 deficiency
Ataxia is also used in reference to certain degenerative diseases of the nervous system called hereditary and sporadic ataxia. These types of ataxia include:
- episodic ataxia
- Wilson’s disease
- Friedreich’s ataxia
- ataxia-telangiectasia
- spinocerebellar ataxia
- congenital cerebellar ataxia
If your poor balance and loss of coordination is caused by a hereditary health condition, then you were born with a defect in a certain gene that makes abnormal proteins. These abnormal proteins interfere with nerve cells ability to function properly, which causes them to degenerate. As the disease progresses, your balance and coordination worsen.
There’s no specific treatment for ataxia. If your poor balance and loss of coordination is caused by an underlying health condition, then treatment of it may resolve the ataxia. And in some cases, ataxia resolves on its own.