Several conditions affect how your brain communicates with your body’s nerves and muscles, leading to a symptom of hypertonia. What conditions have hypertonia as a symptom? Problems with how your baby’s brain formed during fetal development.Conditions that affect how nerves communicate with muscles.Birth injury like lack of oxygen when moving down the birth canal.If your muscle tone is too high, your brain is unable to tell your nerves to let your muscles relax.Ĭauses of pathway damage that lead to a hypertonia diagnosis include: If there’s damage or any interference in your brain’s pathways, your muscles are unable to hear what the nerve signals are telling them to do. Pathways that connect nerves to your brain manage and control muscle tone. What causes hypertonia?Ī communication error in your central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), which regulates how nerves and muscles interact, causes hypertonia. Contracture makes it difficult to move affected body parts.
Severe cases of hypertonia result in contracture, when joints freeze in place and muscles, tendons, tissues and skin permanently tighten, making your joints short and extremely stiff. Involuntary muscle twitching or jerking ( myoclonus).Limited joint movement and very little flexibility.The severity of symptoms depends on the location of the injury to the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms vary from person to person diagnosed with hypertonia. Symptoms of hypertonia are the result of muscles being too stiff. Your child may have a hard time walking because their muscles are stiff and they may be off-balance and fall, as their body doesn’t respond quickly enough so they can regain their balance. Hypertonia will make it difficult for your child to move their arms and legs, as there’s a disconnect between how their brain communicates to their nerves and muscles, telling them when to contract (relax) their muscles. How does hypertonia affect my child’s body? The rate of occurrence is unknown, as hypertonia can be a symptom of another condition. Hypertonia is less common than hypotonia (weak muscle tone) in babies, which is the most common condition that affects a newborn’s motor skills. It’s normally diagnosed in babies before two years of age. The diagnosis could occur after an injury or as a symptom of an underlying condition that is congenital (present at birth). Hypertonia can affect both babies and adults who experience damage to their central nervous system. To identify which type of hypertonia your baby has, your healthcare provider will move your baby’s arm or leg from a relaxed position at different speeds in a range of directions. Dystonic hypertonia (rigidity): Muscle stiffness doesn’t change with movement.Spastic hypertonia (spasticity): Exaggerated reflexes and muscle spasms increase with movement.There are two types of hypertonia that describe muscle tone: Children with hypertonia have poor balance, trouble walking, difficulty reaching and grabbing objects, and sometimes they need help eating. If you have too much muscle tone, your movements will be robotic because you’re unable to relax your muscles and you have limited flexibility. Muscle tone allows you to maintain good posture when sitting, controls your reflexes and helps regulate the function of your organs in your body. The resistance you feel is your muscle tone. You can feel your muscle tone if you pinch your bicep while it’s relaxing. Muscle tone is the amount of resistance (tension) to movement in your muscles. Infants and newborns diagnosed with hypertonia have stiff muscles, especially their arms, legs and neck, which can be difficult to move.
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