What are the symptoms of muscle tone?

Author: Major Swaniawski  |  Last update: Thursday, April 3, 2025

Symptoms of High Muscle Tone
  • Stiff or rigid muscles, especially in the arms, legs, or neck.
  • Difficulty bending or straightening joints.
  • Exaggerated reflexes.
  • Difficulty walking.
  • Challenges with balance and coordination.
  • Poor posture when sitting.
  • Muscle pain, soreness, or twitching.

What is low muscle tone a symptom of?

Hypotonia means decreased muscle tone. It can be a condition on its own, called benign congenital hypotonia, or it can be indicative of another problem where there is progressive loss of muscle tone, such as muscular dystrophy or cerebral palsy.

What are the characteristics of muscle tone?

Muscle tone is the amount of tension (or resistance to movement) in muscles. Our muscle tone helps us to hold our bodies upright when we are sitting and standing. Changes in muscle tone are what enable us to move. Muscle tone also contributes to the control, speed and amount of movement we can achieve.

What are four disorders of muscle tone?

Muscle tone disorders include hypertonia, hypotonia, myotonia, atonia, and dystonia: Hypertonia is a condition marked by abnormally high levels of muscle tone. Hypotonia is a disorder involving an individual who has extremely low muscle tone.

What does increased muscle tone feel like?

Spasticity is stiff or rigid muscles. It may also be called unusual tightness or increased muscle tone. Reflexes (for example, a knee-jerk reflex) are stronger or exaggerated. The condition can interfere with walking, movement, speech, and many other activities of daily living.

Hypotonia Explained: What You Need to Know

How do you tell if your muscles are toning?

When your muscles are toned, they are firm and defined. This does not mean you need to be bulky. Toned muscles can be lean and strong. Muscle definition is about showing off the muscles you have.

What are the first symptoms of stiff person syndrome?

Stiff Person Syndrome Symptoms
  • Difficulty walking, and the person might space the feet wide to feel more steady.
  • A stiff or rigid posture due to ongoing spasms in the back or trunk.
  • Unsteadiness and falling because of sudden spasms, which can lead to injuries.
  • Shortness of breath if SPS affects muscles in the chest.

What organ causes poor muscle tone?

Some of the causes of hypotonia involve the brain. These include: Brain and spinal cord injury that may include bleeding into the brain. Serious infections of the brain and its parts like meningitis or encephalitis.

How to check for muscle tone?

Muscle tone is assessed by feeling the muscle's resistance to passive stretch. There is a considerable degree of normal variation. To test this, flex and extend the patient's elbow, wrists, knee, and ankle joints. If decreased resistance is suspected, hold the forearm and shake the hand back and forth loosely.

What disease increases muscle tone?

These include cerebral palsy (CP), traumatic brain injury (TBI), multiple sclerosis (MS), and some metabolic and genetic disorders. People with a spinal cord injury (SCI) or who have had a stroke (CVA) may have isolated areas of increased tone.

How to fix low muscle tone?

Exercises That Can Help Treat Hypotonia/Low Muscle Tone in Babies, Toddlers, and Children:
  1. Crawling Across Different Surfaces. Easy: Army crawl on carpet (increased resistance compared to tile or linoleum) ...
  2. Pulling to Stand. ...
  3. Squatting and Returning to Stand. ...
  4. Tall Kneeling. ...
  5. Other.

What part of the brain controls muscle tone?

The cerebellum fine tunes motor activity or movement, e.g. the fine movements of fingers as they perform surgery or paint a picture. It helps one maintain posture, sense of balance or equilibrium, by controlling the tone of muscles and the position of limbs.

What does low muscle tone look like in adults?

The symptoms and treatments are similar to those for children. Just as children with hypotonia can have difficulty standing up, adults can have difficulty moving to an upright position after lying down. Adults may show increased flexibility in their joints and generally seem clumsy.

What disease causes loss of muscle tone?

Muscular dystrophy is a group of diseases that cause progressive weakness and loss of muscle mass.

Can muscle tone be improved?

Research demonstrates that older adults can improve muscle tone, strength and function regardless of when they start. Strength exercises can improve bone density, balance, metabolism and more.

How do you know if you have low muscle tone?

Muscle tone is your body's response to force and allows you to maintain your posture to sit and use your reflexes, like moving your arms and legs, and helps regulate the function of organs in your body. If you have poor muscle tone, your arms and legs appear droopy, similar to a rag doll.

What does muscle spasticity feel like?

People with spasticity describe their muscles as feeling stiff, heavy and difficult to move. When spasticity is severe it can be very difficult to bend a limb at all. A spasm is a sudden involuntary tightening or contraction of a muscle.

How long does it take to notice muscle toning?

As a rough guide, you'll probably notice some initial changes in the first four to six weeks, but longer-term changes (what you're working toward) will often take around eight to 12 weeks.

What are the symptoms of weak body muscles?

Symptoms that occur suddenly:
  • Weakness or paralysis, usually on one side of the body.
  • Abnormalities in or loss of sensation on one side of the body.
  • Difficulty speaking, sometimes with slurred speech.
  • Confusion.
  • Dimness, blurring, or loss of vision, particularly in one eye.
  • Dizziness or loss of balance and coordination.

What famous people have hypotonia?

You might not believe it from the above description, but several athletes actually have low muscle tone – Michael Phelps, Michael Jordan and many Olympic gymnasts, to name a few!

What part of the body controls muscle tone?

Muscle tone is regulated by spinal and supraspinal mechanisms. While spinal control depends on the interaction between muscle spindle and spinal cord along with the interneurons, supraspinal control is regulated by facilitatory and inhibitory long tracts and cerebellum.

What autoimmune disease attacks the muscles?

Myositis. Myositis makes your immune system attack your muscles. Depending on which type of myositis you have, you'll have a hard time moving or using your affected muscles. There's no cure for myositis, but in most cases, treatment can put it into remission.

What is Celine Dion's disease?

Diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, a rare disease that took away her ability to walk, talk, and sing, she fought an inspiring battle to regain her health. Through intense physical therapy and the use of IVIg, a repurposed drug originally developed in 1952, she was able to make a remarkable recovery.

What can be mistaken for stiff person syndrome?

Both isolated axial dystonia and stiff person syndrome (SPS) are rare conditions that can look as similar as to pose difficulties even to movement disorder experts familiar with both conditions.

Previous article
What is the enemy of lice?
Next article
What vitamin gets rid of bags?