For the millions of people living with neurological conditions, muscles don’t just feel “tight”; they actively fight back. This involuntary resistance is known as spasticity, and it can turn a simple walk into an exhausting battle.
Beyond mobility, spasticity can affect sleep, cause pain, and lead to fatigue. These challenges can significantly impact everyday activities and routines.
Many people who struggle with spasticity use a range of treatments, techniques, and medications to help alleviate symptoms. Addressing spasticity often requires a multifaceted approach, including new wearable technologies that help to modulate spasticity and, in doing so, reduce muscle spasms.
“Normally, our brains send signals to our muscles to tell the muscles when to contract and how much to contract in order to produce movement or maintain posture. When these signals are disrupted due to a stroke or spinal cord injury, or in conditions such as MS, the individual may experience increased involuntary muscle activation or contraction. This is known as spasticity,” said Rebecca Webster, MSPT, PhD, vice president of clinical operations and research at Cionic. “During walking, spasticity may feel like stiffness in the leg making it difficult to bend the knee or to lift the toes to clear the foot.”
Spasticity is a symptom of damage to the upper motor neurons (UMNs). Disorders that damage the upper motor neurons (UMNs) can disrupt the signals that tell muscles to relax, leading to spasticity.
Clinically, spasticity is defined as a velocity-dependent involuntary resistance to stretch. This means that the faster you try to move a spastic limb, the more it resists the movement. Just like how a seatbelt locks up when you pull it too fast, spastic muscles lock up during rapid movement or walking.
Muscle spasticity is caused by an imbalance in signals from the central nervous system to the muscles that they are meant to direct.
When upper motor neuron pathways are damaged by conditions like stroke, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, or spinal cord injury, there is a loss of inhibition, and the muscles become overactive or spastic. They no longer receive the “relax” command they would normally receive from those UMN pathways.
A number of triggers can worsen spasticity, such as cold temperatures, fatigue, and stress. This is why a multifaceted approach is often used to treat spasticity.
If spasticity is left untreated, it can lead to permanent muscle shortening (also known as contractures), joint deformities, and severe pain. These can result in reduced gait speed, an increased risk of falls, and muscle fatigue from fighting with one’s own body all day.
Together, this can become a difficult cycle. The muscle spasms that come with spasticity can disrupt sleep, and both muscle fatigue and MS fatigue (a distinct neurological symptom) can further worsen spasticity.
Spasticity treatment is highly individual, and a person’s mobility care team often tailors a plan to their specific needs. In most cases, oral medications or botulinum toxin (Botox) injections are the first treatments, often used in combination with physical therapy for added support. Surgery is reserved for the most severe cases and is considered a last resort.
Some of the best nonsurgical spasticity treatments you can use to reduce muscle spasms are as follows:
The Cionic Neural Sleeve 2 is the first FDA-cleared wearable to simultaneously activate functional muscle movement and relax muscle spasms during walking and at rest.
Powered by Cionic’s proprietary MultiStim technology, the device combines motor stimulation that activates muscle movement with afferent, or sensory, stimulation that relaxes muscle spasms.
“It uses afferent stimulation to decrease the excessive muscle activation, thereby allowing the muscles to contract more effectively to create a smoother walking pattern,” said Dr. Webster. “In a home usability study for the Neural Sleeve 2, participants reported a significant reduction in lower extremity spasticity and pain when using this mode on the sleeve.”
Melissa, a Neural Sleeve user of several years, said that within a week of using the sensory stimulation setting on the Neural Sleeve 2, she noticed an improvement.
“I was sitting at my computer and I had just done 30 minutes with the sleeve,” she said. “I got up to go to the kitchen and, when I did, I just noticed that my gait was better. It was improved, it was different. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I connected it with the spasticity.”
The effect was so profound, she added, that over the next few weeks, she eased off one of her daily doses of baclofen, and found that the sensory stimulation continued to provide more ease than that dose of medication.
Jason, another Neural Sleeve 2 user, reports that the device has not only improved how he’s able to move during the day, but also how well he sleeps at night.
“I rarely wake up with leg cramps anymore,” he said. “[Now] I pretty much lay in one position all night… It’s your best medicine. Since I got the new sleeve, I’m sleeping better. And my wife is sleeping better because I’m sleeping better.”
Watch Jason's full interview on the Cionic podcast to hear about his journey with MS and how the Neural Sleeve 2 has helped with his muscle spasms.
Less Fatigue, More Progress: How the Neural Sleeve 2 Is Supporting One Man’s MS Journey
Struggling with muscle spasms? See if the Neural Sleeve 2 is right for your mobility journey. Take the free assessment today: Take the Assessment