Human physiology question (uncontrolled muscle contraction)?

Question

Hello to everyone. I have this hipotetic sitiuation that was given to me, but i can´t really find an answer to it, could you guys help me out?

"A patient went to see his doctor after having an episode of uncontrolled muscle contraction. The patient said it was very weird, he was taking deep breaths before entering the ocean and his muscles started contracting involuntarly for some minutes. That did not hapened again tough. The doctor told him to breath deeply for some minutes in his office. The pacient complied and after a while the sintomes returned again.”

So i see theres a connection between deep breathing and muscle involuntary contraction, but what is it technicly?

Answer 1

Ok.. this sounds like epilepsy. The muscle contraction is the tonic response.

A common technoque to induce an epileptic fit is to get someone to hyperventilate. This causes the blowing off of CO2 from the blood, and a decrease in the CO2 levels in the brain's vessels. This causes them to contract slightly and reduce the bloody supply... this then triggers the epilepsy.

If there is a clonic phase (the person goes floppy), then it is grand-mal. If there is no floppy phase, then it is a partial seizure (loss of consciousness= partial complexl; no loss= parial simple).

If it is partial, the fact that it is affecting motor function only, and whether there is a jacksonian march gives an indication of the location of the brain that is affected by the loss in blood flow.

I hope this helps!

Answer 2

Disagree with the Med student.  You can hyperventilate yourself into tetany. Some people HV mildly all the time, and it just takes a few deep breaths to trigger the symptoms.  The seizure type that is typically triggered by HV is PETIT MAL, and this does not sound at all like a petit mal episode. Further the physician reproduced the symptoms by hyperventilating the patient.  He should have recognized a seizure if that was the problem.

HV changes the pH of the blood, causing Calcium to go out of solution, producing tetany. He may have an abnormally low calcium to start with, and should be checked for that.  

Google "Tetany".