![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Seizures.jpg\")
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This year in the US, it is estimated that almost 24 000 adults and more than 3 500 children will be diagnosed with cancerous tumors of the brain and spinal cord. Brain tumors are frightening because any operation involving the brain carries a huge risk. A big part of that risk is determined by how difficult it is to reach the tumor, depending on where it is situated. To top it all, brain and nervous system cancer – despite not being all that common – is the tenth highest killer among women.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no guarantee that a brain tumor is operable. While survival rates after operations vary, they are not very high: five-year survival rates are 34% for men and 36% for women. The chances of success depend on how early the tumor can be identified, so its growth can be managed, even if it can\u2019t be removed. What follows are the most common symptoms you should know.<\/p>\n
Approximately 60% of brain tumor patients will suffer seizures at some point. Seizures<\/a> are violent, jerky, and shaking movements that can cause a patient to collapse or otherwise lose temporary control of the limbs and facial muscles. Always make sure that someone having a seizure is not biting down on their own tongue, choking, or suffering from a concussion as a result of having bumped their head.<\/p>\n The kind of seizure we\u2019ve described is a myoclonic one, but seizures can also be tonic-clonic. In the case of the latter, the person loses control of their whole body, including bodily functions, and may be unconscious for about 30 seconds. This is followed by the patient looking blue as a result of oxygen deprivation afterward. Often, a seizure is the first indicator of a tumor. tumors press against or otherwise irritate and obstruct the neurons responsible for sending signals from the brain to other parts of the body.<\/p>\n If you have a headache that does not go away, you shouldn\u2019t automatically think \u2018tumor\u2019 as headaches can be caused by a wide spectrum<\/a> of other conditions. However, brain tumor patients do report having headaches in 50% of cases. Brain tumor head pains are usually dull and persistent, rather than fiercely sharp, and are worse in the morning. This is because, most likely, the tumor is interfering with pain receptors in the brain, or exerting pressure on it, the delicate membrane lining the brain.<\/p>\n Headaches due to tumors rarely manifest alone. Rather, they are accompanied by other symptoms. The pain could be all over or worse on one side. Often, the other present symptoms are vomiting; and a pain that specifically worsens when you try to be active, sneeze, cough, bend, or exert pressure during a bowel movement. Another common accompanying symptom is a blurred, double, or impaired vision. Consequently, you may think you have a migraine, not a tumor.<\/p>\n Brain tumor<\/a>s can impede many areas of cognition, often subtly. You\u2019ll still be able to function but be aware that something is \u2018off\u2019. Some cognitive aspects that could be affected are Memory: You may find yourself taking longer to commit something to memory or struggle more than usual to recall something.<\/p>\n Problem-solving: You may find it challenging following simple instructions or a set of progressively more difficult instructions, especially when this was never the case before. Examples include figuring out directions, following recipes, or doing simple maths. Concentration: You may find your thoughts interrupted, blank, or wandering more than normal. Confusion: This can be mild or quite severe, such as having to drop out of a conversation or not remembering the face of someone known to you well.<\/p>\n Spatial problems: Clumsiness and depth perception could set in. You may find yourself making accidents more often, such as dropping things or bumping into them.<\/p>\n The need to throw up can be a stand-alone symptom but it will most commonly present itself in a bundle of symptoms. Vomiting<\/a> that accompanies dull, persistent headaches is reported widely in brain tumor patients. When you need to throw up in the morning, even when not feeling queasy, this could be tumor-related. Besides being most common in the morning, when a tumor is behind the seemingly random but persistent need to throw up, it is linked to sudden movements.<\/p>\n These could be as simple as rolling over in bed, standing up quickly, bending down, changing from jumping to skipping, or suddenly engaging in physical activity. The abruptness and any usual feelings of nausea prior to throwing up are what would link vomiting to a brain tumor. It is usually therefore due to something else if you feel nauseous and expect to throw up, or your vomiting can be explained by something else such as a migraine or bug.<\/p>\n Depending on where the tumor is and how big the swelling is, patients with brain tumors could find their personality or moods changing in ways different from before, and inexplicably so. They may like things they never did before and vice versa. It could be more extreme than this: adult patients may, for example, laugh at inappropriate times, have a sudden surge in sex drive, throw temper tantrums, exhibit toddler-like behavior, become paranoid, or engage in risky social and other activities.<\/p>\n It’s also possible that your existing personality becomes magnified. In other words, your likes, fears and general inclinations may be magnified instead of changing. Your existing personality traits may become extreme. Brain tumor patients have been known to develop what seems like depression but are not \u2018true\u2019 or real depression. In this way, brain tumors are like aneurysms, which also cause inexplicable personality changes. Aneurysms<\/a> are blood swellings within the veins or arteries that could burst and be fatal.<\/p>\n As an adult, things like walking or being able to sit down in your chair, not next to it on the floor, are pedestrian. In other words, these things are so common that we take them for granted. Until that is, something like a brain tumor develops. Brain tumors can interfere in the physical aspects of being in big and small ways. They may cause stroke-like symptoms, such as not being able to walk properly or without assistance.<\/p>\n They may cause a lack of strength on one side of the body. Clumsiness, dizziness<\/a>, loss of balance, extremely slow or unsure movements, and stumbling are ways in which movement is disrupted frequently. If you feel your gait, rhythm, or style of walking has altered without cause, or you are struggling to coordinate movements, for example between your upper and lower limbs, a cranial swelling or tumor could be the cause. Also, watch out for difficulty in swallowing for no apparent reason.<\/p>\n Changes to vision, such as double vision, often come along with headaches<\/a> and vomiting. However when a tumor is present, the headache will be dull rather than sharp, and often no nausea precedes the vomiting. Some brain tumors – depending on where they are situated – can cause visual or auditory disturbances all on their own, without any other symptoms, too. Problems with vision can include seeing flashing lights, red or colorful dots; experiencing double vision, blurred vision, and loss of vision.<\/p>\n Hearing disturbances can include one-sided hearing loss and persistent ringing in the ears as may happen after attending a loud music event, except that you did not attend such an event. When a tumor involves the brainstem, your pupil in one eye may become enlarged. If this kind of one-sided dilation happens, you have an emergency on your hands and should see a doctor immediately or call an ambulance and have yourself admitted to a hospital emergency ward.<\/p>\n This could present as part of the bundle of changes affecting cognition, or personality changes. However, it can also be a stand-alone symptom that warrants attention. Typically, changes to speech involve slurring words, not being able to pronounce them properly, or difficulty speaking coherently and loudly (i.e. not mumbling). If you have a brain tumor, you may have difficulty forming or finding words, or say things that don\u2019t make much sense and are random – even by random standards.<\/p>\n But, you may also be on the receiving end of the spectrum<\/a> because your auditory perception has been altered. In other words, you may have difficulty interpreting and making sense of the speech of others. You may interpret a perfectly well enunciated, logical sequence of words as incoherent babble from time to time. These changes may not be common at first and may present themselves as struggling to find the words and having your vocabulary shrink, without anyone else noticing.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve already addressed changes to speech and auditory problems – the usual suspects such as loss of hearing in one ear, or blurred or double visions. However, these problems could be on a different scale altogether. This is particularly so when temporal lobe tumors are to blame. The temporal lobes are heavily involved with the functions of speaking and hearing. Tumors in these cranial segments can lead to auditory hallucinations<\/a>, that is, hearing things.<\/p>\n You could also develop an inability to understand speech, which is called receptive aphasia, in addition to changes to your vision. Symptoms such as deja vu experiences, depersonalization (such as speaking about yourself in the third person), and seeing things as either much bigger or smaller than they actually are can also manifest. In addition, both the frontal lobe and temporal lobe tumors may cause emotional changes. Examples are an increase in aggressiveness, domineering behavior in an otherwise mild person, or frequent crying without deep provocation.<\/p>\n The various lobes determine different brain control centers for different functions in the body. Accordingly, the nature of your tumor or where it sits will determine the changes you experience. The parietal lobes at the top of the brain can result in changes in sensation on the opposite side of the body. Therefore, you may feel heavy, stinging, ticklish, or any other sensation which you ordinarily wouldn\u2019t, and it would be on the opposite side of the body.<\/p>\n This area of the brain is also crucial in coordinating different parts of the brain<\/a>. As a result, tumors may result in problems with orientation as well as recognition. You may struggle with direction, go upstairs when you mean to go downstairs, and get fairly lost quickly. These symptoms are often confused as early-onset Alzheimer’s until further tests are done. If you have this tumor, you may ignore one side of your body or experience sudden, inexplicable pain on one side.<\/p>\n The occipital lobes at the back of the brain are involved in vision. Symptoms can vary from hallucinations to visual field defects, such as only seeing select images in the world around you. Frighteningly, it can also involve cortical blindness, or vision loss<\/a> despite nothing physically being wrong with your eye. If you feel both off-balance when you walk or issues with your physicality are coordination related, it could be that you have a cerebellar tumor.<\/p>\n The cerebellum, which such a tumor would affect, sits at the lower back of the brain. It is what governs balance and coordination. If you have a tumor in this region, your lack of coordination could make you resemble someone who has had too much to drink. As a result, you are also likely to have your motor skills impeded. This could mean difficulty with fine motor skills in particular, such as writing or brushing teeth.<\/p>\n When children have brain tumors, the symptoms are the same as in adults many times. Children often experience seizures<\/a>, hearing and vision changes, and changes to physicality in the way adults do. However, some symptoms are peculiar to children, as sad as it may be to think of the very young having brain tumors. A headache that wakes up a child from sleep or a period of deep calm and rest.<\/p>\n If a child fails to reach the normal developmental milestones for their age There is also a category of symptoms so severe it can cause death if not seen to immediately. These usually stem from a brain tumor that is causing severe pressure against the skull or cranium. This is why sometimes patients have to undergo emergency procedures to relieve \u2018swelling on the brain\u2019. Because the skull creates a hard, non-elastic, enclosed space, a brain tumor that swells in size poses enormous risks and causes serious complications.<\/p>\n The pressure cannot be released, so is transferred to other areas of the brain. When brain tissue is squeezed, it can lose function or be pushed down toward or into the top part of the spinal cord<\/a>, depending on the location. When the latter happens, it is known as the herniation. Herniation can result in dilated pupils, very rapid breathing, an irregular heartbeat, and loss of consciousness. If these symptoms are not urgently treated, the patient may die.<\/p>\n Although fatigue<\/a> can be a common symptom in the fight against brain cancer, it is often dismissed or incorrectly attributed to one of many things: depression, thyroid problems, lack of exercise, anxiety, sleep deprivation, and more. The problem with chronic fatigue is that it is often incredibly difficult to isolate the exact cause, so a tumor would not be the first thing your doctor tests for. But, most brain tumor survivors will attest to severe fatigue not just before their operations but after it as well.<\/p>\n The kind of fatigue described is not only persistent but one that radically detracts from the quality of life. This kind of tiredness can\u2019t be fixed by a good night\u2019s sleep, and can also lead to not executing daily functions or having to skip work often. If you are convinced that your fatigue is beyond mere exhaustion, and other reasonable options have been ruled out, the possibility of a tumor should be considered.<\/p>\n If you can\u2019t look up this is a very particular symptom that is related to the pineal gland. The pineal gland is situated deep within the brain. Only 1% of all tumors are pineal gland tumors, but these tumors also account for 3% to 8% of all the intracranial tumors that occur in children. There are at least 17 different types of tumors in this region of the brain, with the good news being that most of them are usually benign.<\/p>\n The common symptoms are headache, nausea<\/a> and throwing up, seizures, memory disturbances, and visual changes. The important thing to note is that this gland is involved with eye movements. So a pineal tumor can also cause visual changes because it involves the nearby tectal region which has a role in controlling eye movements. Symptoms, if it is affected, include double vision, not being able to focus on an object, and not being able to look sideways or up.<\/p>\n The pituitary gland controls things like growth, especially during the teenage years, and also menstrual cycles and lactation in women. Hormones<\/a> are also closely connected to pituitary gland functioning. Therefore, if there is a tumor in this region, the symptoms could be many, varied, and far-reaching. The first signs of a pituitary tumor are often determined by whether the tumor is a tumor is functional (producing an excess of hormones) or non-functional (not producing excess hormones).<\/p>\n If functional, then most of the time too much of a single hormone is produced leading to \u2018weird\u2019 symptoms. This is further complicated when the tumor presses on nerves in the brain. The result could be eyeballs moving in the opposite direction or \u2018squint\u2019 eyes, infrequent or never-ending periods, random lactation, or growth in the foot or hand region that is disproportionate to the rest of the body.<\/p>\n A spinal cord tumor at the upper end of the spinal cord can also be a brain tumor. This can cause swelling in the brain. With nowhere to expand, the brain can go into the upper spinal cord, or obstruct the fluid from flowing through the spinal cord. Drowsiness<\/a>, or even going into a coma, can be the result. The other symptoms are the general ones we have already covered – headaches, nausea, vomiting, blurred or double vision, balancing incorrectly, personality or behavior changes, seizures.<\/p>\n However, with the risk of spinal fluid being obstructed, and the all-important messages from the brain to organs and limbs of the body not reaching them, an important additional symptom that could be here is partial paralysis. It could be sudden or manifest as a gradual numbness in an arm or leg. It could, for example, also be stroke-like muscle weakness, or Bell’s Palsy-like partial paralysis of the face.<\/p>\n There is a particular set of symptoms when too much growth hormone (GH) is secreted, thanks to pressure from a tumor nearby. In children, it can lead to what is commonly called gigantism. Nearly all the bones in the body of a child may be stimulated to grow, and these may be the symptoms: being very tall, very rapid growth, joint pain<\/a>, and increased sweating,<\/p>\n In adults, there are other symptoms such as hands and feet that just continue growing, or the skull and face could continue to grow throughout life. In addition, the voice could get deeper, the shape of the face could change, there would be numbness or tingling in the hands and feet, there could be increased sweating, thicker skin, and increased appearance of body hair. In females, this could be in awkward places, such as the chin or mustache hairs sprouting more commonly than is usual.<\/p>\n\r\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/headache-3.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n2. Persistent Headaches<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Short-term-memory.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n3. Altered Cognition<\/h3>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Vomiting_men.jpg\")
4. Vomiting<\/h3>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Irritability.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n5. Personality Or Mood Fluctuations<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Structural-Problems-with-Gallbladder.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n6. Changes To Physical Abilities<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Itching_Ears.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n7. Changes To Vision And Hearing<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Facial-Palsy.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n8. Changes To Speech<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/fidgeting.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n9. More Sophisticated Speaking And Hearing Challenges<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Stressful-Thoughts.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n10. Parietal Lobe Tumor Changes, Such As Changes In Sensation<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Difficulty-with-writing.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n11. Occipital Lobe And Cerebellar Tumor Symptoms<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Inappropriate-Reactions.jpg\")
12. Brain Tumor Symptoms Unique To Children<\/h3>\n
Drastic changes to behavior, such as a quiet child being prone to be loud and screaming and boisterous, without this being attributable to a phase. A normally bubbly child may also become quiet. A child may turn his or her head to see something, instead of just looking in that direction with his or her eyes.
Vomiting that is often projectile in nature, with the child denying that he or she is feeling queasy.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/eye-glaucoma.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n13. Dilated Pupils And Increased Or Irregular Heartbeat<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Stress.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n14. Fatigue<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Aging.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n15. An Inability To Look Up<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Growth-Spurt.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n16. Growth In Hands And Feet<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Joint-Pain_Rheumatoid.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n17. Gradual Numbness In An Arm Or Leg<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/tall-vs-short.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n18. Growth Hormone Symptoms<\/h3>\n
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