Paralyzed from the waist down?

Question

firstly, I'M NOT TRYING THIS.

I'm doing a report on it for medical studies class.
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How does one become paralyzed from the WAIST down? AKA, Your legs can't work.

Where do you get injured for this to happen? What kind of injury does it take for this to happen? What are common ways this occurs and what is your fate after it happens.

Do you have any feeling at all in your legs?
What kind of feeling is there?

Answer 1

Yeah, I would go for something along the spine answer. I actually have pinched nerves and arthritis in my lower back - this causes days/times when I am unable to walk adn can barely move. I usually end up dragging my body around the house with the strength of my arms to get to the bathroom and bedroom - it sucks :-\.

Answer 2

Usually, you get that kind of paralysis from a spine injury, particularly one around the waist area. Quite simplified, it works like this: Electrical impulses go from the brain to the spine and from there to the whole body, so, if the spine gets severed or broken, the signals can't cross the injured part of the spinal cord, and so won't reach anything below the injury. If the injury is in your waist, you'll lose your legs. If it's higher up, you might lose feeling in your arms, torso and neck, too.
As for a spinal injury, you just don't have any feeling at all. In most cases, though not all of them, this people has lost sphincter control, and in some they can still have sex, since that's more or less "automatic", so to speak.
Common ways for a spinal lesson to happen would be surf, parachuting, a bad fall, and the classic horsie, popularized by Christoper Superman Reeves.
Hope this helped you!

Answer 3

The obvious answer here is a spinal cord injury. A spinal cord injury can be complete or incomplete. If it is complete, the nervous system is cut off from any structures of the body that are innervated from that level of the cord or below. In a complete injury, the victim would not have feeling below the level of injury.

The legs are innervated from the lumbar spine (L1-L5) and also from some sacral roots (below lumbar). If a person has a complete spinal cord injury at L1, they would not have any leg function at all. If say it was L4, they could still flex their hip and straighten their knee, but there feet and ankles would be largely shut down.

Answer 4

There's different levels in the back, vertebral cut offs that when injured control where you are paralyzed. C1- C7 are neck, and if the spine breaks there or shatters you risk from the neck down, C1-C2 is the worse as that controls the blood supply to the head and the sympathetic nervous system, you'd wind up like Christopher Reeves. T1 to T12 control arms, hands, various organs, shattering or breaking the spine there would result in waist down, as well as the Lumbar vertebrae L1 to L5 would be waist down. You don't have feeling in the legs no, you don't feel anything, it's heavy dead weight more so then when your foot goes totally to sleep, because you can't feel it or move it.

Automobile accidents, falls are usually the ways it happens. Your fate is a little better nowadays then before because of wheelchairs, motorized ones, then vans equipped with hand controls you have more accessibility and are able to go out more than in the past, you're more independent. They are studying therapies too like oxygen, stem cell, and various modalities that help train your brain to move parts that wouldn't move before. Christopher Reeves did gain feeling in his one hand, not sure how much, and there are Japanese studies now that have paralyzed teens walking even tho they can't feel it, it's pretty fascinating how far we've come. It used to be paralyzed meant totally dependent on others for life and way back bedridden, it's so much better now than then.

Answer 5

I might can answer the question. It is done when you have a spinal cord injury from an accident. I did home health for a young man who broke his neck doing a trick on a bicycle. He was paraplegic, and could move his arms, but not his hands. He could not move his legs at all. He did have muscle spasms that would cause his body, and extremities to seize and shake uncontrollably at times. He did not have any control over his bodily functions as peeing and having a BM. His muscles atrophied, and he had no muscle mass. No he could not feel anything in his legs and other parts of his body. It did not do anything to his ability to being able to have an erection, so he would have been able to possibly father children. He was a helpless as a baby and had to be bathed, dressed, and fed.

Answer 6

First poster is correct.

Some instances where this has occurred:

1. Diving into a shallow swimming pool and hitting your head on the concrete bottom.

2. Car accident.

3. Falling down the side of a mountain.