Question: How do you become paralysed?

Alex Haragan answered on 5 Jun 2018:

There are many reasons!
Paralysis ultimately occurs because the nerves that control your muscles have been damaged, often irreversibly.
When we say paralysis, we are typically thinking about the nerves in your spine – the spinal cord. This can result in paralysis of your lower half (para-plegia) the right or left side of your body (hemi-plegia), or everything from the neck down (tetra-plegia). However there are more and less severe (like so called “Locked-in” syndrome, where you can only move your eyes) and its perfectly possible to paralyse only small areas of your body with damage to nerves outside the spinal cord.
So what causes this?
Well the list is a long one.
An obvious cause is physical damage. Something like a car crash for example can physically damage the nerves. If the bones in your back become damaged or crumbly with age and medical conditions – these can push into the spine and damage the nerves.
Infections like meningitis can damage the spinal cord, and other bacteria and viruses can spread there as well.
Strokes are a major cause in older people – where a part of the brain bleeds or has a blood clot. And sometimes babies are born with some form of paralysis because of something going wrong with pregnancy or during child-birth.
We can also use paralysis in surgery – the anaesthetist doctors will temporarily paralyse your body so the surgeons can work more accurately.
There are many reasons besides these as well! And treating these depends on the cause.