serious wekaness in my lips and the areas around them, & i have no control

i've been suffering recently from a serious wekaness in my lips and the areas around them, i have no control over those areas at all, i can't smile at all (most of the time) and when i try my best to smile it looks like i'm crying, when it gets worse i'm unble to eat, i lost alot of pounds because i've been avoiding eating because i can't chew food and when i eat i'm unable to pronounce some letters that depends on the lips like "B, F" and unable to drink also...if anybody has any information, recommendation please don't hesitate I really need help...

[Dr. A. Srivastava]

Thank you for your question. Although without being able to examine you I can not offer you the specific advice on diagnosis and treatment that you need, but I would try to provide you some relevant information about your health concern.

From, your description of symptoms, it appears that you are experiencing unexplained one sided muscle weakness or paralysis of the face that is called Bell’s palsy (inflammation of 7th cranial nerve). Mostly it occurs after some viral infection, any neurological disorder, and head injury or in cancer. Other symptoms could be pain in jaw of the affected side, drooling of saliva, dropping of eyelid, ringing in the ear, headache, decreased sense of taste, difficulty with speech, and problems eating and drinking. Though it is not a life threatening condition, it is essential that a neurologist needs to be immediately consulted who would like to conduct electromyography (EMG test), nerve conduction studies and MRI to find out the extent and cause.  Most of the doctors suggest steroids, anti-retroviral medicines, botulism injection and physiotherapy to recover from the condition. Hope this helps.