Causes of Toe Twitching, and Solutions
So, your toe is twitching.
Maybe it’s the big one only, or maybe it’s a few of the smaller ones, but nevertheless, the twitching is hard to ignore.
Especially when you can actually see the toes jump under your socks.
When a toe twitches, it’s because of an electrical misfire in the motor neuron unit in the muscle, but this isn’t the cause per se; it’s only the mechanism.
Toe twitching is perfectly normal, but can have a variety of causes.
Sometimes, toe twitching can be caused by scrunching up the digits, which you may not be aware you’re doing.
This actually causes twitching in the tiny muscles in some cases.
Because these muscles are so small, and the toe itself is such a small fixture of the body, it shouldn’t be any surprise that when it twitches, you can see it “jump.”
If two toes twitch in unison, this is nothing at all to be worried about.
For example, the third and fourth ones may twitch together, in synch.
But this is perhaps due to the fact that in anything, these particular toes usually act in unison.
Try lifting the fourth one without the third one coming up, for instance.
Twitching in these tiny muscles is completely normal and there is very little reason to fear you might have a disorder like ALS or MS.
The Key Point
“The key point with benign fasciculations is that, for whatever reason, they occur but do not represent an ominous underlying condition,” affirms Kristina Lafaye, MD, a board certified neurologist specializing in clinical neurophysiology and neuromuscular medicine with Tulane Doctors Neurosciences.
“Yes, some people with benign fasciculations could experience them 24/7 (or so they say; I’m a little skeptical of that), but if nothing else is wrong, then I wouldn’t probe further,” adds Dr. Lafaye.
“I don’t do any kind of a frequency count, because if a person doesn’t have evidence of denervation which, if present, would indicate a MND, myelopathy, or some other condition, then it doesn’t warrant any further neurologic evaluation.”
Causes of Toe Twitching
Tensing up the toes (anxiety, habit)
Improper footwear, especially a tight toe box
Exercise
Pressure on a nerve (shoes, foot position while seated or lying down)
Anxiety (not necessarily about what’s causing your toes to twitch, but anything that can cause apprehension)
Insufficient calcium and magnesium intake
Massage
Fatigue
Dehydration
Medication
Only in very rare cases is muscle twitching caused by a disease.
Perhaps while you were on the verge of falling asleep, your toe twitched.
This isn’t the same kind of twitching that happens when you are wide awake.
This type of “twitch” is actually called a myoclonus: an involuntary jerking of a muscle.
Myoclonus jerks as you drift to sleep occur in healthy people and rarely mean a problem.
More severe myoclonus may be brought on by medication or head trauma.
However, there is also a paranormal explanation for the causes of this kind of twitching, regardless of which muscles it occurs in; myoclonus occurs in different muscles.
The paranormal explanation is that your astral double has left your body (out of body experience) without you knowing this, and when it’s time to return, it re-enters rather abruptly, and you feel this as the myoclonus!
Dr. Lafaye is triple board certified: neurology, clinical neurophysiology and neuromuscular medicine from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Her expertise and leadership continue to make a significant impact on patient outcomes.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
Top image: Shutterstock/Alexander Raths
Source: mayoclinic.com/health/myoclonus/DS00754
Muscle Twitching in Fingers? ALS Fear? Strength Tests
Twitching muscles in the fingers can have some people fearing they have ALS, that incurable fatal disease that causes muscles to waste away.
People with twitching muscles who think they have ALS are prone to relentlessly performing muscle strength tests.
Those with muscle twitching are often never satisfied, however, if they “pass” one of their invented strength tests.
A certain percentage of people invariably google those key words, twitching muscles, which then brings them to ALS links.
The person may then start panicking he or she has ALS. However, ALS muscle twitching comes after muscle weakness, not before.
So the person then starts imagining he or she has muscle weakness — “perceived muscle weakness.”
In ALS, it’s called “clinical muscle weakness.”
The strength testing can become obsessive, yet unknown to those closest to the person, including those living in the same home.
So as a former personal trainer, I have come up with strength tests that, if you pass, you should have no reason to obsess about ALS.
Finger Muscle Strength Test
Piano and guitar playing, if you already play these instruments.
“If someone has ALS affecting the fingers, this would likely affect his or her ability to play a piano or guitar,” says Bonnie Gerecke, MD, director of the Neurology Center at Mercy in Baltimore.
So if you can get through your most difficult songs without a hitch, you should be reassured.
Though this requires no strength in the true sense, it still demands a degree of neurological skills that would be absent in ALS.
Index Finger and Thumb Strength Test
You’ll use a bottle of white-out (correction fluid), nail polish or other bottle with a small cap for this nifty strength test.
Using only your suspected thumb and index finger, screw cap on as tightly as you can. A neurologically impaired finger will struggle.
Shutterstock/Boris Bulychev
This test does not apply to those who’ve historically had trouble with tight cap screwing.
Now, with just thumb and index finger, unscrew this tight cap. If you’re having trouble unscrewing it, don’t fret.
Because this means you were strong enough to screw it on so tightly in the first place!
Additional Strength Tests
Screwing on lids of various food jars can be a good strength test if you, historically, have no problem unscrewing tight jar lids (some healthy people have always struggled with tight jar lids); so screw them on as tightly as possible.
An ALS weakness will prevent you from doing this. Now, unscrew them.
If you have difficulty unscrewing a lid that you just tightly screwed on, this does NOT mean muscle weakness.
It means muscle strength that was applied to tightly screwing the lid on.
Find a very thick encyclopedia or two moderately thick books. Place book(s) end-up on the floor.
With thumb on one side and fingers on the other, pick them up, without palm touching.
Clinical weakness will prevent you from doing this, or, if you’re able to despite actual ALS clinical weakness, you will immediately feel an uncharacteristic gripping deficit that’s very new to you.
“Patients with ALS who have hand weakness often have trouble picking up objects with their hands,” says Dr. Gerecke.
“When there is weakness in the thumb muscles, patients often have difficulty opposing their thumbs and other digits (grasping objects).
“They usually have difficulty holding objects in their hands.”
Use hand grip strength devices (shown below) – and compare hands…
If you have clinical weakness, the affected hand/fingers will be dramatically weaker (when previously they were not), not slightly weaker.
Dr. Gerecke has a special interest in ALS, myasthenia gravis, myopathy/muscular dystrophy, peripheral neuropathy and radiculopathy. She is board certified in general neurology and neuromuscular medicine.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
.
Top image: Shutterstock/Monster e
Source: mayoclinic.com/health/amyotrophic-lateral-sclerosis/DS00359
Perceived Weakness: Tips for Relief of ALS Fear
Perceived weakness is an awful thing to have, and it originates from the mind, when someone starts believing he or she has ALS due to muscle twitching.
Perceived weakness can disrupt a person’s life.
Perceived weakness, though, can be managed, and time passage has a nice way of putting it to rest.
A person who’s been dealing with a lot of muscle twitching may have been diagnosed with benign fasciculation syndrome, and despite the diagnosis, can’t get ALS out of his mind.
As long as ALS is living rent-free in his mind, he suffers from perceived weakness.
This is the mind playing tricks on you. You went and read the ALS sites after Googling “What causes muscle twitching?” and now you can’t help but wonder if every little sign of weakness might in fact be clinical rather than perceived.
Shutterstock/Pixel-Shot
Anxiety over this intensifies the muscle twitching, which then intensifies the fixation on ALS and doing strength tests to reassure yourself that the weakness is only perceived rather than pathological.
Realize that your senses are heightened.
You’ve always required a little “umph” to get out of that deep soft chair.
Now suddenly, your heightened senses perceive this as possible pathological weakness in your legs. No detail of your everyday movements gets missed.
You stumble a bit on the rug that’s always bunched up near the laundry room.
You now wonder if this is clinical weakness, even though you’ve stumbled on the rug hundreds of times over the past 10 years.
As time passage increases from the onset of muscle twitching, the power of perceived weakness diminishes.
Unfortunately, it often resurfaces when a new area of the body begins twitching.
This psychological phenomenon can apply to any body part including fingers, tongue, feet and calves.
Though people with benign fasciculation syndrome may have exercise intolerance, this isn’t the same as pathological weakness.
Ironically, people with benign fasciculation syndrome often engage in strength and balance tests that would wear out most people.
People with BFS often engage in strength and balance tests that would wear out most people. Shutterstock/Vagengeim
I once read about a man who repeatedly got up out of a chair on one leg.
As a former personal trainer, I’ve had my clients doing this (without cheating) —off of a bench or exercise stool — not as a strength test, but as a variation of squatting to shape, tone and strengthen the leg and buttocks muscles.
And it’s not easy. Only my fit clients were able to do this.
Yet this is a common strength test that people with benign fasciculation syndrome are drawn to.
Invariably, they tire quickly and become even more petrified.
Or, they fear the worst when one leg doesn’t perform as well as the other.
We all have a dominant leg. Of COURSE one side won’t perform as well as the other, but…it STILL performs, doesn’t it?
You have no reference point anyways, because you’ve never done these strength tests before, so how would you know that the “weaker” leg wasn’t ALWAYS weaker?
If perceived weakness in a spot has disappeared, but then it returns, ask yourself if the sensation is the same as it was before.
If the answer is yes, then remind yourself that, like before, it will fade away. ALS symptoms don’t come and go.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, health and personal security topics for many years, having written thousands of feature articles for a variety of print magazines and websites. She is also a former ACE-certified personal trainer who helped clients achieve fat loss, muscle growth, strength and improved fitness.
Top image: Shutterstock/9nong
Source: mayoclinic.com/health/amyotrophic-lateral-sclerosis/DS00359
Twitching Muscle in the Thigh (Quadriceps): ALS or Benign?
ALS sites have scared the pants off of you since muscle twitching comes up on them, and this is what’s been going on in your quadriceps or thigh.
You need loads of reassurance that you are probably not the few people in 100,000 who are diagnosed every year with ALS.
So muscle twitching can result from ALS. Why fixate on this very rare disease, when quad muscle twitching is far, far more likely to result from just plain stress and fatigue?
In fact, there’s often no known cause other than a muscle just doing what it was meant to do: twitch here and there, or sometimes even a lot.
Sometimes, it can be described as a thumping – a “thumper.”
The vast, vast, vast majority of all the people on this planet who experience quadriceps twitching will NOT be dead within 2-5 years from anything related to this phenomenon.
If anything, the extreme anxiety over this more likely to kill you!
Whether the perceived stress is physical (primitive man confronting a wild animal) or psychological (modern man being trapped in a traffic jam OR freaking over the possibility of ALS due to a quadriceps muscle twitch), the body responds the same way.
Gearing up for a Fight or Flight from a Perceived Threat = Twitching Muscles
The body preps itself for blood clotting in the event of a serious gash, so that you don’t bleed to death.
This came in very handy for cavemen; they were always getting gashed, lacerated and cut up.
They’d fight or flee their ancient dangers. This physical exertion produced hormones that cancelled out the stress hormones that thickened their blood.
Modern man doesn’t fight or flee. He sits and seethes, trembles and ruminates – over paying the bills and whether or not the creepy crawlies in his quadriceps mean ALS and how long he has to live.
No fight or flee means no physical exertion.
No physical exertion means the stress hormones PERSIST, which means that the blood STAYS thick and sticky.
Chronically sticky, thick blood means a much-increased risk of stroke or heart attack !
Wouldn’t it be ironic if while you’re stressing over ALS and muscle twitching in your thigh, you drop from a heart attack?
Shutterstock/Oleg Golovnev
“The key point with benign fasciculations is that, for whatever reason, they occur but do not represent an ominous underlying condition,” explains Kristina Lafaye, MD, a board certified neurologist specializing in clinical neurophysiology and neuromuscular medicine with Tulane Doctors Neurosciences.
“Yes, some people with benign fasciculations could experience them 24/7 (or so they say, I’m a little skeptical of that), but if nothing else is wrong, then I wouldn’t probe further,” continues Dr. Lafaye.
“I don’t do any kind of a frequency count, because if a person doesn’t have evidence of denervation which, if present, would indicate a MND, myelopathy, or some other condition, then it doesn’t warrant any further neurologic evaluation.”
Muscle twitching in ALS almost always comes after significant weakness.
Are you still able to run, dash up and down stairs and operate the pedals of your car without a hitch?
The weakness in ALS is not intermittent.
The weakness of ALS is not of a come and go nature.
It’s not something that flares up and subsides, flares up and subsides, like arthritis or dermatitis.
Once ALS weakness sets in, it stays. And gets worse. Does this describe you?
Thigh twitching can be caused by exercise, even the day before, plus inadequate calcium, magnesium, potassium and water intake. Anxiety often makes twitching spread throughout the body.
Have you noticed that your quad muscle twitches less when your mind gets taken away from it?
This is reassurance you’re probably just full of anxiety and nothing more.
Dr. Lafaye is triple board certified: neurology, clinical neurophysiology and neuromuscular medicine from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Her expertise and leadership continue to make a significant impact on patient outcomes.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
Source: mayoclinic.com/health/amyotrophic-lateral-sclerosis/DS00359
Muscle Twitching Connection to Anxiety and Exercise
Relax, muscle twitching occurs to people all over the world, and until the invention of the World Wide Web, it didn’t seem to be much of a concern.
Thanks to the Internet, masses of people are now panicking that their twitching muscles mean ALS.
“Some people have benign fasciculation syndrome, which is just that – benign,” says Daniel Kantor, MD.
Benign fasciculation syndrome is the medical term for twitching muscles that reach a point of nuisance for the patient, and often, the patient also experiences benign cramps – which in part can be caused by anxiety.
BFS “means that even without an underlying muscle or nervous system disease, people sometimes have fasciculations,” continues Dr. Kantor, director of the Neurology Residency Program, Florida Atlantic University.
“While muscle twitching can be a concerning and disturbing symptom,” he continues, “many people have it simply as ‘one of those things,’ and in that case, it is nothing to worry about.
“Of course, you always want to clarify this with your primary care doctor or neurologist to exclude other, more serious, causes.”
Anxiety is a chief agent that makes things go twitch in the night, or day.
Perhaps this is because when we are under emotional stress, the body anticipates action, and hence gears up the muscles to prepare for a fight or flight. They get revved up, like revving up a motorcycle engine.
Hard exercise is another cause of twitching.
embhoo. CreativeCommons
Ask anyone who normally trains with intensity if they’ve ever had this experience, and I’m sure they’ll confirm it.
I myself train very hard and often experience some post-exercise twitching, or even immediately after a heavy weightlifting set. It’s my built-in masseuse system.
Many Body Sites for Twitches
- Calves
- Arches of feet
- Hamstrings (back of legs)
- Quadriceps (thighs)
- Butt
- Chest
- Back
- Neck
- Shoulders
- Arms
- Fingers
- Toes
- Lips and tongue
- Eyelids
- Back, top and side of head, forehead
If you see a twitch in action, this means NOTHING. Take-home message:
Muscle twitching (not the tremoring or shaking type) is, by and large, considered a normal occurrence and is no reason to grow fearful and think the worst.
Dr. Kantor is also President Emeritus, Florida Society of Neurology.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, health and personal security topics for many years, having written thousands of feature articles for a variety of print magazines and websites. She is also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
.
Top image: Depositphotos.com
Source: mayoclinic.com/health/amyotrophic-lateral-sclerosis/DS00359
Why Your Stomach is Twitching: Neurologist Explains
Is your stomach twitching?
“Twitching is the common term for fasciculations, an abnormal firing of muscles,” says Daniel Kantor, MD, director of the Neurology Residency Program, Florida Atlantic University.
When your stomach twitches, just what is happening?
“When it is in the abdominal area, the abdominal muscles are having these fasciculations.”
So that’s what’s happening when a person’s stomach is twitching.
Dr. Kantor continues: “Fasciculations can appear in almost any muscle.” With that said, this experience is actually a muscle twitching in the stomach area of the body, rather than an internal organ.
“Fasciculations can be a normal thing (it just feels strange); it can be due to dehydration, aging or to more serious (usually not life-threatening or life-altering) causes.
“When we overuse a muscle, it can twitch. So, just like your leg muscles may twitch after a long run, if you put strain on your midsection, your abdominal muscles may twitch.”
In short, the sensation of your stomach twitching is absolutely no cause for alarm or fear, even though it can be very annoying.
In rare cases, a twitch coming from the stomach area can be a symptom of a more serious condition such as a motor neuron disease, says Dr. Kantor.
If that stomach twitching is really bothering you, see a neurologist to rule out any disease process and put your mind at ease.
However, chances are, if your stomach muscles have been twitching, it’s a perfectly benign situation.
“This is why it is important to relax, not jump to conclusions, and to talk to your primary care doctor or neurologist about it,” says Dr. Kantor.
“Sometimes people mistake abdominal wall dystonia with abdominal muscle fasciculations. In abdominal wall dystonia there is an abnormal muscle tone.
“This causes sustained contractions and involuntary, writhing movements of the abdominal wall.
“This is why some people have called it ‘belly-dancer’s dyskinesia’ — abnormal movement.
“The confusion between twitching, abnormal muscle tone and even muscle jerking (myoclonus) highlights the importance of a good physical examination by your doctor.”
If you haven’t put recent strain on your stomach, but the muscles continue to twitch, this could be the result of anxiety, stress, dehydration and/or mineral imbalance.
Make sure you are getting enough fluids and adequate amounts of magnesium and potassium.
If you’ve noticed that the more you think about your stomach twitching, the more it fires away, then this pretty much confirms that the situation is benign.
After all, an actual disease isn’t going to cause fasciculations just because you started thinking about it.
Dr. Kantor is also President Emeritus, Florida Society of Neurology.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, health and personal security topics for many years, having written thousands of feature articles for a variety of print magazines and websites. She is also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
Top image: Shutterstock/Andrey_Popov
Source: neurologique.org/
Suffer with Body Wide Muscle Twitching? Here’s Good News
If you’re going nuts because of muscle twitching all throughout your entire body, stop fearing the worst, and don’t even worry about something even a little bit serious.
Muscle twitching isn’t necessarily a sign of something dreadful just because it’s happening all over your body.
The most common cause of body-wide twitching muscles is anxiety.
Lack of adequate fluid intake, plus exercise or heavy physical activity, are two other common causes of muscle twitching, which may begin as localized.
Image: Freepik.com, pressfoto
But it has a funny way of “spreading” throughout your body moments after you begin worrying about it.
Yes, muscle twitching all over the body often starts in one spot, such as the thigh, arm or calf.
This is something that may have happened hundreds of times to a person, without him or her giving it even one second of thought.
But for some reason, one day, the twitching in this localized spot becomes the focus of attention.
Since it’s so easy to research things on the Internet, this person then decides to do a Web search on twitching muscles, and all sorts of interesting medical information shows up.
Shutterstock/fizkes
As a result, the person starts thinking he or she might have a deadly neurological disease, in which muscle twitching is a symptom.
But this kind of thinking is akin to believing you might have laryngeal cancer — just because you have a scratchy throat.
Upon filling up with anxiety over the consideration of this neurological disease, the individual then starts feeling more areas of his body begin to twitch.
The muscle twitching spreads throughout the whole body, and pretty quickly, too.
However, this is NOT how a neurological disease operates.
But it IS how anxiety can cause all sorts of nerve-impulse firing in muscles.
“Some people have benign fasciculation syndrome, which is just that – benign,” says Daniel Kantor, MD, director of the Neurology Residency Program, Florida Atlantic University.
He continues: “This means that even without an underlying muscle or nervous system disease, people sometimes have fasciculations.”
Fasciculations is the medical term for twitching muscles.
“While muscle twitching can be a concerning and disturbing symptom, many people have it simply as ‘one of those things,’ and in that case, it is nothing to worry about.
“Of course, you always want to clarify this with your primary care doctor or neurologist to exclude other, more serious, causes.”
When muscle twitching is the symptom of a serious neurological disorder, it’s almost always accompanied by other symptoms such as strange cramping or an uncharacteristic weakness such as one day finding you can’t hold your hairdryer.
Anxiety can produce dozens of physical symptoms, and muscle twitching all over the body is one of them.
Dr. Kantor is also President Emeritus, Florida Society of Neurology.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, health and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of feature articles for a variety of print magazines and websites. She is also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
Top image: Shutterstock/Song_about_summer
Source: neurologique.org/
How to Tell the Difference Between Multiple Sclerosis and Restless Leg Syndrome
Telling multiple sclerosis from restless leg syndrome?
Multiple sclerosis vs. restless leg syndrome: Is there really a way to know, without seeing a doctor, if what you’re experiencing is restless leg syndrome, as opposed to the more serious issue of multiple sclerosis?
Restless leg syndrome can be so troublesome that a person might actually wonder if he or she has multiple sclerosis.
So I asked Daniel Kantor, MD, director of the Neurology Residency Program, Florida Atlantic University, if there is a way to know that certain symptoms are far more likely to be just a bad case of restless leg syndrome, rather than a scarier case of multiple sclerosis.
Dr. Kantor explains: “Multiple sclerosis (MS) usually manifests itself in many ways, not simply as a problem with the feet at night and a need to move around to try to relieve this disturbing sensation.
“So, someone who only has symptoms of restless leg syndrome and nothing else, is less likely to have multiple sclerosis, than someone with many MS symptoms.”
Symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis
- Numbness or weakness in a limb
- Tingling or pain in the body
- Tremors
- Unsteady walking
- Lack of coordination
- Dizziness
- Fatigue
- Vision problem
- Pain with eye movement.
Multiple sclerosis. BruceBlaus, CC BY-SA 4.0/creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/Wikimedia Commons
Symptoms of RLS
In restless leg syndrome, the person typically feels “creepy crawlies” or crawling sensations under the skin of the lower limbs, that make keeping them motionless impossible.
Sometimes there aren’t any crawling, wormy or squirmy sensations under the skin, but the person still feels a compulsive need to keep the legs moving — all while trying to get some sleep or relax in a chair to read.
Keeping the legs still, gets very uncomfortable, and relief comes from continuously moving them.
However, restless leg syndrome does not produce numbness, pain or weakness, or other symptoms associated with multiple sclerosis, such as difficulty walking or vision problems.
Dr. Kantor says, “There does seem to be a higher prevalence of RLS in people with autoimmune diseases (such as MS) than the rest of the population.
“This can make it confusing when someone has multiple sclerosis and has restless leg syndrome symptoms — how can you know the difference?
“If someone has both MS and separately RLS, it is a good idea to undergo the regular RLS workup — such as having your iron tested, and if no other abnormality shows up, then you would probably treat the RLS symptoms in someone with MS just as you would treat it in someone without MS.”
There is no evidence that having restless leg syndrome puts you at risk for developing multiple sclerosis.
Dr. Kantor is also President Emeritus, Florida Society of Neurology.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, health and personal security topics for many years, having written thousands of feature articles for a variety of print magazines and websites. She is also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
.
Top image: Shutterstock/Image Point Fr
Is Thumb Twitching Normal or Something to Worry About?
Is your thumb twitching lately?
Have you learned that muscle twitching is one of the symptoms of ALS?
Does your thumb twitch and “jump” for no apparent reason?
Can a twitching thumb mean something serious, even deadly?
The reason a twitching thumb can really cause worry is because the thumb is a very small part of the body — a digit — and when muscles of a digit (be it a thumb, index finger or toe) twitch, the digit typically jumps.
It is the jumping that often worries a person when the thumb twitches, but whether or not a finger jumps or visibly moves, upon twitching, has absolutely nothing to do with the likelihood that there’s a fatal disease process going on.
The thumb contains voluntary muscles. So why wouldn’t it occasionally twitch?
Just like other muscles twitch (upper legs, back, arms, calves, etc.), the thumb is not exempt to this very common, benign phenomenon.
The worry factor kicks in because when a thumb twitches, it can be seen in action.
A person’s fixation and worry over a twitching thumb may evolve into imagining that the unit is weak, smaller than the other or visibly atrophied — possible signs of ALS — provided that these symptoms are real and not imagined, that is.
If you find yourself putting your fingers through all sorts of strength tests, and still not feeling assured that nothing is wrong with your body, then consider this statement from Kristina Lafaye, MD, a board certified neurologist specializing in clinical neurophysiology and neuromuscular medicine with Tulane Doctors Neurosciences:
“Weakness in ALS is progressive and not intermittent. There are no good days.”
Once the weakness is present, it will always be present and will only get worse.
This is in contradistinction to the weakness and “off days” that may be experienced by athletes and normal, active people.
A fairly typical scenario for an individual with ALS is this:
The person is fit and active, and begins to develop an isolated symptom of weakness such as unilateral foot drop.
The weakness is subtle at first. The person attributes this to a bad knee or some type of orthopaedic problem.
Over time, not only does this problem not go away, but other signs of weakness develop in other parts of the body.
This is an insidious process, and most people do not initially come to a neurologist for these signs and symptoms.
Dr. Lafaye is triple board certified: neurology, clinical neurophysiology and neuromuscular medicine from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Her expertise and leadership continue to make a significant impact on patient outcomes.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
.
Top image: Shutterstock
Twitching Muscles: More Likely a Good Sign than Bad
Muscle twitching is quite a popular topic, but not one you’ll hear a lot about at the water cooler.
In cyberspace, twitching muscles are discussed quite prominently, because muscle twitching, though extremely common, is also a symptom of one of the most feared fatal diseases: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
But twitching muscles don’t mean you have ALS, any more than a little gas means you have colon cancer.
Unfortunately, once a person gets into the “I think I might have ALS” groove, the anxiety over this can become chronic — unless the person learns to see muscle twitching for what it really is: just tired muscles working their issues out.
Anyone with a lot of muscle twitching will tell you that movement almost always stops the twitching.
Perhaps this is because when a muscle is forced to work, it’s not relaxed enough to twitch.
And anyone who twitches a lot will tell you that most muscle twitching occurs while in a relaxed state.
This is maybe because a relaxed, sedated muscle can “feel free” to twitch all it wants.
They googled those keywords: muscle twitching…
The reason why there is a certain percentage of people out there who obsess about the possibility of having ALS is because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Googling these words will bring up links to ALS, but also multiple sclerosis, a few other neurological disorders, and Lyme disease.
Yesterday I put my legs through a punishing weight routine at the gym.
They were sore today; delayed onset muscle soreness.
But I used my treadmill today, running on top of the soreness.
My hamstrings were aching and stiff, and I took to sitting at the computer for an extended time.
Lo and behold, the twitching began in my hamstring muscles.
But I must say, it felt GOOD ! It was almost like tiny fingers were giving me a nice massage.
It felt like miniature fingers were in there, working their way around in my beat muscles, working out the accumulation of lactic acid and other byproducts of anaerobic exertion (from the weight lifting and also the cardio).
And when the twitching began dissipating, I was disappointed. I wanted this automatic massage to continue.
But I guess the job of the twitching muscles was completed; perhaps the lactic acid had been dispersed.
So next time your muscles twitch, don’t despair; think of this as your body’s built-in massage mechanism for fatigued muscles.
Daniel Kantor, MD, is a neurologist who explains more about harmless muscle twitching from head to toe.
