24 year old male with symptoms

[angelangelofthedark]

Hello,I'm a 24 year old male and I've had some troubling symptoms recently. Started about a month ago, my arms felt really tired for a few days, I had pain in my forearm and palms when typing and writing. I felt fatigue all over after a couple days, and decided to consult Dr Google. Somewhere on the first page, ALS popped up. After I read about ALS, I started having muscle twitching all over my body (literally the next day). The twitching usually jumps from say my left calf to my shoulder to my quad etc. Somedays it will be concentrated in one area for a few areas (one day I had very visible fascilations in my leg thigh). My fatigue mostly went away (it turned out I had a sinus infection), but the twitching has yet to stop. On occasion, I don't twitch at all, or have very little twitching all day, and somedays its a lot worse. I notice the days after I go to the gym, I feel much better (but I feel more sore than I used to before the twitching started). Days where I consume lots of caffeine I twitch a lot more, and I feel nauseous/anxious. I've had bad twitching before when I was younger and experimenting with some stimulants. I also have a weird tingling feeling in my hands and feet. Occasionally my fingers or toes will go numb for no real reason at all. I'm not sure if this is at all related. I'll also have the sensation of something crawling on my toes (once again, not sure if this is related to the twitching). My only other concern that I think may be related is my hands and feet are incredibly sensitive to the cold. If I'm outside for 20 minutes in the cold, my hands and feet will feel painfully cold all day. My finger tips are also always wrinkled (odd since I'm relatively young).edit: Forgot to add, my fingers will turn blue when theyre exposed to the "cold" for a long period of time (cold for me since I'm very sensitive to the cold)My question is, could this possibly be something more serious like ALS/MND?

 

[JoshSon]

Fallen you are 24, you don’t have ALS… Now something interesting that you’ve said is how your twitching became widespread just after reading about that on Internet. It seems to have happened with a lot of people here. It happened with me. A clear hot spot in my right arm deltoid for a few hours one day after a workout, which disappeared and never returned. In the meanwhile I googled, learned about widespread fasciculation, said to myself that no way it will ever happen to me, and of course the next day random twitching were popping everywhere. I’m wondering now if these random occasional twitching were not always present and learning about them made me more aware of my body sensations and made me noticing them more, or if anxiety due to medical literature found on internet created those random twitching out of the blue… Dunno what other people here think about this.

 

[GlowGreen]

@Fallen This sounds NOTHING like ALS. I could write more but none of it would change or really add to that conclusion @JoshSon I have thought a lot about if it is possible to develop widespread fasciculations simply from reading about them. I know in my case I had an isolated twitch (which arguably was almost 'natural' as I was extremely tired and that muscle had been overused) and then developed widespread twitching after reading Dr Google's obsession with ALS. Since then I've read a lot of reports, like this one from Fallen, that this seems to happen. GlowGreen

 

[angelangelofthedark]

Thanks for the responses. I'm going to go to the doctor later this week. I'm thinking I could have hypothyroidism (explains most of my symptoms) or just an anxiety disorder (in which case I'll avoid the SSRIs that I will inevitably be prescribed).

 

[angelangelofthedark]

I notice something similar. When I'm very distracted or very busy with work/in the lab, I don't notice any twitching (or fatigue). The moment it occurs to me that I'm not twitching, I start feeling a lot of twitching all over the place. Having said that, I also have had some twitches that I'm sure I would have noticed even if I wasn't looking for them.

 

[LostLamb]

I work in a lab also, (Hospital based), sometimes wonder about reagents etc. We always laugh that it is more dangerous an occupation than an F1 driver. Over the years I have been UV ed, , ....splashed with gut samples from patients with IBD,....got cholera toxin inmy eye, a medical student froze sampled with methanol instead of ethanol, nearly blinded me, Another student left concentrated HCl on bench instead of in fume cupboard, that was fun !!!! Been splashed by such lovely things as eth bromide, stabbed by needles with various antibodies, been stained with gram stain, which left my arm purple for a month. Add to that exploding epindorfs, leaky gel tanks, out of control manic centrifuges, and dodgy fungal things left over in incubators, I guess it is no wonder I got bfs. Happy to report don't work with anything dodgy at moment. Hope you feeling a bit better today.Hx

 

[angelangelofthedark]

My GP said he thinks it's just anxiety, but sent in a standard blood test anyways. He told me I don't have ALS after he asked me to grip stuff, walk on my toes, walk on my heels. Thing is, my palm has been really sore, numbness in my right index finger and thumb and some pain in my forearm. I also notice my right palm is smaller than my left. Since i'm right handed, that seems weird. It could be carpal tunnel, but obviously i jump to the worst possible conclusion.

 

[Gracer]

fallen,you have Raynaud syndrome very common here, which means your arms and hands blood circulation is not good at all and you easily have spasms in your microvessels. That is about blue fingers.as for the pain in the arm and wrist, many of us complain for that, and not always it is a carpal syndrom but rather something alike. True good well developed carpal syndrom also causes neurological changes and even weakness, but its main difference is a hell of pain (my sister in law had it and she says it was awful. She also had two fingers partly paralysed due to carpal syndrome, but recovered now completely).pain means no ALS but rather infection or compression.Right handed people can have right hand smaller than the left. it just means your left hand has more subcutaneous fat or slight edemas.

 

[angelangelofthedark]

Thank you for the response. I considered Raynauds as well, since I've had the sensitivity to cold for over a year and two blood tests in that time that indicated TSH levels were normal. I used to abuse stimulants and that is one of the causes of secondary Raynauds. I do feel a sharp pain down the center of my forearm when I bend my wrist a lot, but I don't have any muscle weakness, just fatigue. Thanks Again!