Hi all. I was doing my best to stay calm and to not end up posting here, but I keep getting dragged back down into the anxiety spiral, so here goes. (There’s a bit of necessary background before I get to the part about the stiffness/twitching, so bear with me!)Backstory: I’ve always been a bit of a hypo, but I suddenly entered an intense health anxiety phase over the summer, largely related to a drop in weight of about 10 pounds in just a month or two. I was around 173ish last January. I’m male, 6 ft., early 30s, and have always been thin, but the gut had become a little unsightly. So I started working out more heavily/regularly and eating better etc. etc., and slowly but surely I’d dropped to a comfy 165 around early summer. Then sort of out of nowhere I’d dropped to the low-mid 150s by mid-July. It startled me and got my mind racing about cancer (just about every kind you could imagine), which was the focus of my health freakouts until early September when my GP did a thorough exam, plus blood work, chest x-ray, abdominal ultrasound, etc. I haven’t lost any more weight since July (maybe even gained a few pounds back) and we’re following up in a few months. (I’d stopped working out mid-August, and have only in the past two weeks begun to start doing some light free-weights, push-ups and jogging again.)So! Of course, right after my physical, that was around the time I started to notice (perceive?) a stiffness/tightness in my right calf, sometimes a little behind the knee, sometimes up into my hamstring/thigh. Never too painful or too bothersome, but just enough to make me feel like something “isn’t right.” (Sometimes I do get little twinges of crampy, pinching-like pain in the thigh/hamstring/calf, but again, never excruciating or prolonged.) At that point, still coming off my cancer kick, my mind was spiraling with fears of sarcoma. But I got over that for the most part, and I even managed to overcome a few blood-clot panics, accepting that maybe this leg thing is just a weird annoyance that doesn’t mean anything sinister. (Or maybe it’s even all in my mind?)And that’s when I started to notice the twitching. Often in that same right calf/thigh, but also a bunch in the other calf/thigh, sometimes my forearms, biceps, triceps, shoulders, stomach, buttocks, and my left eyelid has really been going crazy these past few days. And that’s also when (you already know where I’m going with this) the volatile combination of calf/leg stiffness + muscle-twitching snowballed into full-blown ALS panic. (This was a little over a week ago, so yes, I’m a newbie, but have been lurking the board quite a bit lately. I sense the etiquette is to not spell out the letters, so I’ll use *** going forward.)Now I notice little things that never would have registered before. My feet sometimes scrape slightly against the pavement when walking. Water sometimes goes down the wrong pipe. I feel maybe sort of clumsy at times. The other night, I said “volunteel filefighter” instead of “volunteer firefighter,” which really got my heart racing. I've always seemed to have a bit of clear mucus stuck in my throat, but now I’m concerned over how I often feel the need to clear my throat after eating/drinking. And so on.I rushed to a neuro last Friday. (She’s a neuromuscular/EMG specialist, but not explicitly an *** specialist. Does that matter?) After doing the usual patient-history and strength/reflex tests, she told me to put these thoughts of *** out of my mind. That none of the signs are there. But that yes, let’s do an EMG b/c it will put your mind at ease and maybe there is something else at play like a pinched nerve. I go back for that on Friday.I was feeling really good after the neuro appointment. I vowed to stop Googling and going onto forums. (Even this one!) Had a great weekend. Then on Sunday, I relapsed into the same old feedback loop. I found myself on Google reading the horror stories about people having multiple inaccurate EMGs, people who had the most subtle symptoms for years before diagnosis, people who *started* with twitching, etc. etc. And then earlier this week I stumbled upon a post here mentioning *** patients often presenting with weight loss at diagnosis, and that brought me right back to where it all began. Now I’m convinced that my sudden weight loss this summer was probably due to muscle atrophy all along. My wrists do look a bit skinnier these days, after all. A bit TOO skinny. (Vicious cycle.)Anyway, this is really starting to take its toll on my life. My saintly patient wife is starting to get really frustrated and also very worried about me. I hope that the follow-up with the neuro and the EMG (assuming its not abnormal) on Friday will put the issue to rest , but I don’t even know at this point. And frankly, I don’t even know how I got myself to this point -- let alone so quickly.I realize I just spit out a whole lot of information, but if any of you have any thoughts or advice on any or all of the above, I’d greatly appreciate it. Thanks for reading.
Fighting Anxiety-Related Stiffness/Twitching
- Thread starter mc35
- Start date
Hey jc825,Everything you've described is classic BFS. Thats almost exactly how I started. Stiffness and aching in the calves, followed by twitching which soon went widespread. Widespread twitching in such a short amount of time, followed by a clean clinical exam by a neurologist screams BENIGN! Please try to relax. Im sure your emg will be normal, maybe it'll pick up some fascics which are still considered normal. Regarding the misspeaking and dragging your foot, that happens to so many of us. We get these horrible thoughts in our head about what we THINK we have and then we put ourselves under a microscope. I did it too. If not for your googling, you would not have thought twice about any of that, and trust me when I say that you were doing things like that last year and the year before. We all were. But we shrugged them off. -Matt
I can only tell that I lost about 8 ponds (however gradually) during my early BFS period. nothing could stop that - it just went down to 71 kilo from 75-76... and I am not sure if I gained those few kilos back.(at leaat I was eating awfully good protugese pasrties as much as i could this summer, haha).so do not make your weight loss a point to think about.Patients with ALS might lost weigt, of cource, because usually they are also anxious and suffering deadly fears, and neglect their normal schedule, and finally they have muscle atrophies, quick and progressive.unless you do not have that (I mean atrophies) - please consider everything else (most probably thyroid issues or anxiety) but not ALS. Weight loss is not a specific diagnostic feature for ALS, I think...
Thanks, Matt and Yulia, for the replies.I guess the thing that bothers me about the stiff calf/leg cramping is that it is predominantly confined to my right side. I know everyone says anxiety can cause all sorts of sore muscles/pains/pangs etc., but I would think those would occur a bit more body-wide, no? Whereas when it comes down to it, aside from the twitching, it's really just my right leg that is making me feel abnormal. And actually, after finding this message-board I probably wouldn't be freaked out at all if it weren't for the leg issues, which I'm actually more focused on than the twitching. (Of course I'm now finding myself veering into all sorts of swallowing/coughing/speaking concerns, but seems like that is par for the course around here.)Anyone else?
Many of us have lost weight because of anxiety. I never, ever attributed it to anything neurological. Once I wasn't worried about this stuff anymore, I popped right back to normal (which I've always been happy with, so that's good).But, the reason you lost weight is because you exercised more and ate better. You can have big dips like that, it's normal! You probably were eating too little and working out too much, and underestimated your metabolism.You're fine. Ignore those horror stories on the internet, and realize that you have thousands upon thousands of stories on this site, that negate all those horror stories.Mitra
PuppyFurryFunTimes
Well-known member
JC, I have a leg issue as well.. & have had it since Feb & it hasn't gotten any worse. I feel that "tight feeling" and I get a tired leg before the other one. It's wierd. Sometimes it doesn't bother me but 80% of the time it does. Only my right leg. I've even posted about it. Unlike you, my EMG isn't till November! Which sucks because now I feel like a sitting duck!! now we always know that without weakness = no you know what!! Perceived weakness is NOT the same as actual weakness when you can't unscrew the lid of the pickle jar or button your shirt or stand on your tippie toes!! But welcome! And stop stressing cuz you don't have that!!! 
but keep us posted on your EMG on Friday!!
but keep us posted on your EMG on Friday!! Will do, Missi. And I'm sure you're fine, too. But it's definitely comforting when another person shares the same random/hyper-specific symptom.And Mitra: Yes! The anecdotes on this board are fantastic. But how *do* you guys manage not to focus on the horror stories? In general, it's the seemingly harmless/everyday symptoms that really get my health anxiety raging, even when I was worked up over the cancer fears. (a la, "She just had this pain in her hip for a few months, but after they did the MRI....") Or in the case of *** it's the ones where it's like, "It all started with these tight calves I had for a few years." Or, "I had two normal EMGs before...." Granted I've only read a few of these, but they seem to run so counter to the common wisdom around here: That clean clinical/EMG = you're OK, and that you'd KNOW it if you had it. It's like, every time I read 50 of the benign/reaffirming stories and start to feel a lot better, I can't help thinking back to that one other story about the poor guy who -- well, you get the picture!Are those horror stories REALLY the uber-rare exception to the rule? Or are we all just deceiving ourselves to feel better? Thoughts please!
PuppyFurryFunTimes
Well-known member
I think that stuff too but I try not to dwell on it 9 months into twitching... It's SO HARD not to but when every other second your body is doing stuff that you can't control.. My BACK even twitches!! But I have my good days & bad days too. There is so many unanswered questions regarding this horrible disease but we are SUPER sensitive to our bodies. Maybe the stiffness is like "CAN'T MOVE" vs us having a slight tight feeling.. You do the same as I do, you read the symptoms & then think you're choking, tripping & you said the WRONG word instead of slur. We ALL either do that or have done it at one time. If I drop my pen.. Oh wow, I look at it, start strength testing my fingers & hands.. Oh wow I go off the deep end. My co-workers think I need a psychiatrist!! Lol, read the symptoms of anxiety & stress.
my twitches and cramps are tending to be at the left side. Yep I have them bodywide (now I twitch much much less then a year ago, but plus crapms), but left side sems to be more sensitive. My point is that we all might start with asymmetry in our brain blood supply or in our spinal nerve roots condition, that is why one side of the body is affected more prominently. But in MND this predominance is usually quite evident, while we still have some bodywide patterns.