Theories on Sensory Disturbance and Weakness

[jerryTwo]

This days when my sensory disturbance is much higher than before, arms falling asleep during the day with no pattern where or when, but not severely and during the night more severly, I developed a theory that, if you can back it up with your own experience, maybe helps newcommers with so called WEAKNESS.I have never felt weak untill now, but I read a lot of posts of this subjective weakness. As I said, my sensory disturbances, I can not even say it is tingling or real numbness (I can still feel my hand good if I tought it lighty), maybe it is a little sensory loss or oversensory gain with mild pain. But I found that when I have this, my brains are percepting this as weakness. I asked myself why is that. I think the answer lies in the fact that for feeling strong we need both motor and sensory functioning to be on a very good level. Obviously if I have severe tingling I would think of it as tingling (paresthesia) not weakness, but if I have, like now, something wrong in my hand that makes me a litle dull ache and just doesn't feel right (sensory), my brain is likely to process it like the hand is HEAVY (because you can not feel it 10%) and heavy processes as WEAK in the brain.As I am lying in my bad and there is something wrong with my arm, feels heavy and I have thought it is weak, I won't be even able to move it. But I can, a little harder because I can not feel it correct, but I can use it lets say almost normally. But feels awkward and wierd. Has no right feeling. If there is slight numbness as I guess is the case in many here for most of the numbness complains (ok, at night hand can get completely numb and tingly on me), I guess you don't percive it as numbness but as weakness and that is the subjective weakness that people report.It is not they are so scared and don't think rationally, but the fact is brain feels something wrong and confuses numbness and some dull ache for weakness.If you support this, it is important for newcomers that have a lot of this strange sensations that they may be the read reason why they feel the limb is weak in the first place.That is just my theory, because when I had mostly twitsches I didn't percive myself as weak, now that I also have lot of sensory problems I have this feeling.

 

[antThatGuyWithNoName]

I believe you're spot on about this and you're describing perceived weakness perfectly. When I was 19 I developed systemic arthritis and my arms felt heavy/weak. At the time I knew nothing about BFS or anything else. I attributed it solely to my joints but I did believe it was weakness. Later on I was told my cartilage had been damaged (some sort of auto-immune thing) and I was feeling some deferred pain/discomfort up and down my arms. I of course was never actually weak. Later on with this BFS stuff I got similar feelings in my arm/hand and I feared the worst but again I was never actually weak. These things still wax and wane for me but they are definitely more sensory than anything else. I don't think many of us would recognize true muscle weakness.

 

[jerryTwo]

Well, I think all of us would recognise true weakness, if we couldn't hold things in hand etc.I see that this sensory stuff includes stiff fingers most of the night and morning. I am not sure how tingling and stiff fingers (hard to make a fist like they would be swollen but are not) is related.I am also guessing how do I move my hand at night and feels ok and seconds later I get tingling in ulnar distribution. When I was "normal", my hand fall asleep and it was NUMB and then it took some time and when was waking up tingling came and then it was ok. Now I just am ok and I move it and tingling comes and then it is ok. This is wierd.