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Does anyone get muscle twitches ?
Just wondering if anyone has muscle twitches as a symptom of hyper or hypo. I get them in legs and arms ,buttocks and sometimes rib area....
Just curious LJ39
Just curious LJ39
Hang in there! And don't jump to worst case scenarios, Stress will definitely cause your twitches to escalate. I've been hyper for over two years and axiety is the hallmark symptom. My twitching occurs only when I am inactive. I also have burning sensations and now muscle cramps at night. Try and remember you are not alone. And be proactive ... see as many doctors as you need to. I'm not getting any answers from mine but I won't let that stop me from seeing them (and bugging them) every time a new symptom appears or an existing one intensifies. I've gone from being depressed over this to downright angry and when you factor in Grave's rage ... watch out! I am going to get answers and I don't care how many tests it takes or how many doctors I tick off along the way.
THANK YOU for posting. Yes, I have started muscle twitching..just in the past few weeks. mostly legs, arms, shoulders, sometimes belly. And it seems to coincide w/me going hyper. i notice it when i 'stop' for the day. i also have the burning sensation, same start time. extreme sensitivey to touch as well. my primary wants me to see a neuro as well....even though brain MRI was clear; to rule out MS. my mother has it. I am really struggling w/believing there is nothing else wrong w/me...and I really don't want to start the wild good chase w/seeing neuro, rheuma, etc...but the other side of me says 'what if something really is wrong.' i have terrible anxiety and all this uncertainty is fueling the control freak that i am. i AM glad to see that folks on this board experience similar things to what i feel. i just want to know it's not going to get worse.
Thanks Jenny and LJ39 for your comments. They are a huge comfort.
While I am determined to get to the bottom of this, I am trying not to get completely disillusioned with my doctors. I know there are good doctors out there but finding one is like finding a needle in a
haystack. All my doctors think my symptoms are an allergic reaction to my eyedrops (a sulfa drug) that I took for a month before realizing it was indeed a sulfa drug. Prior to starting the drops, I was assured by my ophthalmologist that it was not a sulfa drug. I'm allergic to sulfa. I've been off the drops for a month now and my symptoms are not subsiding. So the only other culprits can be either a post viral infection of some sort (west nile, lyme) or my thyroid. Because I developed a nasty rash and case of hives all over that sent me to the ER (two days after stopping the sulfa eye drops), my doctors have been quick to conclude that all my symptoms are a result of the sulfa drug.
If and when I ever get a diagnosis, I will post it here. Thanks again for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate it.
While I am determined to get to the bottom of this, I am trying not to get completely disillusioned with my doctors. I know there are good doctors out there but finding one is like finding a needle in a
haystack. All my doctors think my symptoms are an allergic reaction to my eyedrops (a sulfa drug) that I took for a month before realizing it was indeed a sulfa drug. Prior to starting the drops, I was assured by my ophthalmologist that it was not a sulfa drug. I'm allergic to sulfa. I've been off the drops for a month now and my symptoms are not subsiding. So the only other culprits can be either a post viral infection of some sort (west nile, lyme) or my thyroid. Because I developed a nasty rash and case of hives all over that sent me to the ER (two days after stopping the sulfa eye drops), my doctors have been quick to conclude that all my symptoms are a result of the sulfa drug.
If and when I ever get a diagnosis, I will post it here. Thanks again for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate it.
Hi, Leanne--
Thank you very much for your supportive thoughts. You know, you are right; as long as we all know what each other is trying to say, the bloopers do not matter. I often mentally make corrections on behalf of the writer (even people without a thyroid problem!) and do not at all mind doing so. I know that they do the same for me.
What you say about your muscle twitching rings a huge bell with me. It really is easy to make yourself sick with worry when you have such strange symptoms.
I was doing pretty well at not worrying until six years after my weird symptoms had started, when I provided an overview of them as I was getting acquainted with someone who turned out to be a really wonderful gynecologist. This was right after I had finished graduate school and moved to the Washington, DC area. The gynecologist referred me to a rheumatologist because of my muscle pain problems. The rheumatologist also was my primary care physician for several years (and also has turned out to be truly wonderful). When the gynecologist looked at the "catalog" of symptoms I had had in the past six years, he asked ever-so-casually if I had been assessed for a demyelinating disorder such as MS. He said, "Not that I think you have MS; you probably do not," but the expression on his face was not matching the reassuring words he was saying.
Wow, it was worry in a big way from that point forward. Then all of my "wiring" checked out just fine. Whew! As for my muscle pain, my rheumatologist said that the problem was recognized but "poorly understood." Since that time, which was in the spring of 2001, I have seen the rheumatologist regularly, mostly because he has been an extraordinary ally, provider of emotional support, and sympathetic listener when I just need to tell a physician how very stressful it is to have such weird symptoms coming and going. Until my thyroid gland's struggling became obvious, I was in very good health and highly energetic, and yet the way my body could produce the weirdest of weird symptoms was unnerving.
You are right, though. I have had the grab bag of paresthesias for a long time, and even in my most worried moments, I have to say that the symptoms have not progressed at all. In fact, you also are right in saying that they have become less frequent. Since this has been my situation for thirteen years, it seems pretty reassuring to you and to me both. Also, when I had the neurological assessment, I was checked thoroughly, and my nervous system and muscles were in tip-top health.
Let me add one more bit of reassurance, which comes from my rheumatologist. After I had known him for about three years, I was complaining one day that part of what gave me the creeps about my symptoms was the way they would come and go. It was different "neurological" symptoms at different times, and no rhyme nor reason to why they came and went the way they did. My rheumatologist at that time had been practicing medicine for more than twenty years. He commented that although he could understand how the "little bit of this; little bit of that; today the symptom bothers me for the entire day; tomorrow it is gone again" would give me the creeps, it was the aspect of my situation that most reassured him--as a physician--of there not being anything seriously wrong.
I cannot tell you what the reasoning was behind his comment, but I CAN tell you that my rheumatologist always "calls it as he sees it." He would not say that he saw something reassuring in my situation if he did not sincerely mean it. I can so count on him to be completely honest that I learned long ago never, ever to ask him a worried question unless I was fully prepared to hear any possible answer.
I hope that my follow-up comments have helped a little more. It is so unnerving to have the kind of muscle twitching you are having, where you can see the muscle moving as it twitches and where it is not a little twitching that happens a few times within the space of an hour and then it is gone.
If all physicians, including primary care physicians but also including endocrinologists, realized that what you and I have experienced may be far, far from rare among people with endocrine system problems, we could have our worries settled for us a lot more easily. There is a real problem, I think, with physicians knowing only what is most common among people with a certain condition and not knowing what the entire range of symptoms is like, and I do not fault them for not knowing. In this "information age" in which information pours forth in such torrents that it is difficult for any of us to sort through it, I do not know how the kind of valuable information (even though it is "anecdotal") that I see at the forum can be communicated to the physicians who really need to know about it.
This is really too bad, because as I have learned (and as you implied as you thanked me), knowledge can be a huge help when you are trying to cope. Just knowing that you are far from being the only person with a certain symptom is powerful in the reassurance it provides. My "neurological" symptoms never crossed my mind after hypothyroidism was diagnosed. Then when I became part of the forum and started reading various posts, I found my jaw sagging. More than once, I thought, "So I am not the only one who has had that kind of odd symptom." I learned that it is never too late to feel reassured.
With good feelings for having been helpful,
Jenny
Thank you very much for your supportive thoughts. You know, you are right; as long as we all know what each other is trying to say, the bloopers do not matter. I often mentally make corrections on behalf of the writer (even people without a thyroid problem!) and do not at all mind doing so. I know that they do the same for me.
What you say about your muscle twitching rings a huge bell with me. It really is easy to make yourself sick with worry when you have such strange symptoms.
I was doing pretty well at not worrying until six years after my weird symptoms had started, when I provided an overview of them as I was getting acquainted with someone who turned out to be a really wonderful gynecologist. This was right after I had finished graduate school and moved to the Washington, DC area. The gynecologist referred me to a rheumatologist because of my muscle pain problems. The rheumatologist also was my primary care physician for several years (and also has turned out to be truly wonderful). When the gynecologist looked at the "catalog" of symptoms I had had in the past six years, he asked ever-so-casually if I had been assessed for a demyelinating disorder such as MS. He said, "Not that I think you have MS; you probably do not," but the expression on his face was not matching the reassuring words he was saying.
Wow, it was worry in a big way from that point forward. Then all of my "wiring" checked out just fine. Whew! As for my muscle pain, my rheumatologist said that the problem was recognized but "poorly understood." Since that time, which was in the spring of 2001, I have seen the rheumatologist regularly, mostly because he has been an extraordinary ally, provider of emotional support, and sympathetic listener when I just need to tell a physician how very stressful it is to have such weird symptoms coming and going. Until my thyroid gland's struggling became obvious, I was in very good health and highly energetic, and yet the way my body could produce the weirdest of weird symptoms was unnerving.
You are right, though. I have had the grab bag of paresthesias for a long time, and even in my most worried moments, I have to say that the symptoms have not progressed at all. In fact, you also are right in saying that they have become less frequent. Since this has been my situation for thirteen years, it seems pretty reassuring to you and to me both. Also, when I had the neurological assessment, I was checked thoroughly, and my nervous system and muscles were in tip-top health.
Let me add one more bit of reassurance, which comes from my rheumatologist. After I had known him for about three years, I was complaining one day that part of what gave me the creeps about my symptoms was the way they would come and go. It was different "neurological" symptoms at different times, and no rhyme nor reason to why they came and went the way they did. My rheumatologist at that time had been practicing medicine for more than twenty years. He commented that although he could understand how the "little bit of this; little bit of that; today the symptom bothers me for the entire day; tomorrow it is gone again" would give me the creeps, it was the aspect of my situation that most reassured him--as a physician--of there not being anything seriously wrong.
I cannot tell you what the reasoning was behind his comment, but I CAN tell you that my rheumatologist always "calls it as he sees it." He would not say that he saw something reassuring in my situation if he did not sincerely mean it. I can so count on him to be completely honest that I learned long ago never, ever to ask him a worried question unless I was fully prepared to hear any possible answer.
I hope that my follow-up comments have helped a little more. It is so unnerving to have the kind of muscle twitching you are having, where you can see the muscle moving as it twitches and where it is not a little twitching that happens a few times within the space of an hour and then it is gone.
If all physicians, including primary care physicians but also including endocrinologists, realized that what you and I have experienced may be far, far from rare among people with endocrine system problems, we could have our worries settled for us a lot more easily. There is a real problem, I think, with physicians knowing only what is most common among people with a certain condition and not knowing what the entire range of symptoms is like, and I do not fault them for not knowing. In this "information age" in which information pours forth in such torrents that it is difficult for any of us to sort through it, I do not know how the kind of valuable information (even though it is "anecdotal") that I see at the forum can be communicated to the physicians who really need to know about it.
This is really too bad, because as I have learned (and as you implied as you thanked me), knowledge can be a huge help when you are trying to cope. Just knowing that you are far from being the only person with a certain symptom is powerful in the reassurance it provides. My "neurological" symptoms never crossed my mind after hypothyroidism was diagnosed. Then when I became part of the forum and started reading various posts, I found my jaw sagging. More than once, I thought, "So I am not the only one who has had that kind of odd symptom." I learned that it is never too late to feel reassured.
With good feelings for having been helpful,
Jenny
I think we all make grammatical bloopers I know I do all the time!! that's o.k. we all know what each other is trying to say!! that is the main thing. Those darn twitches are so strange some days I have them on and off through the day,and I can actually see my muscle moving when they twitch. When they started I really had myself convinced that I had a neuro problem llike ms. Can really make yourself sick with worry about these symptoms. I will be 40 next year and I know that my hormones are starting to kick in big time,I am on a good vitamin regime and I am going to start primrose,around my cycle I could literally poke somebody's eye out if they look at me the wrong way. NOT GOOD. Jenny It makes me feel allot better knowing that you have had all of these paresthesias on and off for a long time and that they really have not progressed at all ,if anything they have become less frequent. Talking to you has really helped me cope,just knowing that maybe there is really hope that mine may lessen over time too.Thank you so much.
Leanne
LJ39
Leanne
LJ39
P.S. I just reread my comments after I had posted them, which was dumb. I should have read--and proofread--before I clicked on "post comment," not after. Sorry for the grammatical bloopers.
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