The situation has got much worse - arm numbness increasing every night until last night i could not sleep on my side at all. Everytime i fell asleep the arm of the side i was laying on went numb and woke me up - wether the arm was up or under my head or stretched down by my side. Must have woken up 20 times at least. Then i just clench and unclench my hand a few times and the feeling starts to come back.
Tried sleeping on my back - which was torture, kep turning over in my sleep (have been sleeping on my side for years and years) It is worse on my favourite side. Also cannot always sleep flat on back because of problems with lungs.
Yesterday and today a certain amount of pain stayed with me in the day, arms felt weak and if i lent slightly on them on the sofa, they would start to go numb straight away.
I really need to sleep!!
sorry to hear that. Yeah it is a very unpleasant symptom.
Like you, I stuggled to sleep on my back due to it and when I did finally manage to learn to start sleeping on my back, I then would get intense lucid dreaming going on which sleeping laying on my back causes me (which then further just added to all my issues.. as thou I was asleep.. my brain wasnt getting no rest due to being still conscious when dreaming).
I really suggest to try to work on all the possible things which could cause this.. circulation and anything else people can think of eg if caused by low blood volume maybe a drug to help that could help or maybe even thinning the blood may help seeing nearly all of of us with ME/CFS have hypercoagulation issues there too and I guess this symptom could be a hypercoagulation issue too (specialist blood lab once found that eg hughes syndrome common in us with a study.. so I'd logically think that something like taking some baby asprin right before bed may help it if its being caused by something like that.
I hope you dont get worst.. I acutally got to the point where I thought I may end up loosing some fingers due to it (as my circulation was so severely badly being affected while I was asleep. I consider myself lucky I didnt end up with permanent damage done)
I didnt know enough at the time to trial things to help the symptom and would try handling that symptom differently if I had known what I knew now.
I suggest you try to get some blood work done to try to find out if hypercoagulation may be involved in causing this symptom for you.. eg
- "MTHFR polymorphism" test or a "thrombophilia genotypes test" (which checks for MTHFR and other issues which can cause thicker, sticky blood issues)
- APTT (can show up an abnormally shortened thromboplasmin time) the APTT is done on as part of a labs "coagulation study" test along with it tests prothrombin time..
All those above things which affect blood and can cause clots etc due to what they do to blood, I found out in me many years later were out of the normal ranges or I had and in my case must of also played a part in the issues I had with the symptom you are having. And these types of issues are more common in ME/CFS.
edit.. added info on the tests i suggest due to this symptom
